Why Advertising Is Different Today

By Avi Dan
Published Oct 13, 2008 in Adweek

Wells, Rich, Greene. Scali, McCabe, Sloves. Ally & Gargano. Ammirati &
Puris. Levine, Huntley, Schmidt & Beaver. RIP.

These were some of the hottest creative shops of the '70s and '80s. As they
disappeared, swallowed by bigger fish, some of the creativity in our
business disappeared with them. Agencies today are not as entrepreneurial as
those who set the creative standard a generation ago.

Much of the blame for that has been laid at the doorsteps of the holding
companies. As the business shifted from a collection of independent agencies
to a holding-company model, the argument goes, creativity and
entrepreneurship were replaced by financial discipline. The business became,
well, a business, and that killed creativity.

But maybe you can be part of a holding company and still be admired as a
creative agency. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which has been part of a
holding company for 25 years, and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, part of a
holding company for a decade, are exhibits 1 and 2. Berlin, Cameron &
Partners, where I worked earlier this decade, became Adweek's Agency of the
Year after being purchased by WPP Group. Holding companies are not the death
stars of creativity.

So if it's not the holding companies, what hampers creativity?

For one, size. Today's big agencies are simply too big. Being big means
complexity that requires a process and bureaucracy. Bigness drives away
entrepreneurship and passion, the oxygen for ideas and creativity. Instead
it values management. Well, I'd take good art direction over the art of
management any day. Jay Chiat was right when he said, "I want to see how big
we can get before we get bad." Most agencies got the answer quickly. Too
quickly.

Small size is not a hindrance in a business of ideas. Berlin, Cameron, an
agency of 40 people, snatched the most prestigious account on Earth,
Coca-Cola, from uber-giant McCann Erickson. And McCann had it for 50 years.
Advertising is a business of individuality and entrepreneurship, and it's at
its best when practiced that way, not by an army in gray flannel suits
floating from meeting to meeting.

The business today is less personal than it used to be when ownership had
its name on the door. When the principal was a familiar face in a meeting
and not just a name on the letterhead, the work was better because the work
mattered more -- it was the soul of the agency. Those principals did not
compromise and they put the work above all else. It was that attitude and
their bigger-than-life personalities that inspired their troops. Today, I
think there's less Kool-Aid in the business.

Perhaps this is unavoidable. There's no question that the creativity gene
gets depleted from generation to generation of agency life. As we move on to
a generation of managers taking over from entrepreneurs, the values that
helped build those agencies are being replaced by other values. And maybe
that's why more and more clients turn to media agencies, newly minted and
unbundled, as well as digital agencies for strategic thinking and
creativity. In media and digital a first generation of an inspirational and
highly entrepreneurial management is still personally involved in the
client's business.

Clients also have much to do with the fact that there is less creativity.
Clients today are not as willing to buy a risky idea without researching it
to death and watering it down. Maybe this reluctance to stick their neck out
has something to do with the fact that CMOs get guillotined, often unfairly,
at an average of 22 months. Or maybe it has something to do with the
evolution of marketing from an art, where people were willing to make
decisions based on judgment, to faux science, where procurement officers are
part of the marketing apparatus and "accountability and ROI" are more
important than "out-of-the-box thinking."

Whatever the reason, clients look at the work differently today. Bill
Bernbach once said, "Every client gets what they deserve." Today's clients
certainly get something different from what they used to get a generation
ago.

A generation ago, copywriters and art directors like Keith Reinhard, Allen
Rosenshine, Alex Kroll, Rick Fizdale and Jay Chiat led many prominent
agencies. Today, none of the top leadership of the major networks comes from
the creative ranks. Perhaps it's a function of the changing nature of
agencies and the business where size and complexity favors professional
managers over the people who are in charge of the creative product. Whatever
the reason, agencies today are different and the business is different.