The New Agency (Isn't an Agency at All)
Kingdom of Heaven, the 2005 Ridley Scott film, is a mess. Plotlines go nowhere, character motivations are never realized, and its pacing becomes clunky. As is typical of a Ridley Scott film, the cinematography and visuals are breathtaking, but the final product falls into the style over substance camp. But the Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut is nothing short of a masterpiece. Adding 45 minutes of footage, this version of the film becomes a thing of beauty. Subplots are added in, characters become fully realized, and the gravity of actions becomes weightier.
20th Century Fox forced Scott to trim his film after fearing how a 189-minute movie fare in the market, and taking a knee-jerk reaction after initial audience reactions were mixed. This watered-down "theatrical cut" was released and bombed at the US and Canadian box offices and received unfavorable reviews from critics. The director's cut, released a few months later in one theater and then on DVD, was reviewed to overwhelmingly positive reviews and is considered not just the most substantial director's cut of all time, but an epic on par with those created by David Lean.
Looking back on the failure of Kingdom of Heaven's theatrical cut and the decision by the studio to release it due to initial preview feedback, Scott said this to STV in 2008, "It depends who's in the driving seat. If you've got a lunatic doing my job, then you need to preview. But a good director should be experienced enough to judge what he thinks is the correct version to go out into the cinema."
In other words, trust those who create, trust the artist, and know that the original vision - while not immediately apparent - is often better received than a concept distilled to a shadow of its former self.
Introduction
A few years ago, I wrote a missive called "Death & Advertising." In it, I critiqued the current state of advertising and pointed blame at its lack of creativity to clients who wanted safe campaigns over groundbreaking works of art. I made broad accusations that, just because you have an MBA, you are not necessarily creative nor understand what the public wants. (A friend who has an MBA and is creative, was quick to inform me of my misplaced anger.) I was fed up with seeing incredible ideas whittled down to insignificant concepts that would seemingly blend in with every other cut and pasted campaign in circulation. Mostly, I hated seeing the creative genius of my peers squandered by higher-ups who sat in high-floor offices while claiming they had their finger on the pulse of the nation.
I wrote it while I was still employed at a marketing agency after a day of seeing an ingenious idea die at the hands of a client. I outlined the problem, the mistakes the industry was making, and how I'd make changes were I in charge - the dream of everyone stuck in middle management. The central idea was this:
Clients should pay agencies to be creative. We are artists. You've hired us to come up with ideas that will drive recognition and relevance. Trust us to do that. The solution was to design an agency model where the client sends a creative brief and, in return, gets several incredible ideas in return. The catch here: the client buys one concept ... and can't change it.
I sent it out into the world as a carefully disguised middle finger to the collective advertising and marketing fields. A few friends and colleagues read it - including my friend with his MBA - but it resonated like a scream into a pillow. The general consensus was this:
"Great in concept, but good luck convincing a client to go along with it."
They were right. It's too risky for a client - and it goes against the established feedback paradigm. So, I let the idea die on the vine and went on with my life. But on long runs and car rides, my mind had a habit of drifting back to the idea. What does the advertising/marketing agency of the future look like? And after a few years of thought, I think I've finally figured it out.
The Problem(s)
At an agency I worked for, I saw junior copywriters report to copywriters. They reported to senior copywriters who then reported to Associate Creative Directors. Those ACDs then reported to Creative Directors who then reported to Executive Creative Directors, then Chief Creative Directors. And because the agency was owned by a conglomerate, the Chief Creative Directors then reported to other Creative Executives higher up the food chain. It became a top-heavy problem that crumbled under its own weight. Junior employees were doing most of the work while the bloated management levels reaped the financial rewards while having little impact on what was being created.
Yes, this is typical of most industries and companies, but workers are beginning to find ways around this inverted triangle, especially in a post-COVID world.
The fact remains: it is completely unnecessary to have that many levels of management on either the creative or account side of the business. Not only is it needlessly expensive, but having that many fingers and opinions in the mix do a disservice to the campaign, too. A brilliant idea will easily be changed and perverted once different viewpoints and egos get ahold of it. What once was brilliant becomes mundane and trite, like a river stone tumbled for years under the relentless churn of water.
Advertising and marketing agencies are notorious for showing how amazing their culture is. Most use "culture" to mean they have a forgotten ping-pong table in a dusty corner, an unused espresso machine unplugged in the kitchen, or conference rooms named after local bars. These may pique the interest of recent grads looking to start their careers in a fun work environment, but these items are mainly bait to lure in fresh meat who'll work insane hours and never have time to enjoy what they have to offer. As Zoom, Slack, Teams, and a host of other applications have proven during the pandemic: we don't need offices.
Video conferencing - a once clunky and abnormal technology - is now so ubiquitous in the modern workplace that to not use it seems atypical. As a society, we've quickly gotten up to speed on how to use it, when to use it, and the social rules that govern it. And any fear of productivity going down by working from home were squashed by recent findings:
Several studies over the past few months show productivity while working remotely from home is better than working in an office setting. On average, those who work from home spend 10 minutes less a day being unproductive, work one more day a week, and are 47% more productive.
In-office working is a fallacy. Employees don't need it. Employers don't need it - especially with the additional costs of facilities maintenance and rent. It's time we fully leveraged the digital tools available to us and make at-home work a standard in the industry.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, advertising is a dying art. Gone are the days of Mad Men creating mind-blowing concepts and campaigns that would define brands for decades to come. Instead, we often have ideas that are debated, poked at, and ultimately ruined by layers and layers of creative and executive refinement. Nothing is bold anymore. Nothing pushes the envelope. Sure, you might get a chuckle out of a SuperBowl ad now and then, you might not press "Skip" after the first 5 seconds of an ad on YouTube, but the art of advertising is ready to go into the great beyond because it's become irrelevant.
What's caused this slow decline? On the one hand, the general public's need for instant entertainment, quick hits, and short attention spans have contributed to the destruction. On the other hand, brands can be blamed for playing it too safe. And these are really two sides of the same coin.
Brands are too afraid to take chances. In this world of "wokeness," companies don't want to put themselves out there and push things a bit. And I get that. But there is a stark difference between being insulting and being edgy. There are ideas out there that can appeal to a broad audience, cause them to remember brands, and do so without winding up being torn to shreds on the front page of the Huffington Post.
The Reverted Triangle
Management is the least efficient activity in your organization.
Think of the countless hours that team leaders, department heads, and vice presidents devote to supervising the work of others. Most managers are hardworking; the problem doesn’t lie with them. The inefficiency stems from a top-heavy management model that is both cumbersome and costly.
-Gary Hamel, The Harvard Business Review 2011
A top-heavy company is doomed to fail. When a majority of an organization's overhead is positioned to support the heavy weight of management salaries, the company is not running efficiently. A glut of supervisors means there's oversight of oversight, but the workers, the "do-ers," the ones who are creating your product, are often paid meager wages in comparison to the higher-ups. And this is the case with almost every marketing and advertising agency in America today.
Remember the example earlier: junior copywriter > copywriter > senior copywriter > associate creative director > creative director > group creative director > executive creative director > chief creative officer (division) > chief creative officer (global). That is, for lack of a better term, a lot. And I can assure you the chief creative officer of a global advertising company has little to no idea what a junior copywriter is putting out. In fact, I've known some creative directors who have no idea what a junior copywriter is putting out.
It's time to flip the triangle over. It's time to put the power and the salaries back into the hands of the creators. It's time to get rid of middle management.
Not only will a reduction in executive salaries lighten the overhead, but it will lead to more interesting ideas, concepts, and campaigns being produced. Creatives who are in the trenches day in and day out, gain a quick understanding of the brands, their positions, and what works best for enticing customers. Further, with fewer people peering over their shoulders and editing their concepts, their ideas can be bolder, more interesting, and tuned into what will be memorable to the target audience.
The account side is in a very similar situation. Junior account associates talk to the clients each day with an increased reduction in understanding the clients' day-to-day needs the farther up the ladder one travels. Clients want a hyper-responsive account team, one that understands the needs and time constraints of the project. But a large management structure doesn't accomplish this. A small and dedicated team concentrating solely on that one piece of the business is the way to ensure that clients are heard. However, instead of flipping the triangle over, I think it's time to get rid of account teams altogether.
Hear me out.
Essentially, account teams act as liaisons and/or intermediaries for the clients in the agency. They brief the creatives, make sure things are on track, go back to the client with the final product, and, if they have the time, upsell the client on additional work. All of this can be accomplished by an in-house account team on the client side. So, instead of having a top-heavy account team taking up space in an agency and, in many ways, acting as duplicates for their counterparts on the client side, why not have them work for the client directly? Why have these superfluous people acted as conduits for information when they'd be just as effective working in-house?
We do this by creating a platform that eliminates the middlemen and makes it easier for clients to interact with creatives directly.
Digital Transformation
The accountants at my former agencies would send out threatening emails about late timecards and hard-to-read expense receipts. And because we more or less billed by the hour, these things were necessary to have as accurate and timely as possible.
The HR departments at my former agencies spent a great deal of time compiling literature and videos that we were instructed to watch and be quizzed on so that we properly understood terms like NDA, sexual harassment, and phishing. All good things to be aware of, no doubt, but time-consuming for a team that wanted to spend their time looking for new candidates.
The studios at my former agencies would retouch images, produce high-quality posters and in-store elements, and ensure everything we produced was well-polished. But the overhead expense of an agency having an in-house studio is almost prohibitively expensive, especially when you consider that most of what they do can be farmed out to production houses all over the country.
Expensify can handle and process all of a company's expense reports. Zenefits can run payroll and benefits seamlessly. There are virtual accounting departments and HR departments available, too. And if you want studio-quality prints made, there are numerous online sites available to you.
In other words, we can de-centralize these departments and safely rely on digital outlets to perform these tasks equally, if not better, than their in-house counterparts. Advertising and marketing agencies have become too large and unwieldy, and digital options help reduce overhead while fueling operational efficiencies.
Without these departments weighing down adverting and marketing costs, clients can know that their costs are going where they truly matter: creating incredible campaigns. But, how do we do that?
Give the Power Back
The dumbed-down version of how an advertising/marketing campaign is created goes something like this: a client wants to advertise or market a product, so they tell everyone they need help putting a campaign together. Agencies then "bid" for the job by creating RFPs and, if they pass that round, they then pitch their proposed campaigns against however many other agencies are doing the same thing. This takes a tremendous amount of time and energy on both the agency and client's parts. And, ultimately, it could be done for nothing.
But let's say you win the piece of business. The client will then send their agency a creative brief explaining what they want. This will be interpreted by the account team and presented to the creative team. The creative team will brainstorm ideas, pick out the best ones, and put them into a pitch. They'll present these ideas back to the client, and the client will then take them and - usually - revise them. They'll go back to the agency with their changes, and the creative team will ideate again, this time with the additional notes from the client in mind. This process can continue until the client is content with the campaign. It looks something like this:
It's where those arrows loopback that the problems occur.
Look at it like a copier. Copying an image on a copier might spit out a duplicate that looks very similar to the original. But do it enough times and it becomes something else entirely. Sure, it may have similarities to the original image, but the more it's copied, the more it veers from the untouched version.
This happens with advertising and marketing concepts every day. Enough people touch them that, by the end of the filter, the concepts become bland representations of what they once were. And, yes, there is a need for refinement in everything. Ideas need to adapt to the problems they're overcoming, but at some point, they lose their originality, their punch, and their memorability.
As I mentioned before, clients have been playing it safe for a long time. They want cutting-edge ideas, but ultimately turn out campaigns that don't challenge, don't excite, and are far from being retained by the general public.
An excellent example is the run-up to Cannes - the Cannes Lion is arguably the highest award given out in marketing and advertising. To win one is akin to winning an Oscar or a Pulitzer. Agencies scramble to put together brilliant ideas that will blow the minds of the Cannes judges. These are often the best and most innovative work an agency will do all year. These campaigns push brands outside their comfort zones, they require the realignment of brand voices, and they often use the latest technology available. But outside of trade journals and the awards themselves, no one will see the agencies' efforts. To win a Lion, the campaign must exist in the real world - it has to have been seen by the general public. But these are one-offs destined for obscurity. Brands usually put these campaigns out in very small markets where only a small slice of the general public will be able to see them. This prevents any negativity or confusion from directly impacting the brand itself. In essence: brands will dip their toes in the daring zone, but they won't swim.
A common sentence heard throughout my work in various agencies has been, "We always end up giving the client what they want, not what they need." And it's true. Agencies need the clients' money, and they don't want to rock the boat. Pushback rarely occurs. But creatives can save clients from themselves. They can produce campaigns that are both smart and hit the target demographic in the sweet spot.
How do I know this? Because most creatives are the target. They're young, usually a few years out of college, and for the first time in their lives, they have money to spend on goods and services. And when they come up with an idea, they're using their collective knowledge of current trends to inform the campaign. Clients need to trust creatives. They need to know that, yes, that young 20-something punk might just have a better idea of what "cool" is than the 50-something who still drives a Hummer unironically. They need to stop playing it so safe.
There is a solution to this problem. One that puts the power back into the hands of both the creatives and the clients.
The Solution: Rocket & Sparks
How do you create an advertising and marketing agency of the future? By getting rid of the agency altogether. Sometimes, the best way to fix the issues is to start again. To rebalance things in favor of art, culture, and creativity. To launch something new.
Welcome to Rocket & Sparks, a new way for clients to get exactly what they want while giving writers, designers, and artists the ability to bring their best ideas to life. A platform that moves away from reaction to action. This isn't going to disrupt the advertising and marketing world. This will deconstruct it.
How? Let's start at the beginning where two paths diverge...
Rocket - Launch Your Idea into the Stratosphere
Sites like 99Designs have done incredibly well for freelancers. They allow people looking for solutions to find people with the answers. And while they are solely in the world of graphic design, a myriad of other services are available across the web giving users the ability to find writers, web designers, and producers. (Think sites like Fiverr and UpWork.) But how does this model translate into the advertising/marketing world? And how can clients get a full campaign package, not just a one-off?
Imagine the CMO of a CPG business needs to launch a new product. They'd normally pitch their agency of record, have it travel through the inner workings of the firm, and then receive a few options at the other end. But with the Rocket & Sparks, they can cast a much wider net.
This same CMO can post a creative brief on Rocket & Sparks, tag it with a few descriptive words, post a budget, and see who bites. On the other end, creatives looking to work on something can view the brief and submit concepts for it. The CMO reviews the submission, views the profile of the creator(s) to see their past work, selects the one submission they like best, and they work with the writer, designer, or both to make revisions and get it ready for launch. The client gets exactly what they wanted without having to deal with the grinding gears of an agency, and the creative team gets well paid for their idea.
The Rocket solution puts all of the initial control into the hands of the clients, without the need for distillation from agency-side account teams. It also allows for direct contact with the creative team so that both sides can share their opinions and get real-time feedback. It's low-friction but high-reward.
A common complaint from clients is that concepts can get stagnant and dull, but with Rocket, every campaign will feel fresh and cutting-edge by having new creative geniuses breathe life into it from around the globe.
Sparks - View Ideas that Ignite Your Brand's Creativity
The amount of ideas that end up on the proverbial cutting room floor is, frankly, staggering. Bits of genius are sent to the scrap yard and lost forever because they didn't quite fit into what the client had in mind. These concepts might get Frankensteined into something else down the road, but generally, they enter the void and rarely return.
With the Sparks route, these ideas can get a second life. Creatives can post their "rejected" concepts to the Rocket & Sparks marketplace and tag them accordingly. Clients, unsure of what they want, can search through relevant concepts and purchase those they think might work best for their brand. Instead of forcing creatives to react to a brief, this option gives the clients an a la carte way to build and assemble their new campaign with one or several ideas from the Sparks marketplace.
Once purchased, the client and the creative team work together to refine the campaign and tailor it to the brand's voice and needs. The client knows exactly what they're getting before they've signed a contract, and the creative gets financially rewarded for their lost ideas.
Instead of the constant back and forth and continual refinement from all levels of both the agency and client, Rocket & Sparks eliminates the noise and lets the creatives shine. Cutting-edge campaigns and concepts will be created without fear of distillation. Brand new concepts can come from unlikely places around the world. And, by using 3rd party printers and retouchers, overhead fees become things of the past.
Rocket & Sparks is the digital transformation the marketing and advertising worlds need. An all-in-one approach that provides solutions to the biggest problems modern agencies face today.
Step One
Most of my articles and thoughts revolve around an idea I find interesting. But almost all of them end with: someone should do something about it. Not me, of course. I can think about it, sure. But doing it? No. Find someone else.
But not this time.
I really think there's something here. I've looked for similar companies doing this and I haven't found any. I believe this could not only be the next evolution in marketing. This is the new agency model without being an agency at all. So, here's rocketandsparks.com - a brief introduction to the platform, how it would work, and crucially, ways for investors and people who actually know how to build such a thing to get in touch. It's not finished, not even close. But it's a start.
In Conclusion
Let's put the art back in advertising. Let's see what happens when designers and writers are given the tools to create their own "director's cuts." We can do this by reinventing the operating models of advertising and marketing agencies. We can create a bottom-heavy organization that puts the power back into the hands of the creators. We can use new tools to increase productivity and reduce overhead. And, we can stop castrating ideas over and over until they barely resemble their initial brilliance. The model outlined in Rocket & Sparks allows for all of these things to not only happen but to happen simultaneously. All we have to do is put ourselves out there and see if we can't shake up the world.
