If your agency makes fast, low-cost ads, especially as requested, I’m sorry to say that it is just another commodity . An undifferentiated, low value-added product is in the uncomfortable position of being easily substituted. In our case, by any free-lance or workshop, if what the client is looking for from us is simply a cheap ad for yesterday, because such an ad can be made by anyone.
The “commoditization” of products and services is visible in practically all existing categories, and advertising has not escaped this condition. For this reason, the advertising companies of the past are obliged to evolve, or we will see them self-condemned to their disappearance, as can already be seen in many large firms in rapid deterioration and visibly collapsed, to my way of understanding and comprehending through this subjective x-ray of our activity.
However, among many others, it is important to highlight one condition that does not seem to be in danger: the power of television, or in other words, of sound, movement and vision (sisomo) on a screen. Contrary to the variant experience of radio or print, film, video, magazine or direct marketing, television will continue to grow and will remain the most important medium for many years to come. We will have more channels every day, yet people will continue to live among their 3 to 5 favorite channels. The others will not be important. Television will reach many screens and will not cease to be a powerful way to achieve attraction to our brands.
In such a context and exposed in an almost irresponsible synthesis, advertising agencies will continue to face the challenge of seducing, attracting and impacting with their creativity through television. In fact, from content to interruption, from the unconventional to the current 30-second commercial, from entire movies made into commercials (remarkable FEDEX) to subtle or not so subtle insertions (the devil wears Prada?), television only anticipates evolution and strengthening in its condition as a media, even if it comes to give a different name to its presence on the Internet, cell phones, PDAs and other screens.
Thus, advertising agencies will have to find their own way to move away from that commodity condition in which many have fallen, and very possibly, they will continue the trend of multiple avenues and different proposals. We will see them evolving into a sort of “department store” or focusing on boutique variants, we will see them integrating services or mutating into new ways of doing what we do best: the ultimate connection.
Indeed, we are the ultimate connectors, the ones who have to make eye contact between brands and people in order for them to establish a relationship. Some brands will trigger relationships akin to an arranged marriage, others to love at first sight, others to best friends, and there will be no shortage of those that will be like a one-night stand. However, to add in the midst of today’s varied typing, all brands will be looking for a lifelong relationship, because loyalty is a key ingredient for the sustainability of any business.
For these kinds of simple reasons, as companies, businesses, agencies, advertising agencies, whatever we want to call them, we have to do everything we can to stimulate creativity, supported by formulas, theories, philosophies, research, consumer insights , whatever is solidly strategic, to reach the increasingly elusive shopper. We are the ones who will have to give our advertising clients what they never imagined possible, before someone else comes along and delivers it to them. It is we who are called upon to create value appreciated and sought after by our clients, or we will be just another victim of commoditization .
In an integrated and intelligent attack to give sustainability to our own advertising business, we cannot omit the essence of our activity, the ideas to build powerful brands , and the importance of generating them in the context of organization, system, structure, competitiveness and very desirable, high rates of profitability.
In short, agencies will have to continue their reinvention, and each one will do it in its own way, brands will continue to seek to inspire loyalty beyond reason (lovemarks), television will remain the protagonist, people will not stop desiring and aspiring, and we, creatives and advertisers, will continue to live on ideas and creativity to build emotionally connected brands, in full capacity to seduce and attract, but most especially, to inspire emotional connections for a lifetime.