We can all agree that technology is a wonderful thing.
From the first stone tools to the iPhone 5, technological innovation has
without a doubt helped mankind push the boundaries of what’s possible. However,
when it comes to ad agency clients, technology has become our worst enemy.
It is because of technology that clients now expect us to
do more with less, and faster. Why? Because they know its possible.
I’m gonna get all Andy Rooney and bring up the “good old
days,” when clients actually respected our work because they knew it was just
that, work. Back then, they knew that changing a logo from left to right, or
changing a font size, or airbrushing out a birthmark, or getting an ad to the
newspaper, was a big deal. They knew these things took time and money and
expertise, and because of this, they were much more considerate and respectful of
the advertising process.
Nowadays? Oh man, have we been duped. While technology
has helped us give life to bigger and better ideas, it has also turned us into
our clients’ slaves. They are well aware of the magic of Photoshop, the virtues
of copy/paste, the power of “command” something. They know that asinine changes
at the 11th hour can be requested because, well, it’s just a matter
of right-click this and left-click that. They’ve lost respect for the process,
both creative and technical. They now tend to see their account executives as
order-takers and their creative team as doers. I know I’m using a broad stroke
here, but this is the new reality.
Whereas coming up with great ideas was once a daily thing
at an ad agency, today many talented creative professionals are relegated to
coming up with their best stuff exclusively for new business pitches and/or
annual reviews. The rest of the year our days are nothing but doing revisions
and changing this and rewriting that.
The other fallacy of technology? Saving time. Technology
came with the promise that we would do things quicker, that productivity would
be high and we would have more free time. Well, never before in the history of
advertising have we left the office so late so often, and taken so long to get
shit done. I’ve seen projects where, for example, a simple 3-fold brochure has
taken a team six weeks and multiple 15-hour days and weekends to complete. Why?
Because the client kept dicking around with revisions and overall indecision.
If anyone in the ad biz has benefited from the leaps
achieved in technology, it’s the client. They can now approve ads late at night
when they’re at the gym, at home feeding their baby, or sipping cocktails with glamorous
friends at a glamorous lounge, all the while the agency hacks are digging on
old Chinese food and stale Coke.
Where did we go wrong?
1 comments:
Most times the answer to where we go wrong goes either high up the food chain up to Creative Directors, CEOs and VPs or actually never go past inept account execs that are unable to utter the word NO.
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