Remember that preso I did with Chaz from BBH at the Asian Effectiveness awards?
Well it’s been viewed over NINETEEN THOUSAND TIMES.
NINETEEN THOUSAND!!!
Fuck me.
Now as nice as that is, there are a couple of points that are slightly worrying …
1. None of the presentations I’ve written on my own have got anywhere near that amount.
2. None of what we said was really new … it was just a consolidation of a bunch of facts we have all known about as an industry for a long time.
Which begs the question, does adland have the memory of a goldfish?
Seriously, why does a presentation that talks about issues that the industry has been muttering about for literally decades, become so popular.
OK, so I am using the term ‘popular’ in relation to my other presentations which are anything but, but seriously, what’s going on?
Debates regarding television vs internet … pre-testing … social media … the relevancy of US/UK ad models for other markets are hardly new themes, so why it is an issue that has seemingly got so much interest?
I’ll tell you why, because too much advertising is done to appease clients not to drive business.
Sure, a client has to buy into what you’re doing so that it can be executed as powerfully as possible, but sadly it appears too many clients are only interested in doing work that allows them to go into their review and say ‘they’ve executed their goals’ than do something that quantifiably helps their business grow.
I’ve said it before, but what’s more worrying than adland losing their seat at the boardroom table [which is our fault as we decided it was best to not talk about issues the board were actually interested in] is the fact that too many marketing directors have also been kicked out of the top floor room.
Instead of being charged to ‘market’ their company to groups who can fundamentally ‘change their commercial future’, their role seems to be to ‘satisfy the ego of the board’ … which is why our industry seems to have now ended up doing so much work that encapsulates everything we know is wrong, even though it is contributing to our own downfall.
Creativity is an amazing thing. It can change and build things. Amazing things. But it needs to be based on truth and quantifiable goals because if we continue to go down the path of satisfying clients whims – simply because we have sold the value of true creativity down the river and now need to chase every $ we can get – we are not victims of corporate ego, delusion & arrogance … but conspirators.