Consumers are the new medium, and few agencies have figured out how to harness that power.
Ad agencies are in big trouble and may very well become just a memory five to 10 years from now. That's a bold prediction, for sure, but the marketing world is offering far more support for that suggestion than proof against it.
The best, most brilliant, most effective marketing ideas of the past of couple years have not come from big ad agencies. They've come from small shops, and more often from individual consumers.
Madison Avenue didn't come up with the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" stunt in Boston. It didn't invent Matt Harding, either.
New brands such as Zillow and Twitter are ignoring traditional ad channels, yet they are immensely popular with consumers. And at the same time, we're increasingly disappointed with work done by traditional agencies.
Big companies such as Nike, Miller Brewing Co., Procter & Gamble and others struggle with finding and keeping an agency of record that can drive their brands forward in today's media environment.
Part of the problem lies in what big ad agencies have traditionally done well, vs. what works in marketing today. Even 10 years ago, traditional media was king. Great creative, placed correctly in the right media channels, could build mindshare and drive consumers to action.
In this traditional marketing world, massive ad agencies were built based on high-margin creative departments and highly-profitable media buys on behalf of their clients.
Now fast forward to today. Traditional ads are either ignored or assumed to be puffery. Our shorter attention spans and faster lives give us less time to consume messages in traditional media, anyway.
What's more, the best, most credible marketing messages today come directly from consumers. We believe each other now, not the companies who want to sell us something. We assume that our neighbor down the street, or fellow parent on the soccer field sidelines, is going to be far more authentic and credible than the talking head on TV.
Consumers are the medium now, and few (if any) agencies have figured out how to harness the massive power consumers now have. Some agencies (mostly on the PR side) do employ brilliant thought leaders who clearly understand the role consumers now play in building brand influence and mindshare, but those same agencies have little expertise at the tactical and execution level for their clients.
What should be even more concerning to big agencies is that great creative may never work again in traditional media channels. Consumers don't want to listen to messages directly from brands and agencies, they want to listen to each other. And what they tell each other isn't a marketing message. It isn't a flashy ad campaign. It isn't anything remotely resembling what we've traditionally built to influence consumers through traditional media channels.
What consumers are telling each other today are stories about their experiences with brands. They're sharing stories about how well a product works, or the great service they recently experienced from a service provider. On the flip side, they're also sharing horror stories about how some products prove to be defective, or sharing (sometimes with extremely compelling video proof) the crummy service many companies put behind their products.
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