In an article that is related to the previous YouTube post the NYT reports that speakers at the leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies urged the industry to stop wallowing in self-pity and get on with the challenges ahead.
Here are some of the comments:
“We should just stop talking about what was,” Tom Carroll, president and chief executive at TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group. “It’s like driving in the fog, you’re not sure what’s ahead of you, but you have to keep driving.” Mr. Carroll acknowledged that it would be hard work to “change the way we do our business,” but called it a necessary response to the profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape. He illustrated his point with a rhetorical question, “How’d you like to be in the CD business?” [Ouch!]
Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative at TBWA, who in wearing onstage his trademark garb of a T-shirt, jeans and sandals was perhaps the most casually dressed speaker in the 90-year history of the conference. “Stop whining,” The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.
I thought this was a good one - - -“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”
“Strap on your seat belts,” advised Irwin Gotlieb, chief executive at the GroupM unit of the WPP Group, which is composed of large media planning and buying agencies like MediaCom and MindShare. “In order to achieve any kind of success, we — meaning media agencies and creative agencies — are going to have to cooperate and collaborate in a very different way than we have in the past,” Mr. Gotlieb said.
“All these challenges will no doubt put a strain on all our organizations,” he added. “Every one of us will be re-engineering and re-inventing, but the end result will be a positive one.”
“The system worked well for 40, 50 years,” Mr. Silverman said, referring to the model of paid pitches that interrupt programming. “Now we have to think differently and do each other’s jobs.”
“Our studio has to think a little more like an advertising agency,” he added, “and the advertising agency has to think a little more like a studio.”
Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, told the audience that digital media will “create new opportunities for advertisers and new opportunities for information.” He added, “The scale of this is underappreciated.”
The opportunities will come in the form of “developing new forms of storytelling,” Mr. Schmidt said.
“We’re not creative,” Mr. Schmidt said of Google, seeking to reassure the attendees that the company did not seek to usurp agency functions. “We’re sort of boring.”
