Casting for Big Ideas: A New Manifesto for Agency Managers (Adweek Magazine Series) by Andrew Jaffe

Author:Andrew Jaffe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf

SOMEONE'S GOT TO PLAY THE ROLE OF CONDUCTOR

Ad agencies are the natural orchestrators of this kind of experience. They already employ planners who through research or instinct know when such communications are appropriate. Their media people should be able to plan such placements and negotiate their appearance. Their creative people should be skilled at designing them and fitting them into the brand's overall media mix. However, agencies have cut back on digital resources in recent years due to the recession. It remains to be seen whether they will want to get back into the game. To do so, they are going to have to find ways to drive revenue from digital applications while waiting for broadband to roll out to homes and offices.

"So we're not saying the world is coming to an end," says Tobaccowala, "but what we're talking about is somewhat unfathomable in today's climate, and there's no way to get to the next level unless you put your oar in the water today. The reason is basically that we're no longer talking about the Internet, but about the future of marketing and television. Just bring one of these technologies into your home and watch what happens with young people. Something like the personal video recorder is very easy to program if you know how to use a remote control. Once you've mastered it, you become addicted to it. Then you start to say, `Okay, I've changed, so obviously the people I market to have changed, too.'

"Now, if you're ready to accept that we will have access to programming on the Web that we will want to record, then you're going to want to figure out what the new thing is. Organizationally, we may not be set up for this frontier. Agencies may require a different kind of talent than what you find in the typical creative department. I don't think someone who is spending 95 percent of their time on 30-second commercials is going to have the time and inclination, in effect, to want to spend time destroying the 30-second commercial. Creatives won't be the ones to destroy it, of course. Consumers are going to destroy it. So agencies are going to require different skill sets if they want to exploit this new appetite for content."

Tobaccowala believes, as I do, that in this new frontier clients may be expected to gravitate away from ad agencies and toward robust media companies, providing they're staffed with people of vision. "I've always believed that if the future is about marketing, it's much less about advertising and media," says Tobaccowala. "In the old days there was a triangle consisting of the client, the agency, and the medium. What tended to happen was that the agency would buy the medium and develop the content for the medium.

"But in the new world there are going to be all kinds of applications. So you will have things being done by the advertising agency, the promotion agency, the PR agency, and the media company. Now clients

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