Will 2019 be the year the agency model finally gets updated?

In the December issue of Marketing Week Sarah Vizard talked about how big brands are beginning to wonder what value is really being delivered for the mega bucks they pay – recognition is leading them to take content creation in house, in-source and cherry pick cross agency groups in providing “the full service”. Sarah noted that big agencies are responding by looking at business models that span disciplines, streamline and cost cut.

It’s interesting that the pictures painted of a 21st century (21C) update are not very exciting, creative or breathtaking, are they? It feels more like creative accounting than creative business modelling. And then we wonder why clients no longer feel the value of the “creative industries”.

So what might a 21C update really look like?

For me it’s all about agencies reclaiming their ground and to do this they need to attract back the talent – by understanding what will make talent see an “agency” as the best place to “be” as many of us used to.

Agencies must put the “glamour” back in – and today, the glamour means something different to what it might have meant three decades ago.  It means offering a unique combination of a rewarding career (Millennials want purpose over paychecks) with rewarding ways of working that allow the necessary head and heart space to be supremely and uniquely creative in adding value for clients. In this way clients will see “agencies” as uniquely useful and necessary once again and understand that they have to go the agency route to access the pool.

In support of this point, it may surprise you to read the 2018 mental health and creativity report by Tank (Australia) which asked employees about mental health in the creative industry:

Only 50% of 400 respondents answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Are you ok?”. 60% of these said they were aged 20-29 when they first realised that work was impacting their mental health.

The single word that appeared most amongst responses was Fear – with reasons for stress being given as “working late and weekends worrying they’re not good enough, seeing others not coping, the threat of redundancy, being berated and feeling watched all the time, senior leader egoism, inadequate content/time/understanding for what it takes to do our job properly.”

So why would the brightest talent want to enter an industry where that is the case?

Accepting that margin is important to shareholders and that it is unrealistic to persuade the industry en masse that Social Business (like ours) is the way to go for everyone, by thinking differently you can still make an agency magnetic.

Our agency for example decided to champion virtual networked working – we don’t have a shopfront in the traditional sense and we don’t need all the fluff that goes with it – by cutting out the commute, enabling people to work flexibly and not to be so brutally torn between their work and life commitments we provide the time and space to be creative. We deliver cost savings that make margins easier to manage and of course deliver positively against bigger issues like gender inequality, ageism and even the potential threat of a diminishing skills pool in the light of the maybe, one day Brexit.

Social & Local engage the IPA and Young Creative Council in helping award winners to get their feet under the table.

Creative Conscience, IPA, Social Value, Social Business Mentoring
Everyone knows that we bang on about the impact our industry could potentially have on changing the world if only it put its mind to it! So, we are thrilled that on July 4th the IPA in association with the Young Creative Council kindly agreed to host an event for Creative Conscience Award winners in the hallowed halls of Grosvenor Square. The event brought together some young inspirational creatives already in adland to talk to winners about the opportunities and pathways into advertising and were able to hear about the passion and capability young talented people have for doing good and pursuing rewarding careers. YCC’s Charlotte Kushi said: It was a great event to be part of, and all the work Creative Concience and the IPA are doing is great. I & the YCC are really passionate about inspiring the next generation so let us know if there’s anything else to get involved with.

Attendees were also impressed and informed:

“I didn’t realise the ad industry was ‘good’ and put on events like this just to help young people out.”

“There are so many more routes into a job than I thought, and it’s ok to be me.”

“I didn’t know much about advertising. It’s quite exciting.” (from a young children’s book illustrator)

“Advertising is so much more diverse than I thought.”

IPA Lunch & Learn – Social Impact in the Ad World

Yesterday we had the privilege of being invited to share how our Social Business model works with the full team at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. We sometimes forget that Social Business as the new black has yet to take hold and be understood as a concept for the many. Our talk was designed to inspire others to take the model seriously, not as a philanthropic gesture but as a true commercial opportunity. Of course, Social Businesses come in a whole range of shapes and sizes, but they share a mission to use business to generate profit and to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. It’s encouraging that NatWest reports that the top 100 fastest growing social businesses worldwide achieved record-breaking 951% average growth in turnover in 2015/16 and recorded £1.3B in profits in the most recent financial year. (This of course far outstrips the sales growth posted by Britain’s top FTSE 100). It’s interesting too that the Social Business model is beginning to take hold in the media sector, with companies like oneOeight TV growing like topsy. We note with glee that the UK Government has recently (October 16) developed a cross-governmental strategy to position the UK as a global centre for the social economy. Our mission is to demonstrate that a Social Business in the brand communications industry can be profitable, mainstream and sustainable. It is rooted in the belief that there are big commercial prizes to match the social benefits offered by such a model. And by doing things holistically, with social value running through everything we are and do, this kind of model can also answer some of the problems our industry itself is facing. How can the industry reclaim its magnetism as having long term strategic vision, work-life balance and job security? How can a world that is overtaken by big corporate beasts offer a flavour to its clients that is not vanilla – and avoid being commoditised? How does the ad industry recruit, develop and retain the right new talent when millennials want to change the world and make an impact by doing something meaningful? And finishing on that note, perhaps we can inspire you by sharing some stories of our own – examples of how our profit share goes to fund young creative talent to make a difference in the world. How Billy the Rucksack has been given funding support to set up his new online Social Business, how Damiano the filmmaker is creating a conversation about hate crimes in the UK with our support, how we are helping Fatma to captured the attention of the design world with her creative work on female genital mutilation – and so on and so forth.