Has "Digital/Social" Become the Dollar Menu of the Advertising World?

In the ad agency world where digitalsocial advertising is growing and cannibalizing traditional media dollars and quotdigital is the futurequot arguments prevail agencies have jumped on the digitalsocial bandwagonamp160and they are cranking out digitalsocial deliverables at an astonishing rate for astonishingly low fees amp160Has digitalsocial become the Dollar Menu of the advertising worldThe changes in industry scopes of work over the decades is staggering amp160Back in 1992 when I completed my first ad agency office diagnostic my client completed 385 briefs with 52 creatives 75 client service folks and about 30 production people amp160The work was 100 abovetheline TV print and radio amp160Nearly all the work was quotoriginationquot or original creative work rather than quotadaptationsquot based on previously completed originations amp160The average deliverable was worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars in incomeEach creative completed on average 74 deliverables across the mix of media amp160Hmmm I thought at the time amp160That39s more than David Ogilvy wrote about in Ogilvy on Advertising 1983 where he said quotThe average copywriter gets only three commercials a year on airquot amp160Ogilvy complained about how long it took to do creative work amp160quotThe process of producing advertising campaigns moves at a snail39s pacequot he grumbled amp160quotThe average time it takes them to produce a campaign is 117 daysquot amp160That39s because there was a lot of thinking there were a lot of ideas being developed by multiple creative teamsamp160and there was a lot of rework to get the ad exactly right amp160BBDO called this quotthe work the work the workquot and they were proud of the process to whittle down creative ideas and turn the best ones into awardwinning adsLet39s fastforward to 2018 where I recently diagnosed an ad agency office of similar size amp160The office came from the same quottraditional advertisingquot background but like most traditional agencies it had diversified into digitalsocial advertising amp160It had about the same headcount as my original client with 52 creatives 52 client service folks eightamp160strategic planners and 18 production people amp160Note the lower proportion of client service and production people in this mix amp160There39s a story behind this but not for todayInstead of 385 deliverables though this office completed 14750 deliverables in 2017 amp160Do the math amp160That39s 284 deliverables per creative per year or roughly one per day for every working day of the yearIs this a good thing or a bad thing amp160One thing is sure each deliverable today is tiny compared to the deliverables of 1992 amp160The average creative is grinding out huge quantities of tactical print social and digital deliverables amp160There39s not a lot of time for thinking or strategizing everyone is busy executing amp160Strategic thinking is completed by only a few thinkers in the office and the total amount of agency time spent in strategizing is small indeed amp160The agency executes adaptations of locally generated originations amp160Sixtytwo percent of the deliverables are adaptations of low creative complexity amp160Fiftytwo percent of the office39s income is associated with adaptations amp160The average deliverable if sold by the piece would generate only 600 in incomeIf creatives were French chefs during the commission days they39re more like burgerflippers todayThis is not their fault Clients are experimenting with digitalsocial in a quest to find something that works amp160They do much of the strategizing themselves and they ask their quotbest in classquot agencies to execute not strategize amp160Their agencies will take whatever crumbs are offered amp160Fees are in short supply and relationships are short and uncertainMuch of this current work could be done arguably by production houses or even client inhouse agencies but not without reducing the office by at least 50 in size including headcounts and overheads amp160What would be left amp160Clearly the office will cling to the work it has and try to move quotupstreamquot to carry out more strategic work for its clients amp160This won39t happen though until senior executives make a commitment to move the mix quotupstreamquotIt39s a terrible situation and if David Ogilvy were alive to see it he39d stop complaining about how long it takes to get creative work done amp160He was enough of a snob to appreciate a good French meal and a fine glass of claret and he wouldn39t have bought a burger from a Dollar Menu if his life depended on itCartoon credit Mischa Richter The New Yorker The Cartoon Bank With permissionClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Has "Digital/Social" Become the Dollar Menu of the Advertising World?

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Michael Farmer

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Has "Digital/Social" Become the Dollar Menu of the Advertising World?

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