Late this morning it was very windy in New York, with gusts up to 30 mph. I was out in the park with my dog and I came upon two park workers who were blowing leaves into a pile with their leaf-blowers and a nano-second later, the wind would scatter all those collected leaves to the--er--wind.
That got me thinking about the state of the advertising industry and how traditional agencies, to me, are like the leaf blowers I saw, and the wind itself is like what's happening in the world. Maybe that's obtuse, but what I mean is it seems to me that adherence to traditional advertising is fighting something as inexorable as continental drift, the rotation of the planets or the law of entropy. TV isn't over, but the tv-centric universe is gone. If you don't buy this, you're a leaf-blower in a tornado.
Everybody talks about it – clients talk about it. Everyone agrees – agencies make cosmetic changes – new media shops wish for the whole cake but don't take neccesary steps that would onece and for all kill the tradtional shop.
ReplyDeleteEither they're waiting for a new generation of people on their side as well as on the client side, or they can't take the step?
Maybe the fact that most every shop, trad or new media, belongs to one of the big holding companies is the key to this snail-pace of change.
They don't want to kill the old monster off.
So in a way, this could be a golden opportunity for a new indsutry to emerge independant from the tradtionally owned one. but it won't happen. New agencies sell out too early.