Think long.
Sitting in the rewardingly crowded room at Unfettered: The Independent Agency Summit in New York, I was struck by how advertising, as an industry, keeps playing the short game.
Frankly, it gobsmacks while it befuddles.
The toxically ironic thought: we're collectively happy to take umbrage at companies and brands that practice "quarterly capitalism," substituting near-term balance sheet gymnastics for durable strategic muscle.
Meanwhile, we're seeing great swaths of adland embracing tectonic consolidation on the back of AI’s “as if” and “let’s pretend” efficiency gains.
What was that thing about glass-dwelling moralists throwing stones?
This isn’t to say that change isn’t in the wind, or that, somehow, jonesing for business-as-was provides a paint-by-numbers blueprint for business as it needs to become. But the signs of a downward spiral are entirely too obvious in everything from media consolidation to audience fragmentation to message overload to the lack of advertising-attributable brand growth.
Speaking truth to power:
When we tell the world we're prioritizing efficiency at the price of talent and creativity, we're visibly prioritizing our profits over our clients’.
When we, as an industry, choke off the pipeline of entry-level junior gigs, we’re begging the question of “where will the seniors come from?”
When we cave in to the polarizing forces that want us to accept that diversity, equity, and inclusion are radioactive, we cut off irreplaceable sources of vibrancy, cultural relevance, wisdom, and fresh thinking.
When our biggest eviscerate the ranks of seasoned producers in favor of lower cost facilitators, they are putting the work and its impact at risk.
When we settle for dull, uninteresting, and emotionally vacant work, we’re ignoring the data, squandering opportunity, and failing our mission.
When we dive into the ethically murky waters of buying and selling media for undisclosed fees, a practice considered anathema not long ago, we pour acid on the foundations of trust.
When our colleagues in the trade press abandon their historical responsibility to shine a bright light on our self-inflicted wounds, we’re sorely missing a powerful corrective force.
When our clients fail to recognize that this race to the bottom isn’t a solo trek and that they have the means to enable — insist! — their agencies act as big idea magnets, those courses will remain uncorrected.
And when we don’t stop to take stock of where we are, what got us here, and where we want to be, we’re never going to get there.
Tell you what else struck me at Unfettered and that room full of energy, intense curiosity, and, maybe, just maybe, the potential for better.
The essence of my question to one of the panels: “Until we start looking beyond the gloss and the hype and the pretense, aren’t we just whistling past the cemetery?”
A lot of people nodded at that. Which got me thinking about the phrase loosely attributed to both the Jewish historical figure Hillel the Elder and John “Good Trouble” Lewis:
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
