Back in the Box - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

A quick, random review of mission statements found on agency websites leads me to an alarming but inescapable conclusion: The only place to find innovative thinking nowadays in back inside the box where one is – at least if the agency mission statements are any indication – less likely to encounter the legions of obsequious outside-the-box thinkers who preach ad nauseum how they're "client-centric" and "ROI-obsessed".

Granted, the agency industry has always been exceptionally risk-averse (a euphemism for spineless), even when notorious rogue personalities like Hal Riney, George Lois, Jay Chiat, Jerry Delafamina, Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy ruled the roosts. And it's not for nothing that all of the above rogues argued the efficacy of creative magic over an obsession with measurement, because that's the eternal (though recently orphaned) truth of advertising: advertising works not because of but in spite of the media. Indeed, there seems to be an obvious inverse relationship between measurement and performance: the more we measure the media and the more media we measure, the less well advertising performs.

Nowadays, however, the rogue personalities are all but gone for good, in part because they either got bought out or died, and in part because large brand advertisers care more about media ubiquity than creative – what happens over time once you begin to view your advertising as an extension of MBA-driven procurement. The result: everyone sings the same ROI-obsessed, client-centric tune.

We should note that the rogue personalities of advertising did on behalf of their agencies (and retirement packages) what advertising does best: They sold the intangibles, the emotive components that resist measurement and invoke the human heart and soul. The rogues knew – contrary to most of their peers – that their advertiser clients are invariably wrong, so they frequently billed for the requisite time to tell them so in no uncertain terms. Back then we called it setting realistic client expectations.

Nowadays, however, there are no more client expectations because there are no more rogue personalities to set them. Instead, we encounter the exact opposite: realistic agency expectations set not by the agency, but by the client. Realistic agency expectations are predicated on the agency's response to two basic client questions: a) can you handle my volume, and b) how much faster can you drop your pants and bend over the next time we meet?

Not long ago I spoke with the owner of a small creative digital design shop with aspirations to move from project-based tactical engagements into larger, retainer-based strategic engagements. His online mission statement – like every other agency's online mission statement – describes his agency's passion for advertising that performs (his variation on the digital ROI-obsessed virus that has so thoroughly infected and despoiled all marketing and advertising in recent years). So I asked him: "How much of your new business relies on your reputation for advertising that performs?"

He thought to himself for a few seconds, then looked at me and said, "None. Not a single dollar."

"Of course not," I said. But why is that? And why – with all of the self-professed obsession with ROI and outside-the-box thinking – does media performance continue to erode? It's because the big brand advertisers – the deep-pocket guys who can truly afford to gorge themselves on inventory and sweat the ROI details – are the very guys who care least about actual performance. They and their big agency proxies may talk the ROI talk, but they simply don't walk their own talk. They simply don't buy performance nowadays; they know better. So they buy ubiquity and the ability to manage it instead. They buy ubiquity precisely because the myth of media performance is now so transparently inane and so utterly exposed – especially for any advertiser who delivers hundreds of millions of daily impressions. The only reason why P&G now delivers two billion daily ad impressions is because the first 1,999,999,999 no longer get the job done. Quite contrary to what any reasonable obsession with ROI might suggest, the big advertisers buy ubiquity in the presumed absence of actual performance.

Yet our obsession with ROI – like Laerte's sword – continues unabated and envenomed, and it accelerates in direct proportion to bandwidth growth. Its poison has all but paralyzed the creative nervous system of the agency industry, so much so that the agencies – suffocating in their own inertia – can no longer even distinguish their own brands, let alone those of their clients. Go ahead, ask your agency what distinguishes them from their competitors. Just be prepared for a barrage of outside-the-box thinking.

About Jeff Einstein

Digital media pioneer Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a contrarian brand strategy and communications boutique. The Brothers Einstein have just announced the release of their Just BE Workshop,a full-day, hands-on seminar designed to help senior marketing executives lower the barriers to innovation and restore common sense to its rightful place atop the hierarchy of modern management tools.

Read all the Einstein Brothers' MediaBizBloggers commentaries at the Brothers Einstein - MediaBizBloggers.

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