« Congress in competitive pause? | Main | So much for dark matter »
September 20, 2006
Losing creativity in advertising
Steven Pearlstein's column in this morning's Washington Post asks What Happened To Creative Advertising? In it he describes the changes in the industry:
Gone are the days when gray-suited admen would commute to Grand Central Terminal from the Connecticut suburbs, walk the few blocks to Madison Avenue, spend the day concocting clever, feel-good ads, collect 15 percent commissions for placing them with the three TV networks and glossy magazines, and schmooze clients over three-martini lunches.
Today, the center of gravity has moved downtown to SoHo and TriBeCa, and much of the work is done by twentysomethings in jeans and T-shirts. They earn less and work harder to peddle niche products through a fragmented media market to savvy consumers who tune out messages they find boring or irrelevant. The cushy commissions have been replaced by stingier, cost-plus-fee schedules imposed by numbers-driven corporate marketing officers who care less about the creativity of advertising than its return on investment.
The results, he argues is an attack of the bland:
Creative-services firms have proven ill-suited to the demands of public shareholders and analysts, with their fixation on quarterly earnings targets and double-digit growth. The emphasis on cost-cutting and meeting financial goals dampened the enthusiasm for risk-taking at the heart of creative advertising.
"The mantra became 'Figure out what the client wants, do it, and get paid,' " explains Lee Clow, the legendary creative director at Chiat/Day. And because agencies are generally paid on the basis of fixed retainers, hourly billing rates and media commissions, there is no financial difference between delivering a blockbuster ad and delivering a mediocre one.
Not all the blame for bland, formulaic advertising, however, lies with the advertising industry. Many clients are also to blame. Chief marketing officers, with an average tenure of less than three years, have become loath to take risks. And in their drive to meet growth targets and cost-accountability, they rely heavily on research techniques such as testing ads in front of focus groups -- leading, inevitably, to least-common-denominator ads.
I'm not sure I would completely agree with Pearlstein implied assumption that things were more creative before. The "good-old days" never struck me as an outpouring of creativity. And I have seen some very creative ads in recent years. (My favorite is the EDA "herding cats" ad which aired during the 2000 Super Bowl - which was followed the next year by the not-so-great "running with the squires" ad.)
I would agree with his closing statement:
Because so much time and money is shifting to the Internet, none of the old rules applies. Now, it is the clients who are pushing the agencies for change, and the agencies are finally examining how they are organized, how they are paid and how they conceive of their jobs. As a result, after a decade of fighting changes, the industry is coming around to embrace them. Changes once seen as frightening are now being viewed, at least at the top of the ad business, as opportunities.
But it is not just the shift in technology that is causing a change. One of the hottest new areas of advertising is product placement. To overcome that problem of "savvy consumers who tune out messages they find boring or irrelevant", more and more advertisers are looking to place the message inside the story. Is that Bombay Gin that 007 is using to make his martini? Was that a Coke or Pepsi can that Arnold had in his hand? The creative test for such "ads" will be how to weave the product into the story line - not just have it show up on the screen. And how to make sure the product is not associated with the wrong part of the story (while, according to wikipedia, Ruffino Riserva Ducale (Chianti Classico) appears many times on the table of Tony Soprano, I don't think company wants a bottle of its red wine on Hannibal Lecter's dinning table?)
This change is a perfect example of an innovative business model, i.e. a non-technological innovation. It will be innovative actions like that which will bring creativity back to the advertising industry.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at September 20, 2006 10:37 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.athenaalliance.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/903
Comments
Ken - In our experience, the hottest trend in communications is measuring the impact of advertising and public relations messages to customer activity and financial outcomes. We have been doing this for eighteen months - and there are a number of competing methodolgies. To some degrees, it is the measurability of internet advertising that driving migration to that channel. However, the larger trend is to define what is working down to the message or theme level and track it over time. As you point out, clients are demanding it and the agencies are responding. Best - Jon
Posted by: Jon Low at September 20, 2006 12:49 PM
It is nearly impossible to avoid changes that the advertising industry faces from time-to-time if not daily. There are numerous discussions about the shift in technology that has led to the appearance and not to mention heavy spending of ads across the Internet. I think it is great that you have moved away from the non-technological standpoint and tapped into something that is business sound – product placement. With technological innovations integrating into our daily web-driven lives, it may not be effective as some advertisers perceive. Consumers can very well tune out and ignore advertising they see online. However, if more agencies implement ads with effective product placement, one can expect to welcome success. The idea of product placement has been touched upon in marketing textbooks for some time, but now agencies really need to evaluate a strategy to create an appropriate and thriving ad-viewing experience for their target markets. Pearlstein’s article may question the whereabouts of creativity but I think you have just found where it was all along and just how much more it can be improved.
Posted by: Davi at September 20, 2006 8:47 PM