Let’s face it. There’s a ton of advertising out there that’s just pure crap. That somebody spent a lot of money to make. I watch TV and flip through magazines and shake my head at how painfully bad some of the advertising is. (the above image is not an example of that). Usually the reason is quite simple: the person responsible for producing it probably has absolutely no idea what their doing. So today, i would like to talk about staffing. And roles. And abilities. And respect for those roles and abilities.
My early career was in an advertising agency where i had the opportunity to encounter many different people, in many companies, in the role of advertising/communication director. What i found, more often than not, is that the role of advertising director is usually a necessary pitstop of any aspiring CEO on their way to the top. Usually they start out in sales, perhaps product, and then they move through marketing before they actually move on to a role their more comfortable in. More times than not, the person driving strategy and driving creative really showed no refined creative skills or understanding of the rules of communication, making them a very frustrating counterpart for the agency and, no doubt, very frustrated in their own personal awareness of their inadequacy.
Usually a person that is responsible for advertising, but has little experience, will use an age old “diplomacy” approach by creating a committee of respondents. This protects them from having to publicly make a wrong decision and at the same time creates a, false, feeling of team. I have sat through meetings, on both ends of the business, where a cross functional team of people ranging from all levels, all ages, and all disciplines were invited to comment on an agency’s creative work. What inevitably happens in those meetings is that each person - to avoid risking looking out of place - adds another unskilled comment and the creative gets whittled down piece by piece until there’s absolutely nothing left to the idea. Then the company comes to the agency at the end of the year and says “you guys aren’t very good because that campaign sucked.” If you had a cake and took away every ingredient except for the flour, you wouldn’t have a very good cake either.
Let’s look then at how the process works. The person responsible for the advertising delegates feedback to a team of unskilled workers, despite agency protests no doubt. This allows the person responsible to look like the good guy because s/he defends the comments that come from their team. The agency needs to earn their money, and is under contract, so they’re forced to produce a piece of work that they don’t believe in, fully knowing what will happen in the end. The creative comes out and is more often than not, unsuccessful. The team that commented looks to the boss for leadership. The boss thinks the team got it wrong. And at the end of the day, somehow it’s the agency’s fault, or that’s what we tell ourselves and each other to protect our jobs. Any company that has this dangerous cycle going on, and allows this process to continue, is actively choosing to knowingly throw their money out the window.
I don’t drive. I hate cars. I think the ability to drive is a miracle skill and the inside of a car looks like a spaceship. If your car was broken - would you come to me for advice? I hope not, because I wouldn’t have a CLUE as to what I was talking about. So why can *anyone* do advertising? Why do companies believe that communication is an ability that all possess equally? A clueless company will think that anyone can do advertising and will make that job a necessary stop on your career train. A good company will find a mix, where they rotate that job but at least create training specific to that role. A great company will hire someone with a specific skill set to lead that charge and a staff of successors in training. I have been quite lucky to have spent the last 10 years in a great company. The only way to get strong creative work as a brand is to have a person in that position who has the right skills, a vision, and the ability to bring their vision to fruition. Anything else is just running in a hamster wheel.
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