When Will Ad Agencies Make a Heel Turn?

alexanderbasek
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

First, some personal news: I am a Yankees fan. Yes, yes, I know. Though the righteous anger of Patriots fans obscured it of late, for much of the late 90s and early 00’s, the Yankees were the “Evil Empire,” which no lover of the underdog could ever support. Yankees fans, for their part, embraced this role better than any other fandom in sports. This is not to say that Yankees fans are the best fans in any sport, but rather, they are the most comfortable with being hated, and that is both commendable and good for baseball. As recent shows like GLOW remind us, we need villains, especially in sports. We need heels.

In wrestling, the heel turn is when the face (good guy) turns bad. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean smacking someone with a folding chair. For the Yankees of recent vintage, their heel turn happened around 1998. The team in ’96 was likeable, with a young core and journeymen players to round out the roster. By 1998, the team was no longer scrappy, it was a juggernaut. Many franchises struggle with this switch. Being disliked is hard and not for everyone! Yankees fans, for their part, embraced the dislike. The team made the heel turn and leaned into their talent unapologetically, and the fans followed suit. I’m comfortable with the fact that, even now, the Yankees are hated. When they sign Bryce Harper, it will be even worse… but Bryce Harper! The Yankees get their player, the rest of the league gets to hate us and tune in to root against us, and there you go.

“Has he ever looked any more regal to you, Jesse?”

No one believes the good guy act in ad land anymore. I say, it’s time for ad agencies to make a heel turn. Wouldn’t it feel better to be bad?

The current mania at ad agencies is to swear up and down just how much good ad agencies are doing. That is not to say that they are doing good: the hours inside agencies are spent on how-do-we-spin-how-white-it-is-here, rather than, you know, putting any actual people of color in real positions of authority, or searching for candidates outside a very narrow slice of job applicants. Agencies are putting women in senior roles, but even there, the progress is incremental. Places where women run the show are cognizant of the need to hire more women, but overall, it’s demographics that help their cause most. When more women graduate college than men in general, even ad agencies can be duped into doing the right thing. Eventually.

At the root of this glacial change is, on the agency side, fear of being disliked. Instead of taking pride in doing a good job selling a product for a client, it has to be part of a world-changing idea. This is so, so stupid. The client wants you to sell their product and make them look good to their bosses, in some combination, depending on the client. They do not want your do-good, world-changing anything. No one in the ad world believes you. They think it’s ineffective and also bullshit.

On the flipside, this fear also stops minorities from getting hired at many agencies. Inside the agency lizard brain is such a huge fear of failure and being disliked that they would rather hire an all-white crew of 24-year-olds than risk upsetting a client with a person in a pitch meeting who looks or sounds different. Great, except now all your ideas will be pablum, because all your employees come from the same background. The fear of dislike causes the work and the agency to both suffer.

Which brings me to a fantastic interview last week with Errol Morris. Morris is one of the great documentary filmmakers of our time; for the Fog of War and Thin Blue Line alone, he’s cemented his place in history. He’s also a great ad man. Morris is responsible for directing iconic ads, the Miller High Life campaign, Taco Bell’s Ronald McDonald campaign and Apple’s Switch campaign among them. Because he is not a bullshit artist, here’s what he has to say about making ads:

My feeling is that whatever I’ve done, it’s always been in service of the client, and the agency, of trying to get an idea of what they’re trying to convey, what the brand idea is, and trying to execute it to the best of my ability. To make it work. Often, doing that is not slavishly following a set of boards but thinking, “How can I make this work?” Commercials, after all, are designed to achieve some end. And that end is to get people to buy stuff.

“You get to assemble a group of people named Ronald McDonald and have them extol the virtues of Taco Bell. It’s really funny!”

So, let’s start at ad agencies by being honest. As a creative, it’s ok to sell stuff, or work in the service of selling stuff. You can make art. You can support your art. You can hire interesting people and do interesting things. This isn’t about millennials searching for a higher meaning in their work. This is about accepting what we do, both as creatives and as businesspeople. The @RGA Twitter feed works because (beyond being well-written and smart) it’s authentic. It talks about the business of advertising more than any other agency on social media, which is to say, they do it at all.

After all, what is the purpose of the agency when they get in the ring? To win. Ad agencies shouldn’t be afraid to wear a feather boa and kiss their biceps from time to time. Not everyone will like it, but not everyone has to. Being the bad guy means you get to tell the truth. That’s what makes bad guys effective and a little bit scary.

Being the heel should come more naturally to agencies than it does. We help sell stuff. Don’t pretend otherwise. Embrace it, and focus on the best creative and strategy to do it, not the safest or the most likeable. Along the way, just like in wrestling, you can sneak in new, more diverse faces and interesting ideas in the process. It’s a lot more meaningful than adding a slide about diversity at the beginning of the deck. Clients, brands and agencies win, and we can all stop pretending we’re saving the world in the process.

Written by

Freelance Creative Director and Copywriter

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