8 posts
That’s one of the many stirring quotables from a blog post published last week at John Winsor’s blog.
John is the CEO of Victors and Spoils, the new model (ad) agency that’s applying crowdsourcing models to creativity.
Justin’s ‘Agile versus Strategy‘ post has tapped an excellent debate.
One of the most interesting comments comes from R/GA’s William Charnock, who makes the point that traditional ad agencies got rid of ‘the makers’:
They outsourced production to directors, photographers, digital technology specialists etc and carved off media execution to separate media agencies. With no ability to prototype, experiment or execute in the real world, the only option for them was to focus on ‘conceptual thinking’ or ‘BDUF’.
Some forward thinking agencies seem to be addressing this, if only on a small scale, setting up labs for experimentation (a la Ogilvy, BBH, Media labs etc.); creating partnerships with content creators, VC’s and start-ups (who truly are the leaders in market agility and fast fail learning/prototyping).
As William and other commenters say, it’s the start-ups who are the true leaders in this space – not least in terms of overall value creation. Indeed, you could argue that the ‘start up culture’ of high-growth tech start-ups has become a defining (and disruptive) force in work cultures well beyond tech, marketing and media.
Rishad Tobaccowala’s blog post at Reinventing, and his speech at the American Association of Ad Agencies Transformation conference, are both incredibly exciting.
With both, he calls for renewal and appeals to the ad industry to save itself by hiring in top tier talent to build a new world, specifically:
This is the time to build. The talent we most need are builders, sculptors, painters. Folks who create and not just manage.
Years ago, when I was a teenager working as a summer camp counsellor, I was given a very valuable lesson in the expectation of success. (Full disclosure: I have yet to actually learn this lesson, but I’m trying. Lordy, am I trying.)
I was caring for a four-year-old whose mum had gone on an overnight trip, and as the day grew darker, my little charge became more and more anxious. I cuddled and soothed her, but nothing helped — she wanted her mum.
Her whimpers turned to full-on crying and I, agitated at the prospect of failing my job so completely, began to shush the poor kid. Obviously, this didn’t help, but I was dogged in my determination to ‘make it work’.
Back in the summer William and I were invited to take part in a Creative Review round table discussion to debate the ‘Future of Advertising’. Chaired by Patrick Burgoyne, Editor of Creative Review, we were joined by the great and the good from agencies across London.
Over the hour and a half chat the topics we talked about varied from measurement mechanisms for digital campaigns, payment models, client-agency relationships and a load of other stuff.
Another week, another blog post on the subject of “why creative advertising folk need to embrace ‘technologists and their geeky ways’” once again ignites vigorous debate.
The post in question is by Joe Mele, VP Client Partner at Razorfish, and received a great many comments and a huge number of re-tweets of the @BBHLabs‘ tweet that contained a link to it. The citizens of Twitter seem to react with a combination of self-loathing and schadenfreudian glee to the disruption that social technologies are wreaking on advertising. It’s a little bit dull and frankly misses the point – and it wasn’t quite (I don’t think) what Joe was saying.
That’s the title of an excellent piece in Advertising Age by Reuben Steiger the CEO of Millions Of Us (great name!). Starts off by asking the fascinating question of why ad agencies, with all the client relationships and wherewithal, didn’t get their heads round how to create serious websites back in the day (I’m discounting the ‘product support site’ and interactive advertising.) Reuben relates how surprised he was the first time around that they didn’t ‘get it’ and crush him, and proposes some reasons for this:
