Have we already reached the bottom of the well on price?
Amid debate around elements of the client agency relationship, Ebiquity’s Eric Faulkner asks if both clients and agencies have both unwittingly conspired to destroy each other.
Earlier this week Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen, writing as a ‘hypothetical’ CMO, wrote what many in the industry had long been thinking on the topic of agency pitches.
“For anyone wondering about the race to the bottom, in this market, I reckon you hit it about three years ago. Not that anyone seemed to notice,” his ‘hypothetical CMO’ wrote.
It’s rather like the climate argument — if you’re going to wait until we’re all under water, well, its a bit too late then, isn’t it.
The mistake of assuming that one has reached the bottom of the well, is linked to the ability of some, to drill further into the earth and find more water.
There is a generation worried about climate change, but that generation is sharing the planet and the workplace with one that developed throughout the cold war, the threat of bombs, and the indoctrination of “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
Yes we could wait until we are covered in sea water, but what if the sea recedes and we find we have more land to exploit?
The truth I see is in the comment [quote] “what happened to the old fashioned concept of integrity?” [unquote]
Perhaps the biggest deception of all, this “integrity” was most likely never there in the first place. Business ethics and integrity are things that suited men used to talk about over golf or cocktails when the rest of the world was slogging its guts out in offices and factories all over the land.
It went nicely with the “right schools,” and “a good education,” and (so called) “right thinking.”
For all our imaginings, cheats often prosper, the early bird doesn’t always catch the worm, the fox doesn’t always outsmart the rabbit, and the hare usually beats the tortoise by a huge distance of space and time.