By Sasan Saeidi, global vice president – content strategy, International Advertising Association (IAA)
The game has changed. But for most, this critical evolution and transformation has been absent and we are still very much acting and behaving in an old-fashioned manner.
The advertising and communication landscape has evolved drastically from the days of the Mad Men and 1930s Madison Avenue. It’s evolved from the days when giants such as Bernbach, Saatchi, Ogilvy and Burnett were very active and attending pitches. However, their character traits and work ethic are very much missed today.
What do I mean by this evolution of the business landscape?
– I mean business conditions are not the same anymore and the way agencies are trying to ensure they solidify and justify their brand value for clients and in society is not as before. We are finding it harder to establish our true worth.
– I mean the way agencies are getting remunerated today as opposed to the way they were before has drastically deteriorated. We are now selling creative ideas by the kilogram, instead of selling them through a proper measurement that takes into account the time of the agency and the impact of our idea on the client’s business. In most cases, we are giving our ideas away.
– I mean the way we as a communication industry value ourselves and walk with an attitude and a self-belief that we are part of the greatest industry of all time is taken for granted to a large degree. Those legends of the past had this panache but, over time, we have failed in carrying it.
– I mean the way our creative work is perceived, looked upon and consumed by society today is not like before. Today, we are dealing with connected society that is constantly on the go and not naïve. Social media can make you a hero overnight, but the opposite is also true. So our creativity has an instant approval or rejection and it’s all in the open.
– I mean the way our creative product is now the object of desire for so many. Everyone is a creative director, including the consumer. Media agencies, PR agencies, CRM hot shops, digital platforms such as Facebook and Google, consultancy giants such as Deloitte and IBM… These are already in the creative space and so are clients themselves; everyone has a say and all are at the helm of creativity, with the sole purpose of being labeled as creative institutions.
– I mean the democratisation of creative production. Everyone can produce content today; everyone can scale creativity and push it through multiple social channels that were not there before. Media has shifted to RTB and conversion officers are at the helm of campaigns.
– I mean the fact that clients are no longer obliged or even incentivised to work with creative agencies (the good old ad agency), as they themselves are producing content and creating communication work – just look at one of the latest Dollar Shave Club ads that was produced by the client.
– I mean the slow demise of the AOR (agency of record) for clients and its replacement by many specialised agencies that can provide a number of offerings; add to that the shrinking retainers that are being replaced with project-based opportunities.
Business disruption
The universe of communication is shifting beneath us and we are standing and working in the old-fashioned manner, as if everything is fine and we are merely mortals. Yeah, right.
This business disruption has left us in our tracks and we have forgotten to reinvent our modus operandi along the way. We forgot to stay connected. Our inability as a creative community to bring onboard the next wave of integrators and thinkers and ensure that our processes are very simple at heart and egoless is the reason we are here today. More so, we have been reactive to all these points I have raised earlier on. We failed to read the signs and predict the changes.
But all is not lost yet and time is of the essence.
We need to ensure we understand two fundamental parameters. What’s best for the brand, combined with an agenda that also suits our interests as creative and communication institutions. Both parameters can co-exist – there are many examples out there.
Bob Greenberg put it best: a disruption is needed every couple of years – and nobody can own this mantra better than R/GA. Recently claiming to have built the most connected office in the world, a fully integrated nexus that combines technology, a new agency business model, with modern living and a host of connectivity essentials that help employees ensure they remain connected in a world of changing matrices.
In my view, R/GA is putting all its focus on being able to remain and act as the agency of the connected age; an age of social media, artificial intelligence and consumerism that is synonymous with technological appetite. Agencies of tomorrow, where R/GA is today, need to ensure that their focus remains on how they can bridge the gap of creativity and technology.
They must ensure that their creative product is technology-friendly, created with the help of technology but not for the sake of technology, but rather for the sake of creating value in people’s lives. The R/GA Ventures division does exactly that and, through various accelerator programmes, it allows new technologies to be created, which, in turn, serves a brand or marketing objective. This is an agency model and example that not only serves the brand it is helping, but also serves the equity of the agency, as it raises it profile, worth and bottom line in the eyes of all.
The agencies that fail to bridge this gap and embrace this mantra will be forever forgotten and their creative ideas will merely stay relevant for the age of the past and not the connected consumer of the future.
Game changers
But connectivity alone and an understanding that the final creative product needs to serve a more dynamic purpose is only half the equation. Only a handful of agencies in the world today have figured this integrated formula well. And their work speaks for itself. But in today’s mainstream communication industry, where all and most holding group agencies sit, the process in which the majority are working by needs to also seek this change, fast, and it hasn’t.
Clients are themselves asking for more seamless and integrated answers to their briefs. They are seeking solutions that our silo-models of today are not able to answer. And when we do, it’s not optimal at all.
We are working traditionally and unless we breakdown the boundaries between ourselves, the clients and other agencies that are too serving the brand; our creative product will remain obsolete, even though we think it is a breakthrough.
The biggest advertisers in the world, such as Procter and Gamble, Unilever and The Coca-Cola Company, are all asking for a new order of play; game-changing models that need to overcome the complexity we currently live by.
Marc Pritchard might have said it best: “Frankly, your complexity should not be our problem, so we want you to make that complexity invisible.” He said this when addressing agencies at Ad Age‘s Digital Conference in April, 2016. The Procter & Gamble Global Brand Officer also added: “Our expectation is that, over time, our agency partners, whoever we choose, are going to be able to integrate [all of the workload], so you can get the production out, the distribution out as well as the creative out.”
The agency model of the future should in essence be one that combines a passion and focus for creativity with purpose; one that opposes fragmentation of efforts. A topic that Unilever’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed views as the one of the biggest concerns both for their business and the future of their brands.
Fragmentation of efforts in our world today means multiple agencies are working on creative solutions for brands and working in silos while doing so, with an end result being ideas and communication channel plans that are not connected, not tackling real issues, nor simple enough to be understood.
We can only overcome this clear and present problem if we as communication agencies come together and stand united before the client and the brand. We can no longer live by the “divide and conquer” strategy. This fierce competition between ourselves has also been the cause of our diminishing financial margins.
Anchor and support model
Without sounding naïve, it’s about unity and having a hard and difficult chat internally on how we can together think long-term vs short-term. The future is about working as an anchor and support agency model, where an agency surrounds itself with experts from multiple fields, all coming together to work on a specific strategy, business goal and a defined metrics.
The landscape of today can’t have egos getting in the way, or else things will only get worse. Specialist agencies must work together and ensure there is alignment internally on who does what; agree on the best suitable candidates with the right credentials that can do that job and then do it. Implement a RASCI model for accountability and then move on. Easier said than done, but every one of us has a core competency that we can own better than other things. Why cant we all play fair, identify that and act accordingly?
Most of our structures today are too rigid, too vertical and too slow. We are too egocentric as a culture and are not open to take on advice from other expert brands in the industry. Instead, the agencies that are more connected and prepared for the future are the ones that are working in no silos, are horizontal in nature, fast, open and ego-free. They have figured out the collaboration model. Hard to accept for most, but it’s the truth.
To recap, I would summarise six urgent key action points that mainstream agencies of today need to adopt and implement to be able to remain in the game and remain fast.
To use a basketball terminology; the clock is running down on the third with the last quarter to go.
– Investing in talent that brings a vast array of skills to the table, from coders to anthropologists to hard-core data scientists. Even musicians and linguists. Imagine you have all these minds and skills present in a creative agency. A renaissance of ideas comes to life. I want to bring on board more consultants and pair them up with creative designers.
– Short-term thinking will kill us, as we wont be able to invest in areas that can carry us forward in choppy waters. We need a long-term view during these tough times.
– Put the ego away; focus on what you do best; sit around the 3.0 table and partner up fast to answer the clients. Divide the revenue accordingly.
– Try to create a more connected environment in your process and culture. It’s not difficult. Break down the silos and shorten your high-rises; and instead build a linear and more flat field of connected pods.
– It’s not about the awards. Get over it. Our creative should be celebrated but we cant be in the business of awards. Events like South by Southwest are tomorrow’s meeting points, a crossroads where content, entertainment and music meet. The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference & Festivals celebrates the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW® is the premier destination for discovery.
– Our creative product should be one that is all about creating value for people; be less about marketing at people, rather, focus on marketing for people. Marketing for people means bringing the consumer at the heart of your strategy. Keith Weed has also had a lot to say about this.
In conclusion, our creative advertising renaissance must continue and we can succeed, remain relevant, stay connected, stay fast and lead through creative innovation. But we must enforce some very crucial changes in our organisations, or we will find ourselves alone and a story of the past.
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