Simon Veksner: Let’s play ‘Fantasy Agency’!
October 21 2013, 9:08 am | | 4 Comments
By Simon Veksner
Head of Ideas
Naked Communications
Everyone keeps remarking that the current agency model is broken. But, they never propose a new one.
So here goes.
First let’s look at the current model. It goes something like this:
4 Comments
Of the three models put forward it seems to me that the only really radical one is the third – ‘Ad Guy’ – model. Because it’s the only one that does away with the notion of a “creative department”.
I suspect that what happens in this case, though, is that the ‘Ad Guys’ in question get too close to the marketers and their litany of politics and problems, and will be unable to come up with truly objective and insightful solutions. So you’ll end up having to bring that in, in the same way that agencies already do with other creative skills like directors and photographers.
The result? A lot more freelance copywriters, art directors, designers, etc. operating as guns for hire, much like the Hollywood model for scriptwriters and the like working for studios on projects.
Whether this is good or bad I cannot say, but it’s certainly different, and it’s likely that the very best (now freelance) creatives would do very well under this model. Maybe even Porsche well.
As a client, I do like promise of the Ad Guy model.
For one, it does away with the retainer remuneration whereby big agencies front load an org chart with titles of people and name cards with huge hourly rates and whose value I seldom see.
Often, the titles stay while the faces change shortly after the ink on the contract is dry.
For the Ad Guy model to deliver, we need to see more mature and experienced multi disciplinary ad pros who:
1- Have a proven track record of 360 business thinking
2-Know their way around media plans, spreadsheets as well as research.
3-Come up with their own creative ideas and not just wait for the creative kids to do their magic.
In short, the Ad Guy has to earn the respect of clients, media and creative folks.
Given the agiest, one hit wonder thinking and scamy path many agencies have already clocked serious miles on, the ideal Ad Guy is as mythical as a talking unicorn.
Still, it’s nice to dream about having one in the stables.
Can we rename the Ad Guy model to the Jedi model.
Same same.
Better name.
When I started in the ad business in the 13th century as an even more junior version of a junior copywriter, a trainee, the standard model was what you call the Hybrid. It was shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. There was no such thing as a Planner. Account handlers developed the brief.
Then both the best and worst agencies I’ve worked for adopted your first model, or a variation of the BBH. This model often produced good if not great work, (Saatchi & Saatchi & The Campaign Palace in their heydays) but it was possibly down to the culture of the agency, not the model because the same model produced astounding mediocrity and constipation (McCann Erickson, I’m talking about you).
I also have experienced various permutations of the Ad Guy model, albeit briefly. These sorts of agencies tend to produce awful awful work, because nobody is terribly good at anything, but neither they nor the clients care because ignorance is bliss, and it’s purely about spending/making money. The idea that single-minded creativity or originality are tools for business success is completely alien.
There’s much that could be said about this topic, but I must take issue with the proposition of one of your correspondents that a great creative should also necessarily be a great strategist. A great creative is like a barrister, working to the brief of a well-informed solicitor.
He/she (a sop to your correspondent who got all hoity-toity about the gender descriptions in your models,veered off course and crashed into a tree much to my amusement) takes a (hopefully carefully-crafted) brief born of far greater familiarity and insight into the marketing issues than any creative is likely to have or should have, and applies the specialist tools of creativity, and imagination (rather than mere oratory, but artfully disguised and disarming argument nevertheless) to produce an entertaining, persuasive piece of communication, hopefully with a good chuckle to boot.