Mediocre Work Is killing Ad Agencies.

“It Seems to Be a Different Thing to Know and to Execute.”

– Gerolamo Cardano, 16th Century Gambler

The Paradigm of Creative Agencies.

A paradigm shift is “a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline”. This concept, originated by Thomas Khun — an American physicist and philosopher — means a significant change in the science field. This could apply to every big change in any process and way of thinking in any field, including marketing and communication. Although in the 90s this concept became a buzzword and was way overused, I think today’s advertising is going, or it should be going, through a paradigm shift. It happened before. It has to happen again.

The Separation from Media Owners to Content Creators.

Bill Bernbach and the Copy/Art team.

Amplifying the Services: Researching, Planning, Creating, and Executing. The ‘Full-Service’

From Print to Digital.

You can argue about them, name many more, but at the end of the day, we all agree that agencies have always evolved to suits the needs of the clients. And they need to do it again.

The focus will always be the same: to create relevant work.

The success of a campaign belongs to the creative people behind it. It’s been always this way. Accountant, planners, strategists, creative and production team. An agency is as good as the people in it. And that’s because ideas don’t belong to companies but to people. Advertising agencies were built on these ideas. But now, you don’t need to go to an agency to get this type of ideas. I remember hearing Seba Wilhelm talking in a Hangout Session by Conferencias Publicitarias saying that in the future, clients would be able to buy ideas like we buy songs in Itunes. That was a few years ago. Now, clients don’t have to commit to a long-term relationship with an agency or even to a one-agency communication strategy. Instead, they will buy ideas from smaller, agile, and more flexible teams that do exactly what the want. Creative Directors are leaving their agencies to open their own.

We’re in a creative industry, let’s never forget that. Never forget that you’re a business and your product is ideas. But that’s what you have in common with your competitors. And every agency claims to do great, amazing work. Some of them really do it and most of them don’t. Some of them used to do it or did for a period of time. Consistency is hard because making good, effective, and relevant advertising is extremely hard. And it’s also hard because an agency is as good as the people in it — we’ll talk about this later. The problem now is, that you don’t need to hire a creative agency to get a good communication campaign. Advertising agencies are losing talent. Advertising agencies are becoming irrelevant, unnecessary at a certain point. And that’s because there is a lot of mediocre work.

Advertising agencies are good at solving other brands problems but they yet couldn’t figure it out how to solve theirs. How to be relevant and necessary for their clients again.

Agencies are losing territory to independent teams, freelancers, in-house departments, digital marketing companies, etc.

The main reason, in my opinion, is because they don’t have a purpose. Very trendy, right? But seriously, they let their work speak for themselves when in reality advertising is very subjective and to win awards, to show certain statistics (most of them paid), or to claim to be the best, is to feed their own egos.

There are a lot of reasons, but I wanted to focus on this particular one: the lack of purpose — why do we exist?

This is what 

Yuval Noah Harari has to say about advertising:

I get it. A dystopian future. This is a worst-case scenario type of thing, but, what’s the best-case scenario? Agencies merging, others closing, some pivoting to a more digital business model. The future doesn’t look good for most agencies. And that’s a good thing for the ones that will stay in business because it will mean that they still have something valuable for the clients. I believe that 99% of the agencies we know today won’t exist in 10 years.

This small sample shows why some of the best in the biz are, well, the best at it. They have something valuable. Something that identifies and positions them in the industry and in the client minds.

Anselmo Ramos founded David the Agency with Gaston Bigio over six years ago. A year ago, they opened Gut, “an independent ad agency for brave brands.” That sounds like a purpose to me. In one sentence they tell you why they exist, what clients are they looking for, and the type of work they do.

Purpose = Positioning = Differenciation

“I’m not saying creative agencies don’t know about purpose” said Emily Goldwin, strategic lead at Livity in her keynote at SXSW “but too often you’re the one delivering great work for the brands that have the purpose, rather than having your own clear direction.”

It Seems to Be a Different Thing to Know and to Execute.

Edwin Rager tweeted a couple of weeks ago that “the world needs a lot of things, another ad agency is not one of them.” It’s so funny because it’s so true. Purpose is the reason why you exist. Purpose is what will make you stand out. Purpose will bring you the type of clients and talents you want to have. Purpose will make your work meaningful, provocative, and, last but not least, on-brand.

Even though I love Harari, I don’t think that the future he projects will happen. Humans are way more complicated and irrational than an Algorithm can understand. I feel that creativity is still, and it will always be, the key to success for brands — the only way to stand out. The key to engaging with people, not just a target. The key to creating relevant, relatable, and provocative content. Agencies used to be where the most talented creative people get together and make really cool stuff. Now, they have a hard time finding people passionate about ideas, and when they find them, they can’t keep it. The advertising world is not as appealing as is used to be for those creative minds and that’s a reality that the industry needs to address.

But that’s their own brief: How can we be interesting for the creative talent and the clients again? For me, everything begins with not doing mediocre work. Stop it before it happens. That doesn’t make clients happy and neither the people that work on the project.

If you are not sure if the world needs the advertising agency you work for, well, then that’s probably true. As I said before, 99% of the agencies we know today won’t exist in 10 years, make sure you work today to be part of the other 1%.