Have the Mad Men really become Sad Men?
So Martin Sorrell has stepped down. The end of an era one might say, but that is something that goes for the entire advertising and branding industry. Earlier this year WPP presented it’s worst result in over a decade and the stock prices immediately tumbled by 14%. At the same time the number two and three in the advertising industry, Omnicom and Publicis, respectively lost 12 and 7 percent; leading one Belgian journalist to claim that the “Mad men” had become “Sad men”.
Although it might seem somewhat gloomy for Madison Avenue, the solution might be simpler than one might think: do more of the same, but change the playing field.
According to Sir Martin Sorrell, the digital likes of Google and Facebook aren’t the problem, but instead the short term focus of quite some multinationals as well as the likes of Deloitte and Accenture starting to give advertising advice based on some Google numbers. And whilst I agree with his analysis, I don’t see the advertising industry do a counter attack using their own strengths.
If there has always been one thing in abundance within the advertising industry, it’s creativity. But advertisers need to get back to the roots of their business and become creative marketers again. In an attempt to tie everything together WPP installed last year Lindsay Pattison as Chief Transformation Officer in order to make the company work more “horizontally”. The main problem is that their horizon isn’t stretching far enough.
Even McKinsey underlines the positive effects of creativity within the company as it shows an increase in innovation and financial performance. With so much information available, the planners and creatives of the advertising industry must expand their knowledge beyond that one P that they are covering within the marketing mix: promotion.
Within today’s market place the classic 4P’s are still very valid, and actually expanded to 7P’s we have identified that influence consumer behavior. Sure, Promotion is a universe in itself, but in a connected world, you can no longer treat it in isolation, and with the new ways of digital, we can finally see how they impact each other. Corporate marketers and the advertising industry should step out of their comfort zone and start treating the general of all 7. It’s what they did in the Mad Men days.
New tools, such as Graviz Telescope, provide companies not only with the overview of all 7P’s, but more importantly their respective weights AND how they influence each other. Once that map is laid out, the most important question comes: how to respond. This is where advertising agencies should team up with the right internal stakeholders and partner agencies to bring creativity to the table and lead the innovation process, based on solid numbers and clearly showing an effect on the bottom line. So, Mad Men and Women, let gear up, get out of the comfort zone and start using your creative super powers to change the playing field instead of selling out to the big management firms. Hey Baberaba