Commentary

The Oxymoron of the Future

  I was more than a little surprised to be invited to give a speech at last year’s 4A’s conference in San Francisco, particularly as I had described the previous year’s gathering as a “Giant Wankfest.” Perhaps they wanted to inject a hint of weirdness into the totally expected agenda these affairs provide for outrageous amounts of money. The theme of the conference was “Transformation,” and a dozen or so guest speakers were given five minutes to propose exactly how they would transform the agency business.

Most of the presentations concerned such nuts-and-bolts subjects as datametrics, touch points, diversity, media efficiency and the obligatory frisson of social-media tactics to show how up to speed everyone was with the flavor du jour. My favorite was from the CMO of Kodak, whose presentation was titled, “How Kodak is Transforming.” He has since left the company to pursue “personal projects,” whilst Kodak is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Transformation indeed!

I started off my short speech (which is available on video for masochists) by saying I wished I had a dollar for every time I’d heard someone claim they are creating the “agency of the future.” A noble venture, which invariably requires the “knocking down of walls,” and the “blowing up of silos.” No wonder one recent and much-hyped example covered its Web site with images of wrecking balls and sledgehammers, yet lasted less than two years and never produced a single campaign for its solitary client whilst burning through tens of millions of dollars.

My transformative idea was simplicity itself.

I suggested that the major agencies should engage in a leveraged buyout from their respective holding companies, which currently liposuction off 30% of their revenues, and get back to making ads, rather than spreadsheets. This was met by stunned silence followed by raucous laughter. However, I did get lots of free drinks in the bar later. I also have it on good authority that the management of a major BDA (Big Dumb Agency) explored my transformative suggestion, only to quickly drop the idea when they realized that to achieve this would require putting the SoHo loft, the Greenwich house, the Florida condo, and the yachts, BMW’s etc into hock to come up with the necessary capital.   

Perhaps in order to create the agency of the future, we should look at what made the great agencies of the past.

Admittedly, life was much simpler in those days. You could reach 80% of the population via three TV networks and four national publications. You could do your media plan on the cocktail napkin of your third martini. Heck, if you were George Lois, you could do layouts on a Four Seasons tablecloth while buying the client lunch. I mean, c’mon, what client wouldn’t be impressed by that?

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Back in the “Mad Men” days, many clients actually trusted their agencies, which in return, busted their chops to build rewarding relationships that lasted for years. Now they are measured in months, and many clients continually question not only the effectiveness of their agencies' efforts, but also the price they are expected to pay for them. What went wrong?

Although, I enjoy, somewhat vicariously, my reputation as a critic of the BDHCs (Big Dumb Holding Companies) and their chattel BDAs, I must admit that they are perhaps more of a symptom of the problems that have overtaken the agency business in the last 20 years, rather than the root cause.

Because these are public companies, driven to “make the numbers” rather than invest in the people and programs that will pay off in the long term for both themselves and their clients, they are destined to be on a long, slippery slope to irrelevancy. After all, many of the services that agencies now profess to provide for their clients, can either be performed in-house, or outsourced to low-cost providers in another time zone.

A visit to any major ad agency Web site will give you little reason to consider them for your current advertising and marketing needs, let alone as being capable of taking you in new, profitable and measurable, directions. Profit generation and measurable results are words rarely found in the BDA lexicon. Much better to talk about brand building, brand acceptance, brand awareness, or brand whatever. All impressive claims which allow BDAs to avoid culpability when their efforts fail to produce identifiable results.

That’s why few BDAs take on direct-marketing clients with their inherent insistence of accountability and cost effectiveness. It’s also why most major DM companies produce their advertising and promotion in-house.

So, what’s a BDA to do in order to prosper in today’s uncertain marketplace? I’m not talking about the inevitable menu of options that range from traditional expertise in print, broadcast to newer options, such as digital, viral, guerilla, word of mouth, mobile, and of course, social. Nor am I talking about crowdsourcing and curation, which more often than not, deliver an inferior product.

There really is nothing new about many of the solutions now being punted by agencies as the answer to their client’s ever growing realization of their inefficiencies in today’s marketplace.

Product creation and marketing was tried by George Lois’s agency PKL, in the early 1960s when they bought a publishing company and a bicycle manufacturer, both of which failed. They could also claim the dubious distinction of being the first agency to go public, thereby elevating the pursuit of profit over the creation of superior work. No wonder they imploded after a few short years.

One of the few avenues rarely explored is that of compensation, particularly when it comes to the creation of a formula that rewards agencies based on the results of their efforts. With the exception of direct, this has always been almost impossible to arrive at when you consider the numbers of factors, in addition to advertising, that can play a role in marketplace results.

Even more disadvantageous to traditional BDAs: because of their claims to be knocking down walls and blowing up silos in their quest to deliver totally integrated solutions, it inevitably drives them to generate campaign solutions that can be implemented across multiple channels, markets, and even geographies. Unfortunately, this works against the need to develop content tailored to be effective in today’s expanding communication choices. It also demands a different set of processes and methodologies in terms of creation, implementation and payment. Because of this, agency “Bigness” will inevitably lead to “Dumbness.” Or, as dear old Jay Chiat so memorably put it: “I can’t wait to see how big we get before we turn to crap.”

So, what’s the answer?

Many agencies have simply become too big and have forgotten what it was they were created to do in the first place. Yes, create advertising. Oh, I know this is a word that’s fallen out of favor of late, and we are constantly told we should be engaging in social interactions with consumers to involve them in conversations about brands. I would, however, remind you that the second most important thing the late Steve Jobs ever said: “Never ask consumers what they want. They won’t know until you give it to them.”

And, the most important thing he said was “I want insanely great advertising.” Something you can only get from an advertising agency, preferably, a small one.

Some years ago, Anomaly, an agency I have a high regard for, announced it had arrived at the optimum size for the delivery of outstanding work to their clients, and would therefore create a spinoff, Another Anomaly, and if that grew too big, they would create Another, Another Anomaly, and so on. Unfortunately, within a couple of years, Another Anomaly, simply merged back into Anomaly -- and was never heard from again.

The trick is to find a small-to-medium sized agency, staffed by experienced people, who can demonstrate their capabilities to produce high-quality work based on an understanding of their client’s needs, markets and ambitions. The work itself should be generated as migratory, platform independent forms of communication, because there are no entrenched loyalties to existing departments and profit centers that are the silos BDAs always claim to be blowing up, but rarely do.

Because of today’s high-speed communications capabilities, geographical location is no longer a major consideration, and can, in fact, be a plus in terms of the cost-effectiveness of such a relationship. There are many agencies which fall into this category. A representative example is Drake/Cooper, an agency in Boise, Idaho, where I now live. With offices in Boise and Seattle, handling clients both nationally and regionally, they have been able to attract talent from both coasts, given the lifestyle and scenic attractions of the region, not to mention the affordability of maintaining this lifestyle.

Agencies such as this offer clients true value because they are independent, committed to a total involvement in their client's business, deliver an unmatched ROI when compared to BDAs, and above all, are eager.

Just like ad agencies used to be.

At the end of David Ogilvy’s 1963 “Confessions of an Advertising Man,” he is asked by his sister if advertising should be abolished, “No” he replies, “But it must be reformed.”

And downsized.

 

George Parker has spent more than 40 years on Madison Avenue with Ogilvy, Y&R, Chiat/Day. JWT and others. Over his career he’s won Cannes Lions, CLIOs, EFFIES, and the David Ogilvy Award. He publishes the blog AdScam.Typepad.com, which he describes as, “required reading for those looking for a piss & vinegar view of the world’s second oldest profession.” His latest book, "Confessions of a Mad Man," makes the TV show “Mad Men” look like “Sesame Street.”

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