Advertising is no longer about ads. So what does that mean for agencies?

Advertising? Getting your message into the heads of most people at the lowest possible cost.

Why is it every ‘new agency model’ (and many old ones) seems to want to omit planning?
Perhaps that’s the real problem.

Sighting Kotler as having any relevance in the modern marketing, advertising or branding world, doesn’t give great confidence that you are looking to the right people.

PS. you are also saying everything that most people are already doing.

Is this a paid advertisement or free PR for TogetherCo because there is certainly no news here. And Eon is right, Kotler was avantgard in the early 80s and history now as any real student of marketing would know.

Oops, @really is right

@Really? Oh. Dear. Lord! It’s “citing” as in “to cite” – To quote as an authority or example. To mention or bring forward as support, illustration, or proof. To “sight” Kotler, you may well have to be in Chicago. That is all.

Why does the birth of something always have to equal the death of something else in this industry? Content, participation, conversation, experiences and utility are no doubt very important, just not sure how that means the death of ads? Until you can deliver the former at the scale and efficiency of the latter then I can’t see many CMO’s scrapping TV just yet for example.

Also couldn’t help thinking that the agency you just described sounds awful lot like the original model for Ikon but full service. Not a surprise with Mr Hardwick involved! Good luck with it though, keeping fighting the good fight.

What’s really sad about this article is that there is one example of a company in another category that is supposedly really creative.

The rest is a just a grab bag of cliches with no evidence or justification about how this would make a better agency.

Whilst it’s an opinion, it is full of so many errors and loopholes it is just laughable.

@Alex I was being sarcastic, sorry I didn’t make it clearer. As the other comments suggest the opinion piece could do with a bit more work, and more convincing opinions.

@Alex Hayes my post was intended to be sarcastic when I suggested the piece may have been a paid piece. I should have made it more obvious by being more cutting, but @Really has done it for me, and others will surely follow. Now 83, Philip
would be amused to have the six points quoted to support a conclusion so distant from the 6 points made. Those of us who studied under him would remember how politely sarcastic he would have been commenting on this leap of logic.

I understand this is an old argument but it’s fair to say that content marketing brings with it a greater need for technology, creative and media planners/strategists to work together. Develope content that is trending in social or search for example. Develope creative that can give a level of personalised scale! You can’t just give me an add to push broadly anymore! With all the clutter to cut through we have to be smarter if we want to maximise results… but not loose track of what we are trying to achieve. Great stories are only great if they tie back to the brand and increase sales etc.

Advertising is no longer about making people want things but rather it’s about making things that people want.

Something angry about something that makes me feel intelligent and gives me something to come back and read up on every 15 minutes during my work day.

Did advertising die again?
Again?

Well,I do agree in a few things, Advertisers need to work more with Marketers and also agencies which don’t have digital knowledge will have a hard time, but in the end is all about the strategy and ideas, they can come from various places.

Nice one Simone.

& looks like its bitchy day on Mumbrella again.

Not sure why people have their knickers in a knot – the broader view of what advertising ‘is’, & the role or lack of for agencies, is being defined beyond singular views and pseudonyms.

CMO’s, & yes, CFO’s, have a lot more to consider then the loudest voice on a blog & as an industry we would do well to remember that. My experience on some large accounts, as one of multiple agencies, is that can’t be surprised to see clients moving to the large consultancy shops such (Deloitte, PwC etc) to manage their comms in an increasingly data driven landscape; because with the exception of the back slapping self congratulatory rubbish I see in the comments section, we are not doing it very well as an industry.

& @Eaon, agree that the role of planning needs to be central but I don’t think this piece said it didn’t.

I’ve worked in several agencies where the management spout the exact same line of arse. “everyone is creative” they say. ‘Ideas can come from anywhere”, “re-think the creative team”. Utter bollocks. The ideas always end up coming from only one place. The creatives. Because when the deadline has to be met, and there’s nothing else on the table because all the agency wide brainstorms have resulted in a table full of generic, derivative or just plain shit ideas, it’s the creatives who have a relevant, strategic idea. Then they can communicate it, work it up and get the client to believe in it.

There are so many deluded clowns on here [Edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy] preaching this line, but then you look at the output of their respective agencies and it is appallingly bad. The media landscape is fragmented because people have more ways to avoid advertising but the wheel is turning. Know why? Because a phone in your pocket is just another place to watch TV, and TV ads or content as we now call them are still the only way to reach a mass market.
Big clients across Australia (heard of Lion Nathan?) are slashing their spend on digital and social and putting it all into TV/video and OOH) Agencies like We are social have heard the death knell of a business built around Facebook and twitter and are desperately trying to move into TV production ( exhibit A their recent Adidas campaign that was billed as ‘social’ but was in fact 3 TVCs that ran on Facebook).
People don’t want to have a conversation with a brand, the amount of fucks given about ‘telling their story about how soap powder helps them look after their family’ is zero. Make something funny they can watch on their phone, or at a stretch do, and they will spend 2 minutes doing it or playing it, before moving on to the ‘5 reasons why you need to get your asshole bleached’ item in their newsfeed.
So in conclusion: the new model is actually going to be remarkably similar to the old model. Creatives coming up with ideas, they might be a stunt, a piece of tech that gets filmed or they might be good ole fashioned TV ads that people watch on youtube. But the one thing I can guarantee, the social specialists who think that asking people to share a recipe is an idea, and digital ninjas who know jackshit about how to actually come up with an idea that moves people will be shown the door, as agencies ( and clients) figure out (some faster than others) that the amount of value they are adding is five eights of fuck all.

A grown up in a room of children. Bravo.

@Full Circle completely agree. This Business is and always has been about getting to a good idea and communicating it in the most engaging and effective way. Currently there is way too much time wasted on half arsed silver bullet solutions supported by voodoo logic

Nice one, Nic Halley – I agree with you.

Do people realise they’re addressing other people (it’s not a computer which writes this stuff, you know) when they make such derisive comments? My goodness, make a point but do it with manners!

Thanks for the read Simone.

Mr Full Circle is of course (delivery of message aside) completely right.

Assuming your brand is sufficiently large that it needs mass marketing, the problem with ‘content, participation, conversation, experiences and utility’ is that it doesn’t work.

Your target doesn’t want to watch your content, doesn’t want a conversation with you, has no desire to participate with you, and prefers not share experiences with you.

They wish you’d just stop bothering them.

The media you use is up to you and the numbers, but what works creatively hasn’t changed.

Be simple. Be entertaining. Be consistent.

Full circle, you had me at “Utter bollocks.” Great comment. Thank you for telling it as it is.

Amen Full Circle.

You had me at ‘5 reasons why you need to get your asshole bleached’

Can we just copy and paste Full Circle’s comment into all these type of articles. Yes there are fantastic new ways to reach people – often through other people (i.e. social) – but unless there is something interesting to share in the first place we have nothing. The ‘interesting’ bit needs to be invented by ‘Creative people’, what ever name they go by.

Is it fair to say that some area’s no longer need paid advertising to sell their product?

A well known, established pop act, as an example, can just post on a few of their social channels and sell out a gig right? (In the past they would have had to pay for advertising…)

????? Any others?

What are the forecasts? Who will be able to sell products without advertising, however who will need it?

Will Murdoch’s reign over the ignorant and naive end too, due to social channels and people power?

Another full circle groupie here.

In my experience, it has nearly always been the one who played badly, who volunteered him/herself as pianist at a house party, and the one who has no sense of pitch and/or rhythm who sings loudest. Unfortunately, anyone who can talk, walk and remember a few lines, thinks he/she can act. The one who tells yarns is an author, and the one who can twerk is a dancer.

For good creative ideas, you must have a good creative team. To implement good ideas and create a finished product, you must have team work and trust.