The recession has run its course, hasn’t it? The trepidation that paralyzed 2009 and bled into 2010 has faded, and the lock-down on ad spending has been lifted. Magazines are getting thicker. Big event sponsorships are all the rage. Media companies are experimenting. Then why is there still a great unease permeating most corners of the business? Talk to your peers—agency and marketing execs alike—and ask them how they feel about things. That look in their eye? That’s fear of the unknown. A quick scan of Marketing’s online news archive reveals a record number of agency executive shakeups in the past 18 months. The migration has generally been from large multinationals to small independent shops, often sparking quiet phone conversations dotted with analogies like “big ships turn slowly.” Ad Age’s “Creative Exodus in Adland: It’s Just Not ‘Fun’ Anymore” is still being e-mailed around like a revolutionary manifesto. Names like Bogusky, Beauvais and Montague are uttered over lattés. The media sector is no more stable either. Ignoring the massive questions being put to the CRTC about media concentration and availability, companies are hiring talent to take business away from its third-party vendors. Everyone’s playing nice for now, but the bottom line is bound to win out sooner than later.
Of course through all of this has coursed the steady and constant upheaval by new media. It’s all cheaper now. And more trackable. David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett never delivered pithy quotes about Foursquare. Everyone is fi guring this stuff out as they go along and doing it while trying to keep their portion of diminished ad budgets away from a multitude of new players who are voraciously attacking whatever percentage they can grab. And it’s not like marketers are sitting above the turmoil . While their job tenures become shorter and shorter (soon to be measured in hours, surely), there is no fi rm handhold to steady themselves. The reliable grips have all shifted. Television is massive, but where are the 18- to 24-year-olds? Social media is ubiquitous, but results are inconsistent. Go-to media is gone. Everything else is a moving target.
Such adversity is making even the smartest, most intuitive people in the industry question their survival. Desperate times create desperate actions. Fights are inevitable, and several are boiling over across the industry, including Canada’s. Some have been hyped for years, but most will be the result of spillover from the U.S. ad industry and probably catch a good many people fl at-footed. Amercian agencies like Victors & Spoils are turning the creative process on its head by crowdsourcing work from a network of freelancers all over the world. But while we have similar forward-thinking agencies in Canada, their revolution has remained muted (partly because they don’t seem eager to throw the fi rst punch). It’s doubtful clients will ignore the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the status quo for much longer.
Likewise, media companies and their growing creative departments have been similarly gun shy, but with so much pressure on companies like Postmedia and Shaw to reinvent themselves, possible revenue streams like ad creation will not be ignored forever, even it if means burning bridges with vendors. If Condé Nast can produce ads for its clients, why can’t Torstar? Predicting the future is tricky business, but bravado and theatrics are what make for a great night at the fi ghts. If there’s going to be a brawl (and there will be), why not make it a spectacle? Enjoy this fi ght card, place your bets, and keep your head up out there.
