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Good lord, how’d he survive that?
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Rising Star
Lukewarm take. The business has ALWAYS valued efficiency over creativity. The reason these particular shops were folded is because their “wins” were all scammy Cannes bait that didn’t increase billings or create real world buzz, yes. So it’s an indictment of that kind of awards chasing.
But the other shops that folded yesterday did so because their work is so bleh, their agency brand means nothing. And the indies are eating the holdco’s lunch.
The bigger question is whether the gold co model with layers of bloat and padded salaries at the top is still viable. The answer is clearly no. And I bet whomever wrote this has one of those cushy exec jobs.
Rising Star
You don’t have to go through layers and layers, but more importantly, you don’t have to bill for layers and layers of people who aren’t billable but are expensive. Big agencies are expensive for clients.
And then when it’s time to cut, you don’t need to cut all the people doing the work so you can support a full C-suite, sometimes with two or three layers of management who never talk to clients, don’t have billable time and have massive salaries.
I think this industry needs to have a severe come to Jesus moment in regards to awards. I remember telling my family this past thanksgiving that a campaign I worked on had won an award and it was one of these most humbling experiences. But it’s a good reminder that the average person/consumer does not care about award winning work. My mom didn’t chose her phone plan because of the award winning activation done by some agency. There was no elaborate thought process or insightful consumer journey. I’m willing to bet the majority people are the same way. It’s helpful to remember that.
90% of the population will never see any of the work that wins awards, that being said they also matter for promos, bonuses that sort of thing, until that is no longer the case awards will always be part of it. Just don’t only focus on awards because those projects never keep the lights on and typically lose the agency money / are never billable from the start. Being highly billable is what keeps you employed.
I mean, we've known that Cannes, and awards overall, reallly mean nothing in terms of the bottom line for businesses. Go ask Burger King how much progress they made when they were winning every Grand Prix....McDonalds, whose work has never been particularly great, still dominated them on the business side. The weird part is we are just seeing that encompass entire agencies now. The glitz and glam of the awards is of 0 importance in business and this is just setting it in stone.
Well, DDB and FCB going away has nothing to do with awards.
But we all know that awards in general has always been us patting ourselves on the back. They try to explain it as a way to win new clients and a thing about getting clients on stage etc ... But we all know what it means. Dog walker ads for the most part. Though FCB has had a policy that things they submit must be real work for real clients. And I respect that. But still, the awards chasing is just us talking to ourselves.
This is true on the client side too. We constantly point to brands as a north star that are failing as a business but do neat work
The rock this person has lived under for last decade + must be cozy 🪨
Because it’s not about the work it’s about the business model
Awards shows are largely rigged with political-driven judging and selection and much of the work solves fake or invented problems with metrics that don’t represent real-world challenges.
In that regard, Cannes was already a fairytale but it’s the one everyone got behind for industry credit and people like to feel important and it was an excuse to send people to the South of France.
The most awarded agencies were keenly aware of how success on that stage rarely overlapped with client success but the clients also bought into the hype on occasion.
The flipside is if you don’t have awards shows does it detract from the desire to do “award worthy work”?
A reframe that makes it make sense: Awards are an agency’s biggest marketing expense. Lots of companies can have great marketing, but it doesn’t mean their business will succeed, especially if their product can’t back it up
I think we know what David Ogilvy would say.