“Business disruption has stopped us in our tracks, and we forgot to reinvent ourselves along the way. We forgot to stay connected.”
In a fast society, only fast agencies will succeed, says Sasan Saeidi
SASAN SAEIDI, IAA VP of content strategy, on why a fast society needs fast agencies.
Today we are dealing with a connected society that is constantly on the go and not naïve. Social media can make you a hero overnight, and the opposite is also true. So our creativity has an instant like or rejection and it’s in the open.
The advertising and communication landscape has evolved drastically from the days of Mad Men and 1930s Madison Avenue, and the times when giants such as Bernbach, Saatchi, Ogilvy and Burnett were very much active and attending pitches.
Business conditions are not the same any more, and the way agencies are trying to ensure they solidify and justify their brand value for clients and in society has changed. We are finding it harder to establish our true worth.
The way agencies get remunerated today has drastically deteriorated. We are now selling creative ideas by the kilo, compared with selling them through a proper measurement that takes into account the time of the agency and the impact of our idea on the client’s business. In most cases we are giving our ideas away.
The way our creative work is perceived today and looked upon and consumed by society is not like before. Today we are dealing with a connected society that is constantly on the go and not naïve. Social media can make you a hero overnight, and the opposite is also true. So our creativity has an instant like or rejection and it’s in the open.
Our creative product is now the object of desire for many. Everyone is a creative director, including the consumer. Media agencies, PR agencies, CRM hot shops, Facebook and Google, and consultancy giants such as Deloitte and IBM are already in the creative space. Clients themselves have a say, and all want to be labelled as creative institutions.
There is a democratisation of creative production. Everyone can produce content today; everyone can scale creativity and push it through multiple social channels that were not there before. Media has shifted to real-time bidding, and conversion officers are at the helm of campaigns.
Clients are no longer obliged or even incentivised to work with good old creative ad agencies, as they themselves are producing content and creating communication work. Look at the Dollar Shave Club work that has been produced by the client.
The agency of record for clients is slowly declining and being replaced by many specialised agencies that can provide a number of offerings. And shrinking retainers are being replaced with project-based opportunities.
The universe of communication is shifting beneath us and we are standing still and working in the old fashioned manner as if all is fine.
But this business disruption has stopped us in our tracks; and we forgot to reinvent our modus operandi along the way. We forgot to stay connected. The reason we are here today is our inability as a creative community to bring on board the next wave of integrators and thinkers and ensure our processes are simple at heart and egoless. We have been reactive to all these points above. We failed to read the signs and predict the changes. But all is not lost. Yet. We need to ensure we understand two fundamental parameters: what’s best for the brand, and what suits our interests as creative and communication institutions. There are examples out there of how both parameters can co-exist.
As Bob Greenberg, the founder, chairman and CEO of R/GA, says, a disruption is needed every couple of years. Nobody can own this mantra better
than Greenberg’s agency (which was Campaign’s 2016 global advertising network of the year). It claims to have built the most connected office in the world: a fully integrated nexus that combines technology, a new agency business model, modern living and a host of connectivity essentials that help its employees ensure they remain connected individuals in a world of changing matrixes.
R/GA is putting all its focus on being able to remain the agency of the connected age – an age of social media, artificial intelligence and consumerism that is synonymous with technological appetite. Agencies of tomorrow (where R/GA is today) need to ensure that their focus remains on how they can bring creativity and technology ever closer.
They must ensure that their creative product is technology-friendly, that it is created with the help of technology but not for the sake of technology. Rather, it should be produced for the sake of creating value in people’s lives. R/GA’s Ventures division runs accelerator programmes to create new technologies, which in turn serve a brand or marketing objective. This is an agency model and example that not only serves the brand it is helping, but also serves the equity of the agency as it raises it profile and its worth.
Connectivity alone and an understanding that the final creative product needs to serve a more dynamic purpose are only half the equation. A handful of agencies in the world today have figured out this integrated formula well, and their work speaks for itself. But in today’s mainstream communication industry, where most holding group agencies sit, the processes need to change fast.
Clients themselves are asking for more seamless and integrated answers to their briefs. They are seeking solutions that our silo models are not able to answer. And when we do, it’s not optimal at all.
We are working traditionally and, unless we break down the boundaries between ourselves, the clients and other agencies, our creative product will remain obsolete.
The biggest advertisers in the world are asking for a new order of play, game-changing models that need to overcome the complexity we currently live by.
Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer, recently said: “Frankly, your complexity should not be our problem, so we want you to make that complexity invisible.” He added: “Our expectation is that, over time, our agency partners, whoever we choose, are going to be able to integrate [all of the workload], so you can get the production out, the distribution out as well as the creative out.”
Fragmentation of efforts today means multiple agencies working on creative solutions for brands, and working in silos while doing so. The end result is ideas and communication channel plans that are not connected. They don’t tackle the real issues and are not simple enough to be understood.
We can only overcome this clear and present problem if we, as communication agencies, come together and stand united before the client and the brand. We can no longer live the “divide and conquer” strategy. This fierce competition between ourselves has also been the cause of our diminishing financial margins.
Without sounding naïve, it is about unity and it is about having a difficult chat internally on how together we can think long-term instead of shortterm. The future is about working as an anchor-and-support agency model, where an agency surrounds itself with experts from multiple fields all coming together to work on a specific strategy, business goal and defined metrics.
Egos only make things worse. Specialist agencies must work together and ensure there is alignment internally on who does what: agree on the best candidates with the right credentials to do a job, and then do it. Implement a model for accountability and then move on. Easier said than done, but every one of us has a core competency that we can own better than other things. Why can’t we all play fair, identify that and act accordingly?
Most of our structures today are too rigid, too vertical and too slow. We are too egocentric as a culture and are not open to taking advice from other expert brands in the industry. Instead the agencies that are more connected and prepared for the future are the ones that are working with no silos, are horizontal in nature, fast, open and ego-free. They have figured out the collaboration model.
To recap, there are six urgent key action points that mainstream agencies of today need to implement to remain in the game.
1. Invest in talent that brings a vast array of skills to the table, from coders to anthropologists to hard-core data scientists. Even musicians and linguists. Imagine you have all these minds and skills present in a creative agency. A renaissance of ideas comes to life. I want to bring on board more consultants and pair them up with creative designers.
2. Short-term thinking will kill us, as we won’t invest in navigating the choppy waters ahead. We need a long-term view during these tough times.
3. Put the ego away. Focus on what you do best, sit around the 3.0 table and partner up fast to answer the clients. Divide the revenue accordingly.
4. Try to create a more connected environment in your process and culture. It’s not difficult. Break down the silos and shorten your high-rises. Instead, build a linear and flatter field of connected pods.
5. It’s not about the awards. Get over it. Our creative should be celebrated but we can’t be in the business of awards. Events like South by Southwest are tomorrow’s meeting points – a crossroads where content, entertainment and music meet.
6. Our creative product should be one that is all about creating value for people. Be less about marketing at people, and more about marketing for people. This means putting the consumer at the heart of your strategy.
Clients themselves are asking for more seamless and integrated answers to their briefs. They are seeking solutions that our silo models are not able to answer. And when we do, it’s not optimal at all.