I have a dear friend and colleague, companion of dreams and illusions, sincere creative, talented generator of ideas and proven maker of commercial creativity, admirer of Lovemarks and charismatic musician, among other virtues: Arete.
He opened his creative workshop and launched himself after his most intimate desire: to make the best and most creative advertising. It seems that he got tired of the advertising agency structure and opted for the free, independent, unrestricted, open and unstructured way. Her place is inspiring, innocent and certainly full of desire. For Arete, Monica and their creative aquacatosos, I have nothing but my sincere wishes for the best in their business venture.
For those they hire, I have a different opinion. An advertising agency that publicly acknowledges that it is forced to “outsource” ideas is an agency that condemns itself to the public recognition that this implies: it is not creative. And therefore, it must resort to external resources for its main campaigns. We have had to turn to outside help, but it has always been in the context of an emergency, an unusual peak or a passing circumstance, which I consider barely acceptable.
Cases like that of my dear friends, Comunicación Corporativa, are different. They are a public relations agency and do not promise or suggest advertising creativity, and for this reason, they have to resort to this new formula proposed by Aguacate, after winning the Banco Nacional campaign.
However, there are some issues to review: confidentiality, exclusivity, depth and knowledge of the business, scopes and extremes, among others. Loyalty is not the basis of the business of a workshop or a free-lance, and for this reason, the commitment that advertising agencies make is a value that we can always highlight. The workshop or the free-lance does today a campaign for bank X, tomorrow for bank Y, today they can be in a project for cars B, while they are working on cars C. This is normal for their business.
On the contrary, agencies should strive to have the best and most daring creative talent. No other source of ideas should be as powerful as the creative advertising agency, the one that adds knowledge and understanding of the hidden truths in the consumer, the one that delivers planning and translation of strategy into winning ideas, the one that is consistent, the one that solves in good times and bad, the one that commits and gives its life for the client’s brand. And this commitment is shared by many agencies.
The good thing is that now it is easy to identify which ones are not equally committed.