Another perfect Southern California Day and here I am in my loft overlooking the Hollywood Hills and banging away at these keys instead of sweating and baking out at Zuma Beach with the waves gently lulling me to sleep. Why? Because of you damn people reading this rag and sending me these hard-ass questions that I actually have to think about to respond to. We are up to 93 requests for subscription memberships. If you are interested in a subscription click here, while they last. Hopefully, next week the doors will be closing to the rest of you and I can start to focus on doing some really heavy lifting for those of you who actually valued this drivel enough to want it to continue for at least another year. This weeks question comes from Greta, Z in Pittsburgh, PA, who asks, This Weeks Question:If this is the Post-Advertising Era, what will become of the Advertising Agency as we know it? What an obvious question. Certainly one I never thought anyone would ask, since the answer seems so painfully obvious. In the past month, two Japanese auto companies fired their mega agencies and went with teenie-weenie shops started by friends of the companies' marketing management. This is not an anomaly. This is a trend. Soon it will grow into a movement. Then, as these new relationships prove to be more fruitful, it will expand into a pattern. With each wave, the approach of these new "trusted advisors" will become more and more in tune with the unmet wants, needs and desires of their client's respective audiences. Success has many midwives. Failure has none but the undertaker. |
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As the new agencies evolve, new, more responsive business models will emerge. The only constant will be change. The velocity of that change will be significant. Response to the realities of engaging the audience will become more agile. Creative will have to be meaningful or die. At a certain point the more successful agencies, (not meaning the largest, just meaning the ones whose business is growing instead of shrinking), will began to figure it out. It will dawn upon them that although they are being paid by their clients, they serve at the will of their audiences. At that moment, everything will begin to change. This next generation of advertising agencies will begin to think like media, rather than media buyers. They will begin to seek out more and more ways to connect to the people who read, view, listen, experience their work and less and less with the people who pay their fees. Because they will come to understand that clients may come and clients may go. But the audience goes on forever. And so, the agencies will serve at the will of their audiences. This significant change will not be lost on the next generation of advertisers. They will come to understand that their product claims and value props will have little or no meaning to those in a position to buy. Brands will have to stand for something in order to be considered worthy of purchase. The wisdom of crowds will become far more sophisticated than it is today. Technology will enable the audience to decide which brands will thrive and which ones will parish. Brand tribes will flourish as the audience comes to realize that they and not the suits are the shot callers. And so the brands will begin to serve at the will of their audiences. What will these neoAdvertising Agencies look like? Feel like? Smell like? They will come to look more and more like you. Gone will be the polished steel and ivory corner office towers of the Imperial Worldwide Chief Creative Officers. Gone will be the 4A's confabs at the Greenbrier and the $100k boondoggles at Canne. In will be the infiltrated, spynets of audience watchers and trend spotters who move among us sending constant observations through their barely visible implanted headsets to unseen intelligence gatherers who will have long eclipsed the CIA in ear-to-the-ground infogathering. Yes Greta, the advertising agencies of next week, next year and next decade will be decidedly different. In fact, if you look very, very closely, they may already be here.
Stay strong.
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