“Like a beetle preserved in amber, the practice of advertising has sat virtually unchanged for the last half-century. Over the years, the ad business became an assembly line as predictable as Henry Ford’s. – Danielle Sacks in Ad Age
In my circle, one thing that I have been constantly hearing is the unpredictable future of advertising agencies in India and the world. A few events in the last month have baffled me and made me think if the business is actually dying...
The world is moving towards digital, everyone knows that. The important thing, however, is who makes the best of this trend and uses it to chart a profitable future. Digital agencies have been adding businesses to their kitty, media agencies are getting more and more creative and becoming hotshops for one-stop advertising, data marketing agencies are way up as they have the power of data, PR is the first function clients are looking forward to in order to establish themselves, in the midst of all these, the only thread that is missing is creative agencies.
Where are they? Should I say creative agencies have underplayed it so much that their value is no more being realised by the world? Have they just limited themselves to a 30-seconder? I hope they haven’t.
A video by Darren Brown called Subliminal Advertising has attracted 18 million views on YouTube. You have to see the video to understand it, but in a nutshell it conveys that creative professionals do not get ideas out of this world, but draw inspirations from normal things that they see every day. In fact, just reproduce whatever they see.
Would someone be interested in spending millions to buy average work? I think not. And that’s the reason budgets of clients are quickly moving towards more clutter-breaking, more calculated and more engaging media. Crowdsourcing is an answer to the hefty expenses incurred by clients for hiring an advertising agency. Harley Davidson parted way from its three-decade-old AOR Carmichael Lynch and assigned a crowd-sourcing shop called Victors and Spoils to handle its creative duties. No one would mind getting thousands of ideas, at a fraction of the cost charged by agencies. Internet-made business of record labels is almost dead, as it allowed users to listen, download and play with music online. Once profitable and hugely cash rich labels shut shop as the entire model fizzed out.
It’s a people’s business and “people” are setting up shops to challenge the status quo of larger networks. As brought out in the last issue of IMPACT, to clients, size does not matter. The latest clutter-breaking work from Taproot for Airtel has set the bells ringing. They have done what JWT couldn’t for years. Small shops buzzing with ideas, worthy enough to be integrated across platforms are the next wave of communication. Are the biggies really focusing on them?
Ages ago, TV used to be a separate department in agencies as it was a new medium, but over time, people built expertise in it and it is no more a separate function. Agencies have to realise that digital too is not a one-time activity. It has to be assimilated in everything one does. Nitin Paranjpe, MD & CEO, HUL, is apparently taking training from a youngster in his organisation on digital. When the client is investing so much in understanding the medium, what are agencies doing to be a notch ahead?
We did not win any metal at Cannes this year in Digital, not even a shortlist that says a lot about investment from our agencies in Digital. It is quite amusing sometimes to see leaders of Indian organisations talking about digital work and giving presentations on pathbreaking work done by agencies abroad. I am curious to ask them, ‘Why don’t we yet have a digital campaign that takes the world by storm?’ Not any agency, but a marketer at the e4m Conclave recently solved my curiosity when he said that the agencies are only investing in time and not ideas. There is no eagerness in them to take risks in digital. Even though marketers are ready to share revenues on profits made by a successful campaign, agencies are not comingforth to take risks.
It is time agencies take the cue as Internet is eating hugely into ad-pie. There are 17 agencies on an average with each leading advertiser in the US. Indian majors are also increasingly diversifying the spends. Are the creative agencies in India valued enough that they guide their clients on strategies they need to adopt to be successful on all these platforms? Have they come at a point where they are consultants to brands and not just brief-takers? It is sad that the agencies are too busy in servicing the clients rather than advising them on what they really need. Until that approach changes, the client would constantly look for more ideas and better solutions, treating creative as just another stand-off.
When there are big examples like Harley Davidson and Airtel, it is time agencies reflect upon themselves to understand where they are and what they are, it is time for them to reinvent themselves and be indispensable to the marketers. Unless that happens, businesses would keep finding new and fresh means to reach directly to the consumer and wipe out the mid man from the scene. This epitaph would be remembered then! Amen.
