Simon Veksner: Everyone is saying ‘we need to know the client’s business problem’, we don’t
June 1 2015, 11:04 am | | 4 Comments
By Simon Veksner
Creative Partner, DDB Sydney
This post is basically the same as last week’s – I just thought of a new way to write the argument. So if you’ve read last week’s, you can skip this.
One day, Jonathan Topp-Guy – managing director of AdWow, one of the biggest advertising agencies in BigTown – had a eureka moment. Why were AdWow restricting themselves to solving crappy old marketing problems? It was just so damn limiting. Didn’t they have the brainpower, the skills and the creativity to tackle real business problems? READ ON…
4 Comments
KNOWING the client’s business problem is not the same thing as SOLVING the client’s business problem. And I for one would like to know it – otherwise the “marketing problem” (which in each of your examples, Simon, sounds more like an advertising problem) exists in a vacuum.
“Price of jet fuel’s gone up you say, eh? What if we redesign the inflight menus so that you get a growth in food sales to counter it?”
That’s how marketing can help solve SkyAir’s business problem, which no amount of flat-bed advertising is going to do, given that all of SkyAir’s competitors offer flat beds too.
Couldn’t disagree more in some ways, couldn’t agree more in others.
We definitely need to know the business problem and clients look to us for creative solutions. That is what we have the ability to excel in, where no McKinsey or BCG could come close on. We as an industry have an awful tendency to see all problems with an ‘ad shaped solution’. This is limiting, and is driving us into obscurity.
The problem arises when we look at how we’re equipped – something pointed out here. We don’t hire people with the skillsets to really understand the business problem (accounting, financial forecasting, basic economics etc.) and make it actionable for us as agencies.. but when you’re offering graduates (and most levels) with the requisite skillset salaries half of what they can get ANYWHERE outside our industry, what can we expect?
Evolution is necessary.
Good point Pedant, let’s just pretend I said ‘solve’!
Change Nothing, I agree with you. We do need to evolve. I don’t think the answer is adding economists and accountants though.
Surely you know this by now Simon, it’s the advertising agency’s job to come up with their products and solve their business problems and the client’s job to write the ads.