I was listening to an Ad Age Podcast the other day, one of their daily 3 minute video podcasts, and heard something that really made me think about Ad Agencies.
It was a clip of an Ad Agency chap (sorry I did not remember his name, but did remember his idea) who was talking at an Ideas Conference. His point was that traditional ad agencies should in reality be the best positioned creatively as media fragmented and moved away from TV as they have a history of being able to take complex messages and develop compelling short and sharp ways of communicating them. This after all is what a 20 or 30 second TV has to do. They have to build brand connections as well as get a benefit and reason to believe across. This really struck me as a brilliant point. This is their expertise and they have been doing it for ages and ages.
So why the hell then have ad agencies been overall so lousy at being the masters of new media and media forms? They should be better able than anyone else conceptually to work out how to get a message across in a crowded media place with limited time and space. Yet they just seem to be able to. They even have different agencies within their networks who try and do this, usually not that well connected to the main (sexier?) TV agency..
Is it just that the money is still too good in the old ways?
What do you think, leave a comment on the blog!
5 comments:
Hi Gary:
Interesting post - and I think I agree that the agencies should be the masters of the new media.
Seems to me there is great confusion over mechanics. What is splintering is the delivery channel - not the need for great stories.
This has two effects - first, the new channels enable (and require) different ways of engaging and storytelling. Second, there is massive confusion about delivery channels - both which ones matter - and how to get messages delivered in them.
TO'B
http;//humanvoice.wordpress.com
No! No! No! I'm sorry, I don't agree. it's not about the channel. It's about the idea...
Once you know what you want to say and to whom, then the channel becomes obvious.
The bigger problem is the number of people in big FMCG and Ad Agencies who have absolutely no idea what the new channels are. How many are talking about Facebook whilst we are all moving to Twitter. It's sad.
Chocolate Rain, anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
Chocolate Rain Dr Pepper, anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x2W12A8Qow
I feel like a Cadbury's Gorilla Bar :)
I agree it should be about what is the creative idea first. If one focuses on that then next on what is the best channel to get that message across and how to maximise it.
I think Unilever has doen soem good work by focusing on creative ideas (like Real Beauty for Dove, Lynx/Axe effect, Skin is Amazing for vaseline etc). As once you have these it is so much easier to then exceute the ideas across any channel. Problem is often marketers try and take a specific execution and then struggle..
It's subtractive vs. additive media.
Traditional print, tv, radio, outdoor, they all take an idea, and subtract it down to it's very core, and deliver that message. "take complex messages and develop compelling short and sharp ways of communicating them". It's worked great in the past, but not anymore.
New media is the exact opposite, it's additive, it's conversations, it's content, it's millions of other voices, agreeing, arguing, flaming, competing with you.
Agencies can't just say a product is great anymore, they have to PROVE it, with content, more and more content. NOT ADS.
which is exactly something Ad Agencies aren't used to doing, and explains why they are lousy at it.
http://www.adweek.com/aw/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003654895
Will it blend, that is the question?
I think that new media has taken everyone by storm.
People in traditional ad agencies have to work hard at being creative and keeping ahead of the game - and at the same time try and work out what is going on in new media, who the new audiences are, and so on.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how sophisticated your technology is, how sophisticated your media and werewithall is in communicating to audiences. You have to communicate something interesting and relevant. And advertising has proven that you have to have a big idea, that you have to connect to people in a creative and emotional - in a human way - to be effective (in the short and long term).
Proof in the pudding is that the creative Gorilla ad (and there have been many other successful creative viral ads as well). Creativity / emotion / communicating to people in a human way - has always been important, and always will be. Traditional ad agencies are the masters in this (they have spent years thinking about, and researching, what makes people tick and how to make brand connections and so on).
So i think that traditional ad people have a very important / central role in the future of new media advertising.
Eamon
www.spotlightideas.co.uk
eamon1972@hotmail.co.uk
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