Most of the time, people coming into advertising picture it works something like it does on Mad Men. A client comes to an agency, says “Make us famous” or “Make people want to buy our stuff”. The agency comes up with an idea, pitches it to the client, the client buys it, and some time later, the advertising appears on your TVs & in your magazines. It’s a ‘million dollar campaign’ and everyone drinks champagne.
(usually) small teams working closely together with constant interaction streamlined process - quickly finding an insight that triggers a creative idea, often by talking to people outside the building. clear objectives (to win!) and only one deliverable (the campaign). you don ’t have to produce the work yet, just a prototype of the campaign.
The momuments return. The departments return to their floors and set to work agreeing on ‘deliverables’ with clients, and then creating those ‘deliverables’, presenting them to the clients, and incrementally changing them to reflect all the internal politics and preferences of a client who - often - has never met the creative teams producing the work, or the consumers who will determine the success or failure of the campaign.
Let ’s do the math. If you did a $1 million campaign, the agency would make $150,000 in revenue. Of that, the agency would have made $30,000 in profit. That ’s 3% profit on a lot of effort. 85% of the money the client gives an agency goes to someone else.
We even knew it would require no change to their manufacturing facilities, that they already had access to the ingredients, and that, in fact, they would only have to take things out of the process, rather than add anything in. It wouldn ’t cost them any more than they currently spent, and might even have cost them less.
Nobody loves trends more than agencies. We love a new buzz word, and we start spewing them constantly. The incentives and market structure aren ’t there.