I’m slowly coming to the firm conclusion that marketing services (and all that it comprises) should have acquired advertising – and not the other way around which is what seems to have happened in the industry. Marketing Services (despite their appalling name) agencies had one of the most interesting remits of the late 90s and…… Continue reading Marketing services should have acquired advertising
Category: Advertising
Data is the new marketing drug
The title of this post is confusing, because data isn’t really new, but maybe we haven’t thought of it as a drug before. Data has been around in marketing as long as P&G and J&J have been developing new products and running focus groups, whether the data is quantitative or qualitative it has always existed,…… Continue reading Data is the new marketing drug
Onboarding for change
We are always talking about change, whether it is change for our clients as we sell them new creative or try to get them to evolve their products, or change for ourselves as agencies as we see our market, region, and industry evolving before our eyes – but with all this talk, I wonder whether…… Continue reading Onboarding for change
User experience in the pitch process
My previous CEO at RMG Connect (now JWT) Claude Chaffiotte (@ClaChaf) once compared the pitch process to a visit to the doctor, saying that “rarely do you go to the doctor and he tells you the ailments of his last six patients and what he did for them” – but this is what most agencies…… Continue reading User experience in the pitch process
Why advertising needs entrepreneurs
Regardless of whether you are part of a hot-shop 17-man creative boutique, or one of a 450-man flagship office of a global agency network, the advertising business still needs more than a healthy dose of entrepreneurs – and I think the industry is forgetting that. The challenge with this business, however large the brand name…… Continue reading Why advertising needs entrepreneurs
Tomorrow’s creative team
Back when Bill Bernbach changed the landscape of agencies by partnering art directors and copywriters we thought that this was a major revolution in agency team structure – finally the art department which had up until then really only been thought of as production took its merited role alongside the copywriters to come up with…… Continue reading Tomorrow’s creative team
Disruption for mind and body
I went last night for my first training sesssion at Concept 10 10 here in Dubai, this is a very different approach to the gym that uses very heavy weight against isolated muscle groups, doing very slow repetitions until you reach muscle failure point – and if you can hold out for too long (2.5…… Continue reading Disruption for mind and body
Has ‘integration’ become a dirty word?
In the rush to evolve the skills of the advertising industry to keep up with an ever changing number of new media channels the buzzword for the last few years has been integration, bringing other skillsets and sometimes other agencies into the fold to deliver an integrated product – whether this was branding, digital or…… Continue reading Has ‘integration’ become a dirty word?
The war for digital talent in advertising
Is there enough 360 experience to go around? Are tighter criteria making the talent pool smaller for recruitment today? It seems like everyone is chasing after the golden goose right now – the speed at which digital is invading our industry means that suddenly there is a major need for people that not only understand…… Continue reading The war for digital talent in advertising
Elephant in the room syndrome for agencies
The more I search for information about agency structures and models, the less of it I seem to find, not only are there very few descriptions of the traditional agency structure, how planning, creative and client service work together, but there is even less information about how these models are evolving and what might be…… Continue reading Elephant in the room syndrome for agencies