Best of the Week: Why agencies can’t tell clients what they do
Welcome to Unmade, mostly written on Friday at beautiful Sisters Beach, Tasmania.
Happy Darwin Day. Here’s hoping that believers in evolutionary biology don’t suffer any persecution at the hands of Christians while celebrating the great naturalist’s 213th birthday. Maybe we should pass some sort of science freedom law, just in case.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Led Zeppelin IV, via Triple M Classic Rock. Playing it from vinyl (and on somewhat scratched vinyl at that) is a counterintuitive choice for a digital station played via smart speaker, but it works for me. I miss crackles.
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Good read Tim. As one of those breaking away from the shackles of this homogenise thinking, our offering from the land of Milk and Honey United is simple and clear. Alway Fresh, Always Sticky. 🥛➕🐝
Thanks for the kind words, Andy. And I reckon that one would have made the top ten!
Cheers,
Tim – Unmade
And look at this… I CAN COMMENT HERE! what an amazing feature. Wish mUmBRELLA had it like this.
Tim – thanks, interesting article and echoes some of my own thoughts about agency differentiation, especially in the media sector. But – er, I might be going mad but you said that Omnicom had they’d left DDB out of reporting? They haven’t – the DDB logo is in there, next to PHD. Or am I misunderstanding you?
Indies as artisans is lovely thought thanks Tim. I like to think of the media agency landscape against a restaurant analogy. The kitchen as the buyers and front of house as the client service etc. And in this regard the indies are the paddock to plate option. Love and care in every step.
An excellent piece Tim. The other major independent I would have included (without a hint of bias) is HERO.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve integrated the national creative business we acquired from McCann with a number of independent acquisitions and key hires across media, technology, PR and consulting.
We’ve now built a national HERO business that brings together creative, media and technology as a single national offering, under the banner of Borderless Creativity.
Thanks for adding that one to the mix, Ben. Hopefully we can chat soon.
Cheers,
Tim – Unmade
Hi Tim, the ‘big’ agency you missed was TBWA. ‘The Disruption Company’ – our positioning and strategic methodology for the last 25 years. Cheers Paul B
Drat. I really should have included that one! I have fond memories of interviewing a very charming Jean-Marie Dru about the disruption proposition about 15 years ago.
Cheers,
Tim – Unmade
Tim, the simple answer here is that advertising wasn’t something that was a commodity many years ago because it wasn’t a globalised industry. Sorrell turned a cottage community of businesses into an industry. Everyone forgets that point.
From there; it’s become commoditised and quite process driven. The knowledge to make good ads is largely distributed.
Differentiation now isn’t going to be found in ad agencies, but in businesses adjacent to them (e.g people making new models of advertising – Huge @ IPG is a good example of this in holdcos), adjacent ideas (e.g the BrandTech group, us) or people applying advertising thinking to actual product innovation (e.g Eucalyptus).
It’s like expecting differentiation to exist in the people who produce bottle caps, really.
Thanks for the comment, Henry.
I was hoping you might chime in.
I would have talked about Mutiny as an agency which indeed has a new model… except you of course prefer (rightly) not to be seen as an agency at all, but instead one of thse adjacent businesses.
Interesting example with Huge, particularly with Mat Baxter at the helm. I really must update myself on how they’re traveling.
Cheers,
Tim – Unmade
If you’d like to chat about the software paradigm and which parts of agencies are going to be changed by it, always up for a convo Tim!
I’m in Melbourne this coming week. Let’s (as they say) take this offline!