R/GA founder Bob Greenberg predicts the death of the ‘metaphorical’ 30 second TV ad
It is wrong to assume that digital agencies cannot do good storytelling whilst the 30 second “metaphorical” TV ads are also set to die out, Bob Greenberg the founder of R/GA told audiences at ADMA’s Creative Fuel conference this morning.
Greenberg kicked off day one of the ADMA conference with an address in which he stepped audiences through the agency’s development since it was founded in 1977 and how it has come to its positioning as the agency for the connected age, evolving its most recent positioning of “agency for the digital age”.
“People think sometimes that digital agencies can’t do good story telling, I think they’re wrong about that. I started seeing it when I was the president of the jury at Cannes, not this year the year before, a lot of the work coming out of digital agencies is really strong story telling,” he said.
Greenberg was commenting on what he sees as a “cultural shift” in the industry which is seeing brands, and agencies, surrounding consumers with products and services.
It is this “functional integration” model, the likes of which Apple, Amazon and Google use, which R/GA is adopting for its own.
“It’s where you take a consumer and surround them by products and services and we think that this is the new world that we’re in and something that R/GA is focusing its future business on,” he said.
“Apple is organised by this way, they surround a consumer with all sorts of products and services and they do it in a way that’s simple and integrated so you buy more things from a single company.”
He highlighted this through a number of campaigns R/GA has worked on for high profile clients including Nike and Beats.
“Nike is one of our clients and we did a similar thing for them, creating all these products and services that surround their consumer. They’re moving to really focus on Nike+ which is something we’ve connected consumers with,” he said.
“We think that 30 second spots, the metaphorical ones particularly will be largely eliminated over time.”
“I’m never quite right on the timing,” he quipped. “I said the same thing on the death of film and it took a while but it did happen. And it’s going to move forward to something we call stories and systems.”
Greenberg showed a case-study of a campaign for Nike skateboarding, to promote the Nike SB App, as an example of this.
“Our mission has moved from original moving pictures by design which was our message back then to agency for the digital age and now agency for the digital age is changing to a combination of digital and physical and R/GA for the connected age,” he continued.
“The key to it is no longer a big idea but what we’re calling a whole idea. It’s a combination of the thinking that comes from the top down connected to a piece that’s more utilitarian that goes from the bottom up and when the story comes together we have what we consider is a whole idea.”
Beats is an example of this, Greenberg said, citing the Richard Sherman campaign around the Super Bowl, which used social media to inform the phases of the campaign.
“What we’re doing is flipping the model from having an agency that’s set up to do TV advertising and then interactive, mobile and social to be really the flip of that and being informed by the mobile, internet and social to come up with new types of TV work,” Greenberg said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HESJgpYYUyM
On the future of the industry, Greenberg said: “What we see is this cultural shift to where things come from ideas that come from bottom up and top down. We see a change with what’s happening with accelerators and kick starters where you move very quickly rather than taking a very long time to develop a campaign.
“The connected devices are going to become more prevalent, that’s the campaign we’re working on at the moment for Beats, which we’re shooting around the world.”
Miranda Ward
Linkedin
What a bunch of hysterically hilarious twaddle! Should be read aloud at a comedy festival, preferably by a po-faced Russell Crowe in his most serious delivery. I love it!
Especially ‘It is wrong to assume that digital agencies cannot do good storytelling whilst the 30 second “metaphorical” TV ads are also set to die out! ‘
And just when I thought my ribs were going to crack: ‘What we see is this cultural shift to where things come from ideas that come from bottom up and top down!’
Next, still howling with laughter I see: ‘The connected devices are going to become more prevalent.’
Where do they get this stuff?
What about ‘Let’s run the right commercials in the right places at the right times to the right people and hopefully sell something to somebody???
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One of the most overrated, unchallenged opinions out there.
Bob has trotted around the globe telling the same story for many years now. It’s tired, to say the least.
RGA is an agency largely centred around one client – Nike, and somehow this is meant to inform everything in the digital space? You would think not.
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It’s similar to when agency people talk about being hyper targeted and using geo fences etc…what codswallop.
This is the basic hygiene of our job to make ads which people take notice of and place all our activity in the right media channel at the right time…
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Sadly there wasn’t much else to be inspired by today. The conference hit a real low point with MTV talking about how they put cameras inside balls and threw them out onto crowds at festivals. This talked was underpinned with words of wisdom such as ‘know your audience’, ‘know your brand’ and ‘be authentic’. The m and ms on each table were a highlight though.
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Agree with @Frustrated Conference Goer
Unfortunately, my Creative Fuel highlight was the pre promotion video, which I watched 6 weeks before and didn’t have to pay for.
Not much fun when travelling from interstate for it.
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Agreed – it did take a bit of a dive after Bob. There seemed to be a lack of a theme or thread and on reflection the day was really an expensive curation of YouTube videos.
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So glad to see there were other disappointed creative fuel attendees out there. I was wondering if I was missing something. Speakers lacked energy, inspiration and direction. Almost got up and left when the MC (who had to be one of the most uninspiring people Ive ever heard speak) referred to the MTV activation as a “game changer”.
Walked away feeling more uninspired then when I arrived. Not great.
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Inevitably, I think if we all just get together, follow ‘the process’, really trust ‘the process’ and focus on the whole idea and not just the big idea, and then look at the end result then inevitably it will change the game…inevitably…everyone will have opinions but as long as you love your work, then inevitably the end result will be authentic – which means a different thing to you as it does to me…
At least that was my takeout from most of the speakers…
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