January 9, 2005
the go-between
More thoughts on “The Hughtrain”:
THOUGHT: the future of advertising is clients increasingly asking their agencies to help re-invent not just their brands, but their actual companies. The future is agencies being increasingly unable to deliver on this.
Out of this wreckage a new industry will emerge…
Traditionally, the ad agency biz model occupied a halfway point between “the client” and “the media”. They were the go-between.
The ad agency basically had two kinds of folk– the suits and the creatives.
The suits looked, talked and dressed like the clients. The creatives looked, talked and dressed like the guys who worked in the media– TV, newspapers, dotcoms, magazines etc.
The agency made its money by producing the “deliverables” i.e. writing the ads and buying the media space on behalf of the client. To do this successfully, they needed a rather fluid system that could interface successfully between their clients’ culture and the media culture.
Sure, new creative techniques emerged, new buzzwords appeared, new brand theories and media were busy being invented at an ever-increasing rate.
But during all this time the basic “go-between” biz model was still happily cranking away in the background.
This is the part of the business that is dying the fastest. Too easily imitated by the competition. Too easily commodified.
But like I said, out of this wreckage a new industry will emerge. It’s certainly the part of the business that interests me the most.
Rock on.
[UPDATE:]
Johnnie Moore makes a good point in the comments below:
Yep. For me, it’s the difference between agency (we talk for you) and facilitation (we help YOU to do the talking). I don’t think many agencies will adjust to that very easily…
Rock on some more.
Interesting in that there’s a similar model in the PR world. We’re the gatekeepers between the media and the body corporate. But with blogging it’s becoming increasingly impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends.
We also have suits to talk to clients and crazy people like me to deal with journalists. But the suits are becoming irrelevent. Clients look at the suits and think ‘I just laid off three guys like you.. why do I want to pay for YOU and not the guy who’s actually doing the work.’
Clients want the results — the media hits from us, the ads from you — not talk. Suits are incapable of giving them results.
Should be an interesting consolidation.…
Yep. For me, it’s the difference between agency (we talk for you) and facilitation (we help YOU to do the talking). I don’t think many agencies will adjust to that very easily…
Johnnie — good point and something else that’s been bothering me about the PR world.
We are supposed to be enabling / facilitating a conversation between our clients and their customers through the media. Most agencies and PR types however are more comfortable telling their clients ‘this is what you will say and when you will say it,’ sell them pointless services like ‘media training’ and ‘message development,’ collect big retainers and go home.
That can’t last much longer.
The future of advertising and PR
Gaping Void has some interesting observations on how the world of advertising is changing: “The future of advertising is clients increasingly asking their agencies to help re-invent not just their brands, but their actual companies. The future is agenc…
Future of agencies
Hugh’s been writing about the business model of ad agencies and how it’s becoming defunct. Partly, this is about revenue being based on promotional activity; meaning agencies get rewarded for making noise rather than supporting innovation; for dressing…
Why do you need a go-between if you are having conversations with exisiting customers? A go-between ‘could’ bring together two groups currently not talking.
Maybe the management consulting/PR/advertising industries merge into something new? The facilitation model Johnnie mentions makes sense. In the connected world, facilitating sales and operations are not two separate things.
the Hughtrain Mainfesto
Just a couple of quicknotes about the Hughtrain manifesto, just released by Hugh McLeod on ChangeThis, and inspired by the Cluetrain manifesto. These are the two concept tha mainly hit me: A brand is a place, not a thing: Media is not ʻentert…