A Decade of change in Ad Land

I promise this isn’t another “look how COVID changes things and sped up progress” articles.

It’s me starting 2022 by reflecting on my first decade in the ad business and calling out some big shifts across audiences, agencies, and brand communications.

But in doing that, I may have to concede that COVID did speed up a fair amount of the progress. Soz.

So, here’s five things I reckon have monumentally changed within this industry over the past decade that maybe you’ll find vaguely interesting.

1. Advertising became a dirty word.

Remember when Facebook was cool? I do. It was 2011, when I began. They were snapping up the best talent and genuinely believed they were making the world a better place.

Yet here we are in 2022, and even Facebook has disassociated itself with Facebook.

Well, ad agencies have gone through a similar reckoning and identity crisis. Because it turns out people hate ads. Not entertaining ads, but the other 99.5%. You know, the ones that have nothing interesting to say but merely inhabit monetised spaces on your screen(s).

Ad blocking apps are consistently near the top of download lists, the rise of Netflix has given a scaled view of entertainment platforms without ads that turn out people feel is worth paying for, and 80% of traditional agency jobs that existed when I started 10 years ago are expected to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning technologies by 2030.

So almost every successful Advertising Agency that existed 2011 has rebranded (most landing on ‘creative agency’) and diversified their offering to allow them to no longer be grouped together but now be referred to more specifically - such as a branding agency, brand & strategy agency, brand design & consulting agency, strategic consultancy agency, content agency, CX agency… the list goes on with variations on the themes.

2. Audiences have evolved from flocks to tribes.

Do you remember the ice bucket challenge?

Your answer is either: “yes, it was for a good cause but then people started dying right?!”, or “yes, I was working in an agency at the time and every client called me that week saying we need an ice bucket challenge equivalent for our brand”.

Why it worked in 2014 was because everyone was on Facebook, and it was a platform rife for sending things viral. It was around the time of a slew of viral videos and global challenges (Planking, Gangnam Style, Haarlem Shake, anyone?) that could take over the Internet.

Well, this has been changing lately. Not because people are becoming any less creative or the Internet is becoming any less weird, but because belonging in niche communities is becoming more important than fitting into the mainstream.

Platforms like Discord, Fortnite, Reddit, communities being built on TikTok, and even the growth of WhatsApp and closed groups chats taking over from broadcasting publicly are the places where audiences are now spending their time. It’s mainly driven by the feeling of belonging. It is within these intimate groups that people can be themselves - and not the perfect-life-Instagram-versions of themselves that has become widely accepted as toxic over the last couple years.

And with that comes a complete shift in how brands and agencies are thinking about how to become relevant to these communities.

3. Power shift from CMOs to CXOs.

 In those mystical spaces that Clients inhabit, there has been a battle brewing in the past 10 years of power from those people who promote their company through paid ads - to those responsible for the Experience people have with the brand.

Whilst the marketing & advertising efforts of a company are an imperative function mostly used to drive awareness to attract or remind potential customers about them, it turns out that the Experience someone has with the brand at any given touchpoint is significantly more valuable in 2022.

Whether it’s tweaking a website or app, optimising a check out, revising your package design, or extending the offering from physical product to a digital service on top, the return brands get on these changes have become easier to measure and optimise in real time, and simpler to scale than marketing initiatives - which has in turn made the Chief Experience Officer’s the new rock stars.

4. Brands have been made Accountable.

So, 2020 happened, and it turns out being authentic and transparent is not only super important and demanded from brands now, but also easy to call out if they’re not living up to their claims.

Never has information been more accessible about a CEOs political donation, or a company’s breakdown of employee gender, ethnicity and sexuality - and if what they say doesn’t match their own practices it becomes very public very quickly.

This transfer of power in how a brand controls their own narrative has forced every brand to look within their own organisation, and re-think how they speak about themselves.

As an agency person, it means you have the duty to interrogate a client brief that says they want to appear they support BLM. It means that we have had to change the way we think of the relationship with clients to have that internal reckoning of whether their beliefs and values stack up because if they don’t - it’s never been easier to get called out. And same goes for the agencies we work in.

This has not always been the way. Maybe it was because I was a fresh starter in 2011, but the dynamic of client / agency relationships has evolved with this shift.

5. We love a good doomsday prediction.

“TV is dead, digital has taken over” - 2012, Everyone.

“The Agency Model is dead, consultancies have taken over” - 2015, Everyone.

“Retail is dead, COVID has taken over” - 2020, Everyone.

In this industry, if there is one thing we love more than generalisations, it’s a bit of drama.

And despite the haste to jump to dramatic conclusions such as the above, they are strong opinions rather than facts.

The reality is that like almost every industry, the world changes and in turn the industry changes and we must adapt to the change.

So, to round things back to the statistic of 80% of 2011 advertising agency jobs being redundant by 2030, I leave you with a certified made-up statistic.

It’s that approximately 100% of people in this game who understand there is a requirement to be adaptive to a constantly evolving industry and continue to train up their skills as the requirements of this job change - will most likely be fine.

Going local to global - 4 things you should know

We’ve all been there. 

Day 1 of an overwhelming project when it dawns on you exactly what you’ve signed up for.

For me this was the 1st June, 2018, 48 hours after I’d arrived in Amsterdam to launch my first major global campaign with six other people in a small glass room.

So there I was.

With a group of strangers.

On the brand of my dreams.

On the brand’s first ever ‘blockbuster’ global campaign.

Reporting into 47 separate stakeholders along the way.

From 13 different regions.

To create a campaign that would eventually run in 120 countries.

Trying reposition a category and sell 4.5 million pairs of shoes.

Skipping the details and jumping to the end - here’s what I learned are the four key differences between working on local vs global campaigns.

1. Deck craft will make or break the strategy

On a global campaign there are going to be a HEAP of people, that will influence the work, that you will never meet, have the chance to speak with, send an email to, or even be made aware of their existence. 

You put the trust to sell through a strategy, concept, design, script or storyboard with your global comms client, and then it’s out in the world. In facing this process, the decks you arm them with to crystallise the thinking and get everyone aligned have never been so important. 

They need to tell a story. They need to captivate anyone - of any level - who pick them up in a rush to deliver perfectly articulated key points that cater to the needs of everyone in the company. 

If your decks fail to leave people with the feeling of wanting to get on board and fully commit to the global campaign, you’re going to have holes picked in the work, which leads to hundreds of differing opinions, which ultimately risks watering down and compromising the idea.

2. Global scale politics

Get ready to get political. Yes, this absolutely exists in local campaigns, spanning every industry, so it’s not a uniquely global advertising concept - but it does go up a notch when going global. 

Firstly, there’s the politics within the business. Every market (understandably) wants to create work that reflects the idiosyncrasies of their own culture, and is wary of an overarching global strategy becoming too high and lofty that it then becomes meaningless. 

Secondly, there is the always shifting political climate of the world. The time from a global campaign’s briefing until live date can be many months, if not years. So by the time something agreed months/years ago is ready to go into the world... well... the world might be a different place. 

On my first global campaign, we created 4x global films. Each story linked to a topic that is universal and timely (eg pollution, immigration, race relations). All it took to kill one of the four films was a US government shutdown and it was deemed insensitive. Whilst it wasn’t able to be predicted, we still should have been prepared and had scenarios planned with more foresight of American geopolitics being at an ‘interesting’ time in 2019. 

3. Client approach & motivation changes

A great client who understands their brand proposition, the role in its customers’ lives, the brand strategy which it is executing, and has good creative (& political) judgement... is always a great client, regardless of whether they lead local or global communications. 

The difference between them isn’t being intelligent and knowing their stuff (the same could be said agency side), but how they think in terms of going about executing the campaign. This requires a different skill set and approach and therefore approach to working with their agency. 

I’ve found global clients to be extremely rigorous and detailed in testing the strategy upfront, and then once they’re on board, become an extension on your team as they defend the integrity of the idea to all their markets. 

Local clients generally own a lot more of the process. They write the brief, work directly with you on the campaign, attend shoots, sell in to their company, align media channels and partner agencies, and also get the credit at the end. So they get to make the calls and shape the work as they go. 

For this reason, how they think, operate, and get motivated noticeably differs. The global clients are far removed from the detail, rollout, media planning and market intricacies. Whereas local clients are more interested in the details, tuned in to channel thinking, know their audience better as it’s so specified. 

4. USA & China come first - then everyone else follows

This point is actually as simple as it sounds when it comes to almost any global campaign, and doesn’t require too much more explanation. 

Yes it depends on the product that’s being sold, but these 2 markets generally dominate in terms of cash money spent on stuff that the top 50-100 companies in the world sell. And that has pull. 

A lot of it. 

So before you even start on the creative work, you should have researched attitudes, consumer behaviour, lifestyle, and product positioning in USA or China as a starting point. Get in the minds of people in these countries, because they will end up determining whether enough money comes in for you to have a job on this brand in the future. 

Ok so I’ve written a lot about the differences, but fact is - good strategy is good strategy and good ideas are good ideas.
Great work always depends on the culture of the company for which you are creating comms for.
Smart, collaborative clients always make a positive impact on strategic and creative thinking.
Adaptable people always make things work whether they have vast experience in something, or merely a good attitude to learn a new way of working for a local or global brand.

The trick is in recognising the differences, but staying true to universal learnings that you develop in any agency, anywhere in the world, working on any account, of any size.

How I’ve saved an hour of every (work) day

Hi. I’m Dave. I work in account management. And I’m an addict. For as long as I can remember working with clients, I have developed an unhealthy habit.

My addiction is…

… saying it out loud is always the hardest part…

Checking emails.

There. It’s out. 

I check my emails all the time. It started at my desk, on my work computer, during work hours, but at some point - I can’t remember when - it took over all parts of my life. At work, at home, on my way to work, on my way home from work, on my phone on my way from level at 3 at work where I had a meeting to level 1 where I was going to my computer that had my emails on it.

I never actually realised I was an addict until I was too late. I told myself ‘it’s normal’ and ‘it’s part of the job’, and ‘how else do I stay on top of things?’. That’s right, I was in stage 1. Denial.

Then one day, about 2 weeks ago, I had a revelation.

I was going through an intense phase at work where I had a higher workload than usual. I noticed that although I had a plan at the start of each day, I would very rarely get through my planned list. I couldn’t figure out why.

It hit me. 

Email.

I would spend my entire day with the email screen open and notifications turned on. I would be working on an urgent task, but then I’d get instantaneously sidetracked.

The problem was that when email was on, I wouldn’t determine what I’d get done that day. 

Others would.

So I toyed with a crazy idea. 

What if I turned my email notifications off, and only ever opened my email at the following times:

9:00am.

1:00pm.

5:00pm..?

I gave myself one week to commit to the experiment, and there were four problems I faced immediately:

1. My clients freaked out. I wasn’t responding to their requests as quickly as I once had, and they worried I was not actioning their requests as urgently as I should have.

2. My (internal) producers freaked out. They wouldn’t get constant updates on where projects were at.

3. I got a sever case of FOMO. I knew things were happening on my projects that I wasn’t witnessing in real time, because there was as much as a 3.5 hour lag from my side.

4. I didn’t get to procrastinate on the tasks I was subconsciously avoiding. Because I would actually work through my to do list without distraction, the important / not urgent tasks I didn’t actually want to do would have to get done to best use my time.

I didn’t like the feeling of any of the above at all, and I was only half a day in. I considered…

… sorry it’s hard to say…

…I actually considered relapsing.

That was tough.

But I didn’t, and within another few days I had made some observations about account service life in an ad agency.

Observation #1: When a client writes in an email ‘this is urgent’ with no follow up. It’s usually not urgent. If a client calls your desk phone leaving a voicemail because you haven’t responded to their email within an hour, it might be urgent, but also maybe not. When a client writes an urgent email, follows up with a desk phone call, and follows up 2-6 times immediately on your mobile saying something’s urgent, then yes this is probably urgent.

Observation #2: If you tell internal departments that you’re not on emails, they still email you. If you don’t reply within 3.5 hours and they rely on you for information they will either call you or come find you. Same goes the other way around. If you need to inform someone of an urgent change or brief, you’re far more likely to get the immediate action by finding them in human form rather than sending an email and hoping it will get read.

Observation #3: When you spend your day cracking on with tasks that need to be done - rather than reacting to emails - you produce work that is more considered, more intelligent, less rushed, and that you’re prouder of. 

These were three observations I was able to make from just a few days on my new email schedule.

Now, two weeks in, I’ve noticed two things that I honestly never expected.

First thing: When I’m not dragged into urgent emergencies immediately, I react to them faster and smarter. It’s amazing how knowing that I’m a few hours behind a crisis makes a difference to the approach of a situation. I know I’m always too late offer an immediate solve. So instead, I stop, consider, create a plan, then execute with a clearer mindset.

Second thing: I’ve created less work for myself. If I answer an email immediately with a question, that leads to another questions, that leads to a discussion, that can create a day of work in itself. Whereas if I don’t react for half a day, that person who sent the email (and didn’t require an immediate phone call to follow up) may be half a day through solving the problem already, and I can come in to the picture to help them once I have the time and headspace.

Thanks for bearing with me through this. This has been great therapy, and I feel my addiction may be close to over.

You may agree with this way of working, you may hate it. But as a final thought to leave you on (potential current addict), ask yourself how many times you’ve been asked in a job interview “how many emails are you able to respond to in a day?”. 

If you’re not getting hired for that skill, then why would it be something you’re working so hard for?

What I’ve learnt about creativity after 12 weeks of AWARD school.

I sit here a broken man, days after my AWARD (Australian Writers and Art Directors) portfolio of 10 ideas on 10 briefs has been submitted, tired. Just tired.

Whilst I went through the entire process as an imposter - seeing that I have no intention of becoming a creative - I feel so thankful to the opportunity to undergo the whole process, and so pleased that I had a real crack at it… late nights, early mornings, weird dreams, ridiculous insights, and so so many pages ripped out of scrap books and started again. Week after week after week . I apologies to trees.

In the process of absorbing myself in “the program”, here are some of the things I learnt along the way. Some about creativity, some about the 12 weeks in general, and some not actually things I’ve learnt but mere observations that someone thinking of doing the course in 2018 may find helpful.

The ON Button

Working on ideas that rely on wicked insights and original thinking, there’s no off button. From the moment I’d receive a brief every Thursday night, I would hone in on that product / audience / category relentlessly. This meant becoming absent in most social, sleeping and professional scenarios to think about something differently or to write something down. 

Thinking is more consuming than doing.

Question Everything

We were told on day one that cultural programming is the program we live our lives in, and that we only see our true selves when we step outside that program. At the time it seemed like a fancy, well articulated sentence about how to get than interesting thought. But as time went on, I noticed this was the core of every great insight. 

Once I started thinking like this I’d notice every time someone gave me an automated, culturally programmed response. When I asked ‘how are you’, people always answered ‘good’. Why? When I’d see work colleagues on a Monday, the first sentence was always about my weekend. Did they actually care? 

The deeper I got into AWARD school, the more I realised I was questioning why we’ve all become programmable zombies, and how good ideas can help expose that. 

Discovering New Angles

I’ve never thought about so many (well, ten) different products or services from such different angles. By this I mean anything from literally angles (looking at a product upside down) to how it differs depending on who the audience is, the context it’s viewed in, even to what it would look like to an alien. 

Only when I got into that line of thinking and questioning would I arrive at any half decent insights. Why is the water in a bathroom tap perceived as dirtier than a kitchen tap? (we had a tap water brief) If tissues could fear death, are there many products that would live with higher anxiety levels? (we had a Kleenex brief). If the Internet ended, would a looping gif still have an infinite life span? (we had an ‘unlimited internet’ brief). The list goes on.

Finding Bad Ideas

This was my particular skill. I would come up with not just a few, but I’d say a hundred bad ideas for every brief. The worst thing about my hundred bad ideas is that they weren’t bad straight away, they were just hidden in one of these categories:

1. 33 would be unoriginal (but I wouldn’t realise as they were still creative and answered the brief)

2. 33 were off-brief (but I wouldn’t realise as they were original & creative)

3. 33 were clever, but not simple (but I wouldn’t realise as they made sense in my head)

One of them (usually the 100th) maybe had something in it (I’d submit that one).

In-head vs On-paper

I won approximately 15-20 Cannes Gold lions over the course of the 12 weeks. But then I took those award winning ideas out of my head, put them on paper, and looked at them the next day.

They sucked.

The Best Bit

It got easier.

And by ‘it’, I don’t mean coming up with fresh and unique ideas got easier. 

But filtering our the bad ones did. And that saved time on those ones to get to the good ones.

Which was still really hard.

Life Admin

Is now in a 12-week deficit.

If there’s on shout out to end this article with, it’s the the tutors from 12 or so different (Sydney) agencies (then add Vic, QLD and WA to the mix). They sacrificed so many countless hours (most nights til 10:00pm, submission week for my group went to 2:00am), and gave so much of their brain power and knowledge to us crazy kids, all for the love of helping the industry generate better creative talent.

You are heroes - I would literally never be that selfless. 

Be Kind to I.T. - it will make you better at your job

It seems to come with the territory of being a Suit that it’s normal to complain about things such as lack of details in client briefs, or getting told to drop everything for urgent tasks with unrealistic timeframes and for a budget of $72.50, a peanut and a second hand button. 

We complain as if, were the tables turned, we would be capable of withstanding the pressures of our internal structure and always be timely and reasonable when briefing in an agency, asking for outputs aligned with the budget we know is available, and having the time to think about the golden insight to put into the brief that can help them on their way. 

Or more realistically, we don’t consider the pressure clients are under and we just jump to default complain mode.

This is where you think I’d say ‘but just try to consider it from their point of view’.

Don’t.

Instead, look at what you’re already doing as a client to some of your suppliers.

Actually, only one.

Your IT department.

Here’s how I work with my IT department:

Scenario 1:

IT: Here’s a company wide email with ample lead time warning you of some upcoming changes that will impact your life.

Dave: That’s something for next Monday. It’s still Thursday.**Deletes email**

IT: Here’s further warning of that change that is going to impact your life, and we’re giving you warning for your own good.

Dave: It’s Friday and I’m busy, go away IT. **Deletes email**

IT: That change we’ve told you was going to happen, it’s happening today, here are the simple steps you need to follow:

Dave: Eh, Monday admin. **Deletes email** 

1 hour later - I’m locked out of the server or my email or something that’s now inconvenient.

Dave: (calling IT) can you come to my desk and do that thing for me?

Moral of scenario 1: I’m just the worst guy ever. And so is everyone else considering the answer to the final question is ‘sorry Dave but you’re in a queue of 150 people’. Just because you’ve told someone something, it doesn’t mean it’s been, or going to be actioned. If it effects their life right now, they may jump on it if it’s more important than everything else… but you often have no control over, or foresight into other people's priority list at any given time.

Scenario 2:

In the first week of your job, you get an IT induction. They explain how your computer works, where everything is stored, and how to make technology work in every meeting room.

Every week since that induction:

Dave: (calling from a meeting room at 10:59 for an 11:00am client presentation) IT, I need you to come to talk me through how to turn the projector screen on.

IT: I can be up in 5mins, I’m just on another call.

Dave: It’s for an important meeting, I literally need you to drop everything and help me.

IT: You’re the worst person ever.

Moral of scenario 2: I am the worst. Again. Flipping this one back to clients, how many times I’ve received ‘drop everything’ calls and rolled my eyes. I had a nice priority list for the day that I was working through, and this ruins everything. I don’t actually know the solution to this apart from - as Nike would say - just do it. It’s the joy of account service and it will never go away.

Scenario 3:

Dave: (calling IT) Hi, I’m going to a meeting for 45 mins, in that time can you fix my computer? It’s that problem I mentioned to you in the kitchen whilst we were waiting for our meals to heat up and I forced you to engage in work chat. Gotta run bye!

IT: Wait, what’s the problem? Who is this? Where do you sit? Do you even know my name?

**Dave has already left**

Moral of scenario 3: Get used to writing a reverse briefs! Because a client thinks they’ve told you some info in passing, it’s up to you as a suit to be attentive, create a point of view on the problem they’re trying to solve, and articulate it.

So if there’s one thing you take out of this, please choose the take out that you should be better to your IT department, rather than the whole ‘Dave is a massive spanner’ interpretation.