Right now, here in the US, there's a lot of hand wringing going on about the state of the ad biz, which is understandable when you consider the mess the economy is in (not that it's any better in the UK!) What is unfortunate though, is that whenever this happens, and I've been around the track enough times to have seen this occurrence more than most, BDA's (Big Dumb Agencies) and BDC's (Big Dumb Clients) invariably want to go back to the same old hackneyed boiler plate methods they are convinced saved their *** last time around.
A very senior media guy from Interpublic was quoted the other week as saying "Hard times call for Hard Sell advertising. We need to do the kind of advertising that shows demonstrable results." Which would lead me to ask, isn't producing demonstrable results something you should be doing as a matter of course? Compounding the felony, Ogilvy has just announced that is setting up a special unit aimed at clients with shrinking budgets that promises to deliver better results for less money."
Do these people realize how preposterous they now sound? In the bubble world of Madison Avenue, probably not. But many clients are no different. In a recent study by Anderson Analytics, return on marketing investment moved from sixth place to third in order of importance to the clients questioned.
Pardon me for sounding naive here, but should getting the most value for your marketing, advertising budget be your first priority, irrespective of the state of the economy?
Madison Avenue feels your pain as long as the pain your are experiencing is in your wallet. Anywhere else and forget it....I think what we are dealing with here is too much crap, sold to too many people, for too long. Now the "experts" aren't enough and the crack "top experts" are sent in like an SAS hit squad to deliver to clients what they should have been getting all along - where were these guys hiding out over the past twenty years of mediocre American advertising?
George Parker
Blogging for:
Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 831
