How did advertising come to this?
I wasn’t alive in the fifties, but it strikes me that there are some pretty odd things about advertising today that can’t possibly have been the case when the industry was getting into its stride.
Making non-existent ads to win awards
Taking on accounts for nothing to make your agency look fat and healthy.
Recommending media channels because they’re new rather than effective.
Moving accounts around in London because of a decision that was made in Nairobi.
Creating another awards scheme that caters for much the same ads as several existing ones.
Agencies making a huge amount of their income from behind the scenes client services that have little or nothing to do with advertising.
Strategy trumping work.
Clients binning hundreds of thousands of pounds of work in the middle of a recession.
Lots of big agencies scrapping over a crumby little account just for the chance to say they’ve won something.
It just seems, occasionally, that advertising has gone from an industry that promoted the goods and services of others to something slightly different. It now appears that the image of the agency has become excessively important, leading to odd behaviour that has in turn led to a lack of respect from clients who know they have the pimp hand all day long.
Have we become our own worst enemies, appearing like a series of desperate suitors, each fighting to impress a bunch of boss-eyed munters, whilst forgetting that said boss-eyed munters (and her fit friends who left town a long time ago) don’t find desperation attractive or respectable?
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Yes.
I’d add ‘90% of agencies forgetting how to sell’ to that list, too.
Ben can I change the subject and ask a question: as I write more I find that my thinking time is directed at what I’m writing – so whilst I used to sit on the shitter or stand in the shower and think about ads, now I think about my latest writing project? I’m worried that ultimately, this will be to the detriment of my ad career, which unfortunately, I still need to do to earn a living. Has this been an issue for you and if so, how do you deal with it?
This desperate behaviour is born of the gradual realisation that the current (big) agency model is unsustainable beyond about 10 years into the future, allied with the total lack of any idea about what comes next. If you think about it too long, it’s bloody terrifying.
Taking on clients for little or no fee is an old trick from the early Saatchis days. Still popular down towards the bottom end of Charlotte Street…
I recently worked at an agency that spent 3 weeks + 2 weekends trying to win an account worth about 50k a year in fees. 50k. There were 2 partners, 3 planners, 1 CD, 1 ECD, 8 creatives, 2 research groups the agency paid for and a skyscraper of boards. Oh, and the obligatory mood film and shamifesto. All this to chase a Campaign headline and head off criticism that the place was going downhill. We lost.
Bollocks,
I can give you advice on this one though I think it’s a bit bizarre that you think anyone but you is going have the answer.
You are writing because you find it more enjoyable and meaningful than advertising. If you did not write you would still be finding advertising less enjoyable and meaningful. This is because it is less enjoyable than it used to. It’s also because you are growing up. You are lucky you have something to fill what would otherwise have been an ever increasing void that you might have been able to plug up with cash, but only for a bit.
Be glad.
Surely Stanners wouldn’t stand for it.
Agree with them minus the strategy point, I think good suits should be recognising the importance of strategy and ensuring it works with ‘the work’, otherwise the greatest idea in the world may be irrelevant to who is actually buying your product.
Also agree with Will, hard sells are rare these days.
Bollocks, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but your writing could do with a bit of tightening up.
That aside, I don’t think the question is black and white. If you spend some of your spare time thinking about a non-advertising piece of writing that doesn’t mean you won’t have enough time to do your advertising justice. Think how much time you spend daydreaming, or deciding what to have for lunch, or reading this blog.
There’s loads of time to spend doing all the things you want to do, and certainly to think about them.
As far as my side of it goes, I think I spend as long as I need to do each project as well as I think I should. I can’t afford to do shoddy ad work; if I do I won’t get rehired. And I certainly can’t afford to do shoddy book writing (although those who have read Instinct might disagree).
Does that answer your question?
Bolloks, I think the problem —or at least my problem to be fair— is how to manage time. I feel like I spent too much time thinking about a project or a campaign, especially a campaign —because like many of you I make my living out of it —so it pretty much takes over or consumes all my time, even the spare one.
Ben, do you have like a strict schedule of work? like 1 hour a day for writing, 1 hour a day for your blog, and so on?
Thanks for the respective answers gaylords.
That is a great blog post, although I don’t expect advertising is an isolated industry, not that that is any help. The pendulum of power between, dare I say ‘supplier’ and ‘client’, has swung toward client also in retail, publishing, accountancy, law and I.T. Many service providers have allowed themselves due to competition to become commodities, (in advertising) what they may have advised their clients not to do.
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Agencies seem to not have heeded their own advice, sell on value rather than price.
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Ben E Hana makes a great point, that is common place. Hidden costs of sales are out of control and no one has any idea of the life time revenues of clients either.