It’s always interesting to see how norms change, and how behavior, at scale shifts over time. Here is a story about the ad industry that caught our attention.
General Mills, the big American cereal manufacturer, is now giving its advertising agency partners very unfriendly terms.
In other words, if General Mills is your advertising client, the very fact that you’re accepting their terms means they don’t value your services very highly (otherwise they would not have made these terms, QED).
This is sad. Nobody and I mean, nobody, has any business being in a gig where the product they’re offering is not highly valued by the client. (If your offering isn’t highly valued, quit your job and go do something they actually will value, for goodness’ sake.)
But if you insist on being a business that just offers an already over-commodified product, like these poor agencies, you’re going to allow clients to get away with it. How unfortunate.
I don’t blame General Mills. They’re just pushing for the best deal they can get, in a very crowded market. Too bad so many ad agencies love talking about “creativity”, even if they’re not very “creative” about their actual business model. This disconnect is not doing them any favors, poor things.
