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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Back in the Box
By: Jeff Einstein
A quick, random review of mission statements found on
agency websites leads me to an alarming but inescapable
conclusion: The only place to find innovative thinking
nowadays in back inside the box where one is ? at least
if the agency mission statements are any indication ?
less likely to encounter the legions of obsequious
outside-the-box thinkers who preach ad nauseum how
they're "client-centric" and "ROI-obsessed".
Granted, the agency industry has always been exceptionally
risk-averse (a euphemism for spineless), even when notor-
ious rogue personalities like Hal Riney, George Lois,
Jay Chiat, Jerry Delafamina, Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy
ruled the roosts. And it's not for nothing that all of the
above rogues argued the efficacy of creative magic over an
obsession with measurement, because that's the eternal
(though recently orphaned) truth of advertising: advertis-
ing works not because of but in spite of the media. Indeed,
there seems to be an obvious inverse relationship between
measurement and performance: the more we measure the media
and the more media we measure, the less well advertising
performs.
Nowadays, however, the rogue personalities are all but
gone for good, in part because they either got bought
out or died, and in part because large brand advertisers
care more about media ubiquity than creative ? what happens
over time once you begin to view your advertising as an
extension of MBA-driven procurement. The result: everyone
sings the same ROI-obsessed, client-centric tune.
We should note that the rogue personalities of advertising
did on behalf of their agencies (and retirement packages)
what advertising does best: They sold the intangibles,
the emotive components that resist measurement and invoke
the human heart and soul. The rogues knew ? contrary to
most of their peers ? that their advertiser clients are
invariably wrong, so they frequently billed for the
requisite time to tell them so in no uncertain terms. Back
then we called it setting realistic client expectations.
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Nowadays, however, there are no more client expectations
because there are no more rogue personalities to set them.
Instead, we encounter the exact opposite: realistic agency
expectations set not by the agency, but by the client.
Realistic agency expectations are predicated on the
agency's response to two basic client questions: a) can
you handle my volume, and b) how much faster can you drop
your pants and bend over the next time we meet?
Not long ago I spoke with the owner of a small creative
digital design shop with aspirations to move from project-
based tactical engagements into larger, retainer-based
strategic engagements. His online mission statement ? like
every other agency's online mission statement ? describes
his agency's passion for advertising that performs (his
variation on the digital ROI-obsessed virus that has so
thoroughly infected and despoiled all marketing and
advertising in recent years). So I asked him: "How much
of your new business relies on your reputation for
advertising that performs?"
He thought to himself for a few seconds, then looked at me
and said, "None. Not a single dollar."
"Of course not," I said. But why is that? And why ? with
all of the self-professed obsession with ROI and outside-
the-box thinking ? does media performance continue to
erode? It's because the big brand advertisers ? the deep-
pocket guys who can truly afford to gorge themselves on
inventory and sweat the ROI details ? are the very guys
who care least about actual performance. They and their
big agency proxies may talk the ROI talk, but they simply
don't walk their own talk. They simply don't buy perform-
ance nowadays; they know better. So they buy ubiquity
and the ability to manage it instead. They buy ubiquity
precisely because the myth of media performance is now
so transparently inane and so utterly exposed ? especially
for any advertiser who delivers hundreds of millions of
daily impressions. The only reason why P&G now delivers
two billion daily ad impressions is because the first
1,999,999,999 no longer get the job done. Quite contrary
to what any reasonable obsession with ROI might suggest,
the big advertisers buy ubiquity in the presumed absence
of actual performance.
Yet our obsession with ROI ? like Laerte's sword ?
continues unabated and envenomed, and it accelerates in
direct proportion to bandwidth growth. Its poison has all
but paralyzed the creative nervous system of the agency
industry, so much so that the agencies ? suffocating in
their own inertia ? can no longer even distinguish their
own brands, let alone those of their clients. Go ahead,
ask your agency what distinguishes them from their
competitors. Just be prepared for a barrage of outside-
the-box thinking.
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About Jeff Einstein
Digital media pioneer Jeff Einstein is one-half of the
Brothers Einstein, a contrarian brand strategy and
communications boutique. The Brothers Einstein have just
announced the release of their Just BE Workshop, a full-
day, hands-on seminar designed to help senior marketing
executives lower the barriers to innovation and restore
common sense to its rightful place atop the hierarchy of
modern management tools.
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Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
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