Advertising: Who Cares? Redressing the Balance

The motivation bit is easy Weamp8217ve both had long careers in advertising and weamp8217ve both had a great time Further we both retain an enthusiasm for the business tempered by a real worry that it is losing its power influence and popularity And underpinning all of these itamp8217s losing its attractiveness as a careerWhy is Who Cares necessaryNick and I both write a fair bit amp8211 blogs articles conference speeches and so on Weamp8217ve found ourselves writing about largely the same thingsThe marketing industry is responsible for one of the worldamp8217s largest criminal enterprises ad fraud is yet to overtake drug trafficking in the league table of bad guys but the suspicion is weamp8217re edging closerThe agency world and their clients waste huge amounts of money The more we waste the less likely anyone in any position to do anything about it is to call it outAdd in principalbased buying broking as it used to be called a lack of transparency in trading the neutering of planning the silence around deals done by the agency and sold on to the client unverified audience research poor data masquerading as valuable insights problems in recruitment lack of motivation within agencies and you end up with an unhappy industry staffed by unfulfilled peopleAll of this is wellknown if only we would admit itOur lightbulb moment was to realise that this isnamp8217t just some geeky adtech matter impacting media agenciesWe are as an industry producing large volumes of poor ads poor ads donamp8217t work and itamp8217s not a huge leap to go from there to asking why anyone would spend anything on ads that donamp8217t workIt is a reasonable question to ask why it is that few if any of these topics are being discussed at the Cannes Festival of Creativity this coming week But theyamp8217re not and if by chance any do come up it will be with an air of mutual congratulation that weamp8217ve fixed the issueBut we havenamp8217t and we know we havenamp8217tThe best ads have always emerged from teams Media planners and strategists are key team members Yet their thinking and input is often minimised amp8211 by the physical division between media and creative agencies and shamefully by their own bosses and the deals they makeThe irony is that media agencies in the UK at least emerged from an inequality in fullservice agenciesIf creative was king media was well down below the saltIn the 1970s a few farsighted entrepreneurs took a risk and laid the foundations for the media buying later planning and buying industryThe fullservice model was unbalanced The old joke was that the client presentation was 75 about where to hold the shoot 24 about who would be in the film and 1 typically the 5 minutes before lunch rather grudgingly spent discussing where the ads would appear and at what costWith a few exceptions most clients were uncomfortable discussing creative Itamp8217s ungraspable unquantifiable soft not hard opinion not fact They loved mixing with the stars but most were out of their comfort zoneOf course there were exceptions amp8211 brilliant creative thinkers happy to look past headline research numbers and confident in their ability to sell an idea to their managementHow different from todayMedia today is exactly in the clientamp8217s comfort zone Itamp8217s facts numbers measured precise graspable absoluteExcept when it isnamp8217tAnd increasingly it definitely isnamp8217tNone of us feel comfortable when something we consider immovable moves something solid dissolves something visible disappearsWhen this happens we try to pass it off as someone elseamp8217s problem We rarely admit that itamp8217s us that has caused itTake one small relatively uncontentious exampleWhy do we persist in thinking that an ad has truly been exposed after two seconds Surely thatamp8217s starting at the wrong end amp8220How long do people typically spend looking at an ad on our channel Two seconds Well go off and prove that two seconds is all anyone needsamp8221Itamp8217s upside down logic start with the answer then work out the questionWho Cares has no ambition to rubbish technology online media social channels TV or anything else There are plenty of events that seek to sell you something by rubbishing something elseRather we want to have an open discussion based on experiences and evidence And from that startpoint to look for solutions We are putting on a half day afternoon event at the RSA in London on September 12th to try to start to find someWe want every side of the industry holding companies independents analysts journalists an unhealthy ad market isnamp8217t great news for them either tech businesses platforms to attend They all have much to contributeWe are very grateful to have persuaded dragoonedamp8230 Jenny Biggam Michael Farmer Ruben Schreurs Denise Turner and Crispin Reed to help usWhinging is banned thatamp8217s what blogs are for creative thinking is the order of the dayWe are trying to do our bit to redress the balance from mathmen towards madmenYou can help us by buying a ticket wwwadvertisingwhocaresorg We arenamp8217t making a penny from it any balance will go to NABS any shortfall will be picked up by usWhy are we doing itWe feel someone has to and Nick Manning and I are both at that stage when we can try to do something good for the industryWho Cares We think more people than perhaps you thinkPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Advertising: Who Cares? Redressing the Balance

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Brian Jacobs

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