Mumbrellacast: Jabba on Housos; Who’s Who in Australia; Goldfishgate; YouthFAIL; Google’s most searched ads; And now for the Bullshit

Pity that the titans of the creation of the Internet, people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, are too old to ‘get the Internet’.

And I loved Vint’s comment at one Google conference when challenged that he was ‘too old to get it’ (clearly the young ‘un didn’t know his pedigree) listed his generation’s achievements and then politely pointed out that ‘in our spare time we put a man on the moon – get back to me when you have’.

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Great Podcast by the way that really demonstrates why Mumbrella has come such a long way in 3 short years.

The comments around BM’s bright young things really cut to the chase scene:

“Bunch of people running around and bouncing off walls in a fearless way”

“Bits of inspiration that felt like high school projects”

“If you are the client do you want to be paying to educate people or do you want to pay for experience and people who already know their stuff”

Are clients in the business of risking all too scarce marketing funds for untrained, inexperienced people to bounce off walls albeit fearlessly to produce high school projects in the hope of finding some yet undiscovered gems of marketing ideas?

Risk and daring is not restricted to those who know little but it is accompanied with a knowledge of what has been relatively successful along with total failures and the responsibility to deliver a result for a client’s investment.

Taking clients out to the edge and unveiling new thinking is not restricted to those still recovering from the hangover of their 21st birthday.

This is reflected in many other industries. If we choose to look in the mirror for a while we may feel incredibly embarassed with the industry’s willingness to embrace recklessness in the search for the next big idea that will be quickly forgotten.

If you require urgent heart surgery do you ask for a young med student who might have a new idea that could just make it a whole lot easier?

The ATO is breathing down your neck. Do you ask your accountant to provide his newly appointed graduate to come up with a few ideas as to how to solve the problem?

Your architect runs into problems with council approval with his new design. Do you request the newly appointed graduate to solve the issue?

Is it any wonder that our industry is sometimes viewed with a degree of stifled smirks and muffled laughter wrapped in total disrespect for our lack of accountability in spending our clients restricted budgets in tough times?

And why do we continue to bitch about the continual pitch mentallity of clients who clearly have had a gutful and are looking for agencies that will deliver on their promises.

There is room for great ideas from all levels of experience. But there is no room at all for recklessness and irresponsibility.

Isn’t it about time that the letters ROI stood for more than Reckless Oblivious Irresponsibility?

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Tony to have a balanced discussion on age you need to start comparing apples with apples. Comparing advertising with heart surgery and architecture is embarrassing for our industry and disrespectful to medical practitioners and architects.

Advertising/marketing is relatively low risk to a business so you can be more risky with what you do with a brand, Look at what Alan Joyce dd at Qantas recently and destroyed all brand equity yet their planes are still flying and will probably make a profit in that period.

The reason there is so many young people working on accounts is all down to commercials, the industry has bent over to clients and agreed commercial agreements that can only be remotely profitable by servicing the accounts with young staff. I am no spring chicken myself and believe a balance between youth and experience is the best blend to leverage the benefits of experience combined with the energy and drive of younger staff but the reality is agencies have to make money and the only way that can currently happen is by employing young and cheap staff.

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Hi Fraser.

There was a degree of irony in using the anology rather than a direct comparison
of a heart surgeon and an archtiect.

I remember at the end of a long and stressful week my son was running a huge temperature and we sat in the emergency ward of a hospital as they battled to get his fever under control. At the same time two kids had been burnt from scalding hot water falling on them and doctors and nurses calmed down both the children screaming in pain and the screaming parents who were even louder. My efforts to sell a few more seats on planes for a client seemed kind of ridiculous compared to the daily task of a doctor.

The irony is that many of us are paid better than the ER doctor and the architect.
Neither profession woulde allow their juniors to be seen as the solution as a result of tight budgets and margins.

When your hot water system blows up do you want the apprentice to turn up in place of the experienced plumber who has never done it before but you feel better about it as his boss would be more expensive.

Your car grinds to a halt and it could potentially cost you a lot of money so you defer to the apprentice motor mechanic to diagnose and fix your car. After all he’s cheaper than his boss who through experience may spot a simple problem that can be fixed easily, where as inexperience could be seriously expensive.

Fortunately I really do believe we can make a difference to client’s businesses and their bottom line. I agree that agencies have dumbed down their offering in response to financial pressured but bending over and believing this is beneficial to clients and the longer term sustainability of the industry seems to lack intestinal fortitude and is more than blurred in its short sightedness.

Offering mainly young and cheap labour as an excuse for financial pressure is not an answer for the emergency ward, architect, plumber, mechanic or dare I say it, agency.

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