John Lowery, the Executive Planning Director of Grey London, on the rise of UGC and the future of agencies:
If we continue doing what we’re doing, we’re going to get seriously marginalised. And fast. Our already dwindling revenues will shrink further, as marketing monies get diverted into [UGC] and, as everyone’s already recognised, ever more esoteric forms of ['advertising'] that we have no capability to deliver. Before very long we’ll reach a tipping point, where our capacity to provide something useful to our clients will dwindle to the negligible and, to the extent that we still have one, our seat at the top table will vanish. 10% commission, or equivalent, will then start to look like nirvana.This maybe overly simplistic, but I think you could say we presently stand at a fork in the road. One direction leads to us further and further diversifying our offering; perhaps under one roof, maybe above one bottom line, possibly with some brand continuity (Grey Advertising, iGrey, Grey Arts and the like) or, more likely some hybridised version of all this. As I write, we, and most other agencies, are progressing along this path.The alternative fork, which gives its sentiment to the title of this post, assumes that the problems identified by these questions are ultimately insurmountable. This path imagines that, perhaps, we should be reducing our executional capabilities not increasing them. Perhaps we should jettison the creative department (or maybe they should jettison us). Perhaps we should outsource the executional part of our offering completely. Perhaps we should re-create ourselves as genuinely neutral brand consultants who draw in the ‘executors’ only when necessary.
If we continue doing what we’re doing, we’re going to get seriously marginalised. And fast. Our already dwindling revenues will shrink further, as marketing monies get diverted into [UGC] and, as everyone’s already recognised, ever more esoteric forms of ['advertising'] that we have no capability to deliver. Before very long we’ll reach a tipping point, where our capacity to provide something useful to our clients will dwindle to the negligible and, to the extent that we still have one, our seat at the top table will vanish. 10% commission, or equivalent, will then start to look like nirvana.
This maybe overly simplistic, but I think you could say we presently stand at a fork in the road. One direction leads to us further and further diversifying our offering; perhaps under one roof, maybe above one bottom line, possibly with some brand continuity (Grey Advertising, iGrey, Grey Arts and the like) or, more likely some hybridised version of all this. As I write, we, and most other agencies, are progressing along this path.
The alternative fork, which gives its sentiment to the title of this post, assumes that the problems identified by these questions are ultimately insurmountable. This path imagines that, perhaps, we should be reducing our executional capabilities not increasing them. Perhaps we should jettison the creative department (or maybe they should jettison us). Perhaps we should outsource the executional part of our offering completely. Perhaps we should re-create ourselves as genuinely neutral brand consultants who draw in the ‘executors’ only when necessary.
Robin Grant
Blogging for:
Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 02 Jun 2009
Total Posts: 733
