If you watch Mad Men regularly and filter out all the illegal and non-PC stuff, it becomes pretty clear that not much has changed in Adland in sixty years. Agencies are run pretty much the way they are depicted on TV. Evidently the great management and technology revolutions sidestepped Madison Avenue.
If you doubt me ask how many Six Sigma black belts work in your agency or describe which consultants re-engineered your studio or production departments. And while there has been significant increases in financial controls and cutbacks, ad agencies are notorious for lack of predictable and consistent business processes, spotty project management and the inability to forecast and deliver profit and productivity gains reliably.
Never ones to miss a fad, agency executives have embraced a number of new concepts in an attempt to demonstrate to prospective clients and employees how forward thinking and innovative they really are. These “innovations” are comfortable and convenient illusions that help agency managers sleep at night. But they’ve had little or no impact on either the chronically broken agency business model or the productivity, creativity or profitability of agencies. The dream makers need their own illusions, too.
Consider these 3 concepts that have gained widespread conversation and adoption if not, business traction among ad agencies.
Creative Technologists. Like unicorns, these mythic hard-to-find creatures are part creative, part techie and part wizard. Having one suggests that an agency is able to generate breakthrough tech savvy ideas that become global memes, give traditional campaigns smart digital executions or enable agencies to make applets, apps, widgets and viral or video memes that are as cool and shareable as those created by Google or Intel.
What isn’t clear is how these new hybrid players are accepted (or not) by traditionally run and managed agencies who barely understand the need for interaction and engagement much less complex, two-way digital, mobile or social technologies. Frequently embedded in creative departments with the idea that they will form a triad with copywriters and art directors, most practitioners are frustrated by the lack of baseline technical knowledge, among their peers and co-workers, the reluctance to give a pure digital guy a seat at the ideation table or the inability to prioritize digital thinking and organically connect digital assets to core creative concepts.
In the last few years, agencies have acquired people with these titles to keep up with first movers and to demonstrate their technology prowess in credentials meetings. The breakout creative executions that have resulted across the industry are concentrated in a handful of agencies and can be counted on one hand.
Project Management. For decades account guys managed client relationships and projects. As the digital era dawned and technical production became more complicated, agencies added project managers charged with managing timelines, budgets and project QA. Unfortunately while many agencies embraced the position in the hope to better control timelines and budgets, results have been mixed. There is no consensus on the job description, the tool set, the degree of authority or responsibility granted or the technical competences required.
People were recruited fresh out of school, from traffic departments, and among failed account guys. Some nag and pester creatives. Others hide behind endless revisions of Excel spreadsheets, hot lists or MS Project Gantt charts. Still others send out the invitations for and attend every meeting but contribute only carbon monoxide. To a great extent, agencies faked themselves out.
PMs add a layer of expense and friction, lengthen the production process and gain very little either in terms of quality assurance or staff productivity. Now everybody can claim to have project management as a core agency discipline. But very few agencies can quantify their impact on process improvements, staff efficiency or in added margins.
Digital Integration. Fifteen years ago when digital agencies emerged from primordial bits and bytes, technology was new and alien. It had to be carefully scrutinized and considered before being bolted onto agencies. As the Web grew many people in shops of many sizes and configurations mastered web technologies. Agencies allied with and acquired digital capabilities to reduce competitive pressure, defend brand stewardship, while grabbing a bigger slice of client retainers and provide through the line media neutral communications in service to client commercial goals.
This momentum has continually built up year after year. As consumer behavior shifts toward a digitally centric lifestyle no agency wants to be left out or appear to be a dinosaur. To compensate many traditional agencies hired marquee Chief Digital Officers away from digital-only shops and put them out on the conference circuit and on countless pitch teams in search of street cred and new business.
What they didn’t count on was the culture clash. Ad agencies with their longstanding Mad Men ways are the polar opposite of digital shops which tend to be younger, flatter, leaner and meaner operating on start-up hours, sensibilities and business models. Imagine how many of these well-paid digital evangelists found themselves surrounded by entrenched senior managers who talk the talk but had no genuine appetite to walk the walk. And even those who do have difficulty framing up and selling-in digital communications either to their own account and creative leadership or to clients still heavily reliant on TV and print.
The digital revolution is far from over. The lion’s share of media dollars and creative assets still go TV in spite of massive shifts in media usage and Facebook’s 1 billion members. The next battleground will be mobile and social. And true to form agencies are figuring out how to buy or rent these capabilities to remain credible and competitive in the market even while the people who actually know how to do these things are terminally frustrated and defecting from advertising agencies to specialty shops and start-ups in a re-run of the late 1990s.
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