Think like an entrepreneur not Mad Men/Women
As Cannes Lions are handed out this week, Ash Ringrose from Soap – Linked by Isobar, asks the industry: why are we more focused on boosting our egos than the bottom line?
The recent coverage of all the scam work coming out just in time for Cannes begs the question: why aren’t agency heads angry at the wasted potential and more focused on ideas that make their agency rich, rather than famous?
I think we should invest those valuable hours in creating the next billion dollar company like AirBNB not the next Smart Thong that tells you when the surf is good.
Awards have their value but that value to an agency and its staff is limited. After a few months, everyone has forgotten and you find yourself chasing the next award for that high. Maybe awards are used to attract talent to the agency? But that talent wants to win more awards. It’s a vicious cycle.
Nice article.
It is a problem that is more complex than it seems.
First, allow me to state that I am not a supporter of scam work in any way. It’s a disease of this industry.
Secondly, I’m not a supporter of awards anymore either. They have lost their way. Quite often, work that is awarded, although not ‘scam’, appeals to nobody but a target market like an awards jury.
However, the problem lies within the first sentence of this article: “why aren’t agency heads angry at the wasted potential and more focused on ideas that make their agency rich, rather than famous?”
Put yourself in a creative’s shoes. They already work an amazing amount of unpaid overtime – late nights and weekends, often week after week. Why would they want to work on an idea that makes the agency richer – they’re already being exploited.
‘But they’re doing lots of time for award-orientated work anyway’, I hear you say. And here’s the issue: that is what is going to earn them a pay-rise, possible promotion, or job offer from another agency.
I did plenty of effective, yet non-award-worthy work that went mostly unnoticed by my former bosses. It certainly went unnoticed on my salary.
However, with lions and pencils, I received some very generous increases.
As long as this industry continues to exploit its employees, and financially reward awards, the mess we have now will remain.
On the other hand, if agency’s value their employees properly and refuse to run on a business model that relies on exploitation, things may change.
And of course, one has to ask the question, ‘if you’re a business who makes things, are you still actually an ad agency?’ Perhaps you might call yourself a client who just happens to derive from an agency background and now has an in-house ad team?