My point being that recently after financial crisis, many long time professionals has been let go due to redundancies. These people are professionals who I looked up to when I entered the industry and now they are given the boot – Not the way I thought these guys would retire. However, this is just one aspect of the dilemma. At the same time when senior professionals are exiting industry, there’s really not that much flow coming in.

I’ve spoken to many of my industry colleagues in other agencies and it seems like they’ve noticed the same phenomenon. There’s plenty of very creative people coming out of schools, but for some reason they don’t want to apply for a job in an agency. Many of them start their own one man band and choose freelance projects based on their interests. Others form creative collectives that  splits the overheads, but still gives them the freedom of freelance work.

That’s all very good and many new agencies are building business models based on large freelancer network and centralized project management. So far there’s no single agency in our market who has actually managed to sustain this way of organizing. I feel it’s due to our small market, where freelancers have enough work to source projects without agency in the middle. This then leads to small “networked” agency without a real applicable network.

Anyway, back to the discussion with the editor. One thing that worries me is the education in finland. I urge you to watch the Hyper Island video below. There’s huge amounts of info about HI, but one thing that sticks out is the fact that “Sandy” is on a trajectory to become an agency CEO. A modern age ad agency executive who’s fluent with transmedia concepts and a new agency structures.

My question is… where are the future leaders of our national ad-industry? Is Finnish advertising facing the same faith as Nokia, where the magnitude of changing market is overlooked until the gap is too wide to close without dramatic overhaul.

We as an industry, have always looked to sweden and analyzed what they’re doing, but it feels almost like we’ve given up like we did with Nokia. Farfar has come and gone without any comparable Finnish success story. Daddy merged with CPB produces outstanding creative globally. Hyper Island just opened their office in New York… Not sure how Aalto University compares, but I don’t see them working with agencies too much.

Personally, I’m on a mission. I still believe that by challenging existing structures and embracing the change there’s still hope. If you feel like you’re the future of Finnish advertising, drop me a line and let’s have a cup of coffee.

Pax vobiscum.

-Joni

P.s feel free to comment.

Think of any marketing effort no matter if it’s TV-commercials, print campaigns, direct, virals, campaign sites, mobile applications, retail marketing… whatever you can think of. The fact of the matter is that all of these tactics have a life span. Some live longer and most are very short lived.

Now, how much is spent on the tactic at hand doesn’t even really matter, the truth is that at some point either the product that’s been marketed changes or the target group is not relevant. Might even be that the industry sector withers down and the life of that marketing cycle will end.

This leads to the a point where the marketing has to be redesigned and communicated. So to do that, marketers need to re-invest to start the next lifecycle.

To anwser the question I proposed in the headline… The one marketing investment that increases in value over time is the data that the customer leaves behind when he/she interacts with the brand.

That data will give the insight on why someone did what they did as well as why the didn’t. From the search engine to mobile app and from the cash register to customer service, this data will enable the new marketing tactics to be more relevant and more effective.

Still, when discussing this matter with colleagues and customers alike, most seem to agree but very few actually has a strategy to implement this.

For professional service, I think the new agency model needs to address this factor and have the understanding of data-analysis built into the planning processes. Traditionally it’s the media agencies who have these capabilities, but during my time in traditional agencies I felt that it’s still very disconnected from marketing planning.

So, next time you’re thinking about how will “this and this” affect the marketing, give it another spin and try to think “will this tactic/strategy produce the kind of data that I can use”.

“this notion of creatives coming together with technologists. It’s not about just the art director and writer anymore, it’s about technology, the interaction designer, all these people coming together. It’s probably been happening for a while, but that’s now entering larger agencies.”

Amen.

To create truly outstanding work, this needs to happen. However, before it can happen the artists and the technologists and IA designers must want to come together and truly mesh. It’s not something that can be forced upon anyone who doesn’t have the will to embrace this new co-existence and that’s what is holding so many people and agencies back currently.

Everyone knows that in order to do business, agencies need to expand to digital. Problem is, on a personal level very few senior creatives and agency execs really want to start learning.

No matter, nature will take it’s course in any case… Evolve or fade away.

One thing in particular has caught me by surprise and it is the relative cost of campaigns. Some of the clients have house policy of media vs. production costs and it does make sense in traditional medias, where the media it self is valuable.

However, it does create a challenge when you apply it to digital, since the media is much cheaper. What I’ve noticed is that in many cases it is expected that everything is included in the given budget. Photography, illustration, animation, video and sound. And usually clients are shocked when it becomes clear that those are separate costs.

In advertising agency no client expects that these things are included in the agency cost. Having been involved in many large productions (in our local scale) and knowing how much is spent on that, it does seem quite distorted.

Clients are used to expensive photo shoots and film productions with the ad agency and, for arguments sake a photograph costing 25.000 is still doable, but building a service with rich media content or a business model… “15.000?… seems unreasonable. Yes, we are determined to revolutionize our industry, but 15.000? You must be joking”.

Also it seems that right now clients are willing to pay for media and production, but not planning. In many cases that’s because they’ve already paid the agency for that. Why should they pay for it again? Well, my opinion is that if it’s working, there’s no need. But if what’s been done so far isn’t working, someone should think about it and come up with something that does work. And they should be rewarded for it.

Until next time.

The paradigm change that still hasn’t registered with most of the Finnish Ad agencies is once again proved, by the merger and strategic statement by Alex Bogusky.

“We 
believe 
that 
digital 
is 
at 
the 
center 
of 
everything 
going 
forward,” 
said 
Alex 
Bogusky, 
Co‐Chairman, 
CP+B. 
“We’ve 
made 
digital 
the 
focus 
of 
our 
US 
business 
and 
with 
the 
acquisition 
of Daddy, 
it 
will 
now 
be 
the 
center 
of 
CP+B
 Europe
 as 
well”.

I hope that the authority and vision that Bogusky has over the whole industry resonates to all of the brilliant creatives and executives in Finnish agencies and drives home the fact that each and everyone who has an ounce of professional dignity, must embrace the new skill sets that are required to do our job in this day and age. It’s a matter of personal development and change that can not be outsourced.

To quote Katie Chatfields presentation;

“The challenge with this is that competent people resist change, because it threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like to be competent. That’s who they are and sometimes it’s all they’ve got. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to rock the boat.”

With this in mind I leave behind my dear colleagues and partners for over five years at Bob Helsinki and welcome the change that has driven me for some time now.

My thanks to all the clients I’ve worked with over the past and in words of Bob Marley… “good vibarations, man” …to all the Bobs as well.

I will continue my work in Finnish advertising and marketing industry after the holidays and keep updating this blog as things develop. For a bit more casual encounter, check out my travel blog Citizen Plane.

Sources:

CP+B|Daddy press release

Katie Chatfields presentation