Behind all the Polished Facades of Madison Ave

Behind all the polished facades of Madison Ave and, well, I don’t know about you, but to me the embarrassing lobbies of Soho ad agencies, all trying just that little bit too hard … behind these facades, you’ll find a lot of…. fearsomely dull men in grey suits. Financiers, accountants, lawyers, corporate flat tires.

Sorry. But it’s true. Unsaid maybe. But painfully obvious to anyone who’s been there. Maybe you are one of them. And I have nothing at all personal against any of these men. Many are my good friends. But what a very different breed from the rebels and entrepreneurs who used to run the agency world — who shaped it.

“The agency business became an assembly line as predictable as Henry Ford’s.”

I wonder what happened to their spirit of rebellion and invention. David Ogilvy, Lester Wunderman, Leo Burnett, all these pioneers were idea guys. Creators. Not business managers. For them the business of creativity was far too important to be left to the managers. Or to creative departments for that matter. We’ve ended up impersonating these mad men, aping their behavior, managing their model, aspiring to their dress sense maybe but not inspired by their mindset to subvert and invent all over again. Rebellion and ambition have been reduced to start-ups planning how to get bought. Agencies love challenging clients to transform their industries.

Maybe it’s time we drank the Kool-Aid, not just advertised it. After all, everything else in our media and marketing landscape has changed! More channels, more formats, more platforms, more devices, more niches, more data, more noise… …and in fairness more and more agencies too, with more new approaches, more mergers, more acquisitions, which means even more men in grey suits. And more awards, of course, don’t forget those. Lots of new award categories. Always added, mind you. Never deleted. We never ever delete an award category….

And that’s the problem. How convenient. How comfortable. How… unchanging this all is. Adding & adding more & more changes. More and more noise, cost, and confusion for clients. But never changing the agency model itself or the fundamental approach of agencies, all agencies, whatever the type, whichever holding company, whatever the question or opportunity to be tackled. What happened to change that’s truly rebellious? That’s more than just added? That’s simple & obvious? That changes the status quo? Doesn’t just prop it up. At a certain point change can’t be just something you go on adding to what you do already for clients. Surely change transforms what you do and how you do it. It pivots everything to something new.

We don’t need to add change or push a new marketing approach. We need to reinvent the agency model itself, freeing the entire approach to transformative ideas and client opportunities.

It going to take radical changes in how an agency makes money to unlock far-reaching changes in how it shapes, buys and orchestrates new marketing for clients in the future.