The Ad Agency of the Future

18 Jan


Old model – The Content Factory

  • Shmooze with media
  • Funnel your clients into media spends
  • Collect kick backs from media
  • Shmooze with clients so that they stay loyal while you stab them in the back and rip them off
  • Bedazzle them, with funky offices full of kitsch and young, attractive, funkily dressed ‘creative’ types (smoke and mirrors) to cover up for the fact that you don’t have the foggiest about the new digital landscape and where you fit into it (you don’t) Acting ‘as if’ got you this far, right?
  • Staff are thrashed in a sweatshop environment to produce as much work as possible, creativity and effectiveness suffers. High staff turnover is not a problem, plenty of hip, young advertising wannabes willing to take their places
  • Strategy and creative is a giveaway (cost not profit centre)
  • Media planners/buyers and account executives (suits) are the stars. Creatives are just troublesome necessities to be tolerated.
  • Success equated with quantity of work produced and profits (mostly from media spend) Quality is not rewarded! QUANTITY NOT QUALITY

The New model

  • Get rid of the office, take it to the cloud and work from anywhere in the world (immense cost savings and so much flexibility)
  • outsource to freelancers, no full time staff = reduced overheads (no superannuation, annual leave, long service leave, payroll tax, PAYG, sick pay, maternity leave, etc)
  • If you need to have a client meeting hire a serviced office
  • Media is free (Facebook and Twitter anyone?)
  • Clients purchase their own media (Adwords, FB Advertising, Promoted Tweets, media buying agencies, Youtube, etc)
  • CHARGE FOR STRATEGY AND CREATIVE (you know, the truly important stuff that is the foundation of any successful campaign)
  • Charging for strategy and creative allows the strategists, planners and creatives more time. A relaxed mind is a most productive and creative mind which leads to cutting edge, effective creative
  • Enjoy smaller, leaner, faster and more responsive teams creating more innovative work that’s better and more effective
  • Success = cutting edge creative, original ideas that break free of the clutter, engage audiences and give the client a win QUALITY NOT QUANTITY

  • http://www.deepbasecreative.com Jamie

    Hi Mal,

    Totally agree, the freelance approach just makes more sense. The overheads alone in some of the big agencies are stupid and get passed on to clients in a big way. Still, there will always be those clients with plenty of money to spend that can't see past the swanky offices. I prefer to be flexible and build the perfect team around the project not push a project to fit the team.

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