An International Smoothie

Devolve and Die - The Integration Myth

For most ad agencies, integration is a unicorn. Picture courtesy of Steffe

This is probably going to make me even more unemployable than I already am, but conviction should trump compromise all day everyday so let's go.

Update: In a beautiful example of synchronicity, the great George Parker talked about this very damn subject at the 4As yesterday. Read his speech, because it's the truth.

Right. So I've been reading Bud Caddell's thought provoking post about what the model for the agency of the future is, if there is indeed a future for discrete communication agencies. At the same time, I've had a bit of back and forth tweetage with Robert Phillips about the mighty ad networks; the WPPs, Interpublics and Omnicoms of the world. 

Ultimately, I've come to a final, personal conclusion that apart from the well worn arguments of why the Big Dumb Agencies (A term that I think my homeboy George Parker should copyright) of this world are in trouble in the face of a convergent and almost organically evolving model of media consumption, they are simply not structured (nor are they prepared to truly restructure) to deal with a truly through the line model (what is the damn line anyway?). 

The people at the top of these networks are either completely oblivious to their own business practices or (more likely) hope to ride the gravy train of client compensation long enough that when it all bottoms out they can escape the rubble with their bonuses and start another agency of the future. Or perhaps they're just not brave enough to make a change.

Allow me to explain.

It was Saatchi&Saatchi who (I believe) are credited with beginning the trend of advertising agencies creating holding companies to acquire specialist companies and amalgamate them into the main body of their company. As a principle of course, this is fine - if the many pros and cons of merging two organizations are weighed and deemed to be favorable. There is a whole industry devoted to mergers and acquisitions. (This is saying nothing about the positively neanderthal assumption that snapping up hotshop x will mean you get better after you subject them to the same creativity-sapping procedures that have razed your own company in the first place. But that's another rant for another time).

Where it starts to get messy is the point where we've reached today. Take a holding company, say one of the big 4 of Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic and Publicis. They're composed of hundreds of organizations, spanning all across the globe and dealing in a number of functions; media, creative, direct, banner shops, market research, branding, healthcare and so on. Yet they have one share price, one report that goes to their shareholders every quarter. It's in the interests of their accountants that all their constituent groups and all their companies under their banner do well. Which is why JWT have RMG Connect for their digital and direct work, TBWA have Tequila and RCKR/Y&R have Saint and so on. They act independently on some accounts, but the goal is always to move work into the partner company. These kind of alliances exist between creative and media shops as well; a global client is appointed and the work gets shared between a number of the holding group's constituents.

There is NOTHING wrong with this of course, if you have the balls to say it. But we get ad agencies claiming they're fully integrated, and everything can be done in house. To be fair this may be true for smaller clients, but when it comes to huge pieces of business it's not just local market forces that are at play. Each of the big 4 has global client relationship people (enforcers basically) that make sure WPP stays sweet with Shell, Nissan with Omnicom and so on.

You'll never have an ad agency come clean and say "We actually don't want to be completely through the line, completely integrated or anything like that, we want to do well as a devolved function and make sure our sister companies do well as well". Or "You know perhaps our digital/interactive/media partner isn't the best at what you want to achieve, let's put it out to pitch". It just doesn't happen. 

Because (to borrow a sports cliche) at the end of the day, very few agencies truly care about the client's business. Don't believe me? Look at the work. Look at the work, look at the way the majority of ad agencies are dealing with the revolution that is happening under their noses when it comes to media consumption, production and distribution. If you can stomach it, read the yawn-inducing trade rags and their self absorbed he-said/she said, their ridiculous and laughable advice and ads for mega-conferences claiming to be your communications elixir. Then ask yourself if it's the client's interests that are close to our hearts or if it's actually our back pockets, dividends, making sure quarterly profit covers the interest payments on the crippling loans taken to be able to shout about how big you are, share prices and collective rear ends that we're concerned for more.

The majority of the Big Dumb Agencies are riding the slowing gravy train, they'll continue to do so until the client wisens up, tells the global enforcer to go jump and takes the scariest step that is admitting they have been wrong. I find it shameful that we pull the wool over our clients eyes as long as we can rather than empowering them to make the best decisions for their businesses. And yes, I can cite instances from my very brief career to date. As is eternally the case in life, there are exceptions, but by definition they are scarce..

Make your clients famous and you'll be famous. The best partnerships betwix client and communications agency are not merely business relationships, they're marriages of understanding that what is good for one is good for the other. They're organic and ever-changing. Not the same plans and executions rehashed year after year, territory after territory. They exist, often in isolation in some cases. The goal has to be to make every relationship like that. To make the work truly matter.

The future of the ad agency is doing the right thing for our clients, their customers and their potential customers. Not just doing the easy thing.

Smart Recesioneering

The road less travelled, take it. Pic courtesy of Gerogio. R

With the Bank of England set to cut interest rates again tomorrow, it's a GREAT time to buy a house. If you have the money of course. But sadly, few of us have, and the few who do probably are busy buying baked beans and long-life milk as this dreaded 'recession' thing that everyone loves talking about but remains shrouded in mystery begins to tighten around us all.

So if you have a place, say a holiday home and want to get rid of it. How in these times do you get rid of it at something approaching market value? You break the problem down and sprinkle some awesome lateral thought.

This is an awesome idea to get rid of a house without having to haggle and deal with the dreaded real estate people (who many have said is the only life form below those who work in advertising, but hey that's a different argument). It's not new, but it's being broadcast in a nicely packaged way. And although it's not a new idea to raffle your house, because they've taken the time to get a website done, it's getting some traction with news outlets, doing the PR for them. What a revelation. Boom.

The couple selling the house is raffling the house by selling individual tickets. What a great idea! £25 will get you a chance to buy a house. There's 45,000 tickets so if all the tickets get sold they'll make a cool £1.125 mil, which is waaay more than the house is worth. But will people take the bait and buy tickets? I don't really know. I suspect that they will.

But props to the couple for thinking a little bit awesomely.

Farming The Fear - Why The Meltdown Is Adland's Excalibur

Photo courtesy of hoff_john

According to my pristine records, I started this post on the 17th of July, so it's almost 3 months in the making which along with significant upheaval in the life of moi means that it may well be worse than the usual drivel. But the whole point has changed slightly. Of the post that is. Here we go..

We're witnessing the death of a superpower, it's dramatic but it's 97.44546278% true. When the IMF - long the United States' instrument of terror on the poorer nations of the world states that the US economy is (in plain words) screwed...well, it's time to recognise these as extraordinary times. The important thing to remember is that no-one really has a fucking clue what is really going to happen, so anyone who lays claim to certainty about the future is mistaken. As Niels Bohr once said "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future".

Couple this with the presidential election about to take place in the land of the free, and there are quite a few stories brewiing for us all to tell to our grandchildren, should we and the world last long enough for them to bust out onto the scene.

In the context of the communications landscape, this is all Awesome. Yeah, I've heard all the stuff about how jobs will be tougher to come by, budgets smaller and all the rest of it. But it's here and now that everyone's mettle will be tested. And if you're happy to swan into work in jeans and ironic t-shirts, sit through your days happy to follow orders and then revel in the fact that your job is 'creative' then you're in a pile of shit.

But if you really want to push yourself and get better; the coming months and year(s) are the best battleground for you to prove yourself. And I think that as Charlie alludes to here, these are times in which those brands pushing the agenda of quality of experience will come out of this storm stronger than they went in.

It's nothing new of course, to suggest that to capture the hearts of those we target with our spreadsheets and media plans and positioning statements we have to do cool shit and to make their lives better. But history has shown us that often 'cool shit' translates into throwing money at a channel that may look pretty to those with a fetish for Cannes Lions and/or the genesis of a print ad, but to the dudes and dudettes who are buying what you're hawking, it means little and adds even less to their lives. So without the big budgets it's finally time (I hope) for more of us to proverbially grow a pair and offer a positive experience that we can link to our brand.

Because as an industry and as individuals working in this industry, we've grown chubby on the inflated notion that we're creative enough to show disdain for those that talk about creativity and utility as equals, especially those of us (like myself) who are in environments where the hunger for success has made way for the desire to stay where you are. This lack of fear is what I originally intended this post to be about, before the world's financial markets so impolitely and unceremoniously showed that their foundation has been a mirage. So I'll roll with it and insert tenuous linkage here.

Fear then, I tried to think about the first time I felt terrified and although there was this Dark Dream dude in an old He-Man cartoon that scared the crap out of me and my little bro, the breaking of neighbourhood windows also showed itself on the list I made - and it's a little less embarassing so that's the picture I went with for this post.

It's this fear, or more accurately fear of failure that has been missing from a lot of the work that we've all done. And this fear of failure, this hunger to get better and do better is something that I see in all those I admire, be they communicators or otherwise. Entities that are described as 'challenger'; brands, companies, sports teams or whatever use this fear to greatest effect, as an enabler or spurrer to better things. It's the whole backs against the wall mentality. Many start with it, but success often breeds complacency and sometimes a kick in the ass is needed to start the machine again. Personally I've found that being surrounded by those better than me has meant that it's hard to get complacent (unless you're happy with being the dumbest - but hey each to their own).

It will be interesting to see which nations, people and organizations thrive in these changing times. I have a feeling we'll all be pleasantly surprised.

I haven't written for a while so coherence and structure may be lacking, but it feels kinda good...