Ian Leslie: How the Mad Men lost the plot
The arrival of Facebook and Twitter appeared to threaten the advertising industry’s very existence. So what happened next?
Even admen have souls, and some of them are enduring dark nights. Jeff Goodby is co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a San Francisco advertising agency responsible for some of the most famous campaigns of the 1990s, including ones for Nike and Budweiser. On his return from this year’s annual ad industry awards festival at Cannes in June, Goodby wrote a rueful piece for The Wall Street Journal. In the past, he said, the only true measure of success was whether the public knew and cared about your work. “You could get into a cab and find out, in a mile or two, whether you mattered in life, just by asking the driver.” Now, “No one knows what we do any more.”
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Best article of the year. Should be compulsory for all clients and agencies, but will no doubt get ignored or explained away.
There used to be a great saying.. “it’s hard to bullshit a bullshitter” well if the last few years of digi babble in this industry has proved anything it is this, evidently it is ridiculously easy…
Inspired and inspiring.
“After 10 or 15 years of f***ing around with digital we’ve realised that people don’t want to ‘engage’ with brands, because they don’t care about them.”
Had a brief from a fruit juice client a few years ago, who decided it would be a great idea to spend the whole year’s budget on some hairbrained app thing that scanned your barcode, and then it told you which farmer grew your apples or oranges or whatever. And then you could share it with your friends, and, you know, start a national conversation.
The brand no longer exists.
right from the very first banner, the very first ‘viral’, the very first social content hashtag twerp faceplant matrix, we all knew this was twaddle. but no one said anything. we let the digital snakeoilers get away with murder and allow greedy, lazy gutless clients to think the future was cheap and easy. advertising is back. if you don’t know, or have forgotten how to do it, now would be a good time for you to learn how to do things properly.
Ad agencies have been complicit in their own demise, Ann Ominous.
If you ran a business in which a 12% profit margin was considered the best you could achieve, then the idea of harnessing most of your client’s budget through your own agency’s digital capabilities – as opposed to those from an outside, specialist group – meant that the race for profits was on (which, by the way, is what business is about).
And fair enough to the agencies – you need to move with the times and in the direction of your clients’ budgets. However, ad agencies did lose track of what made them special in the first place (ideas) and went along with the bamboozling, tech effect of a lot of digital advertising.
As a freelance writer, I’m confronted almost every day by people who are interested to see my “digital” campaigns instead of looking at work that has seriously strong ideas. questions like “what results did you get with this?” are common. Sad.