The New Digital Age

Once upon a time, digital marketing was this amazing phenomenon, a new kid on the block that everyone was curious about. It was exciting, it was challenging and most importantly, it was building something from scratch and giving it an identity. It was about engagement. It was truly about understanding people, the fans…what they say, where they go, their likes, dislikes, interests, especially, what makes them really tick.

I remember my first step into the digital world, the first agency I worked at and got thrown into a Pantene campaign on the first day and my first conversation with an account manager who wanted me to write copy for an application on a brand I knew nothing about. Not in the sense of what the brand was, of course, I knew it was hair care, but why we were doing it and what kind of people would actually engage with it. The one thing that stuck with me was the fact that I got told, ‘the fans on the page thought it would be a cool idea to have a game featuring the new product that they could play online. There were a few women who constantly engage on our page (and then proceed to hand me their names and details on a sheet that showed the conversations as well) who said they would also like to try the new product before purchasing it. Hence we though that we should listen to them and give them what they want. So we’re offering everyone who plays a sample of the new product.’

Ask the fans what they want…..ask people what they want? Does that ring a bell and take you back to what the essence of advertising is about? When you see demand, you supply? Isn’t the core of advertising eventually selling a product? What saddens me about advertising today is that it’s all covered with these ridiculous over the top campaigns supported with even more ridiculous budgets! Paying for trending hashtags (you could get a hashtag to trend before without promoting it just fyi), getting your clients to spend huge amounts on media to see your posts, using the same monotonous strategy across all the brands, recycling ideas instead of creating new ones, huge incentives and prizes to FORCE people to engage with you. And the worst part of all this is that the core of the brand gets lost in the process and no one even buys the product/service. Yes, people will talk about it and then your competitor launches another huge campaign and you retaliate and so forth and so on until another brand launches in the industry, gets some celebs involved and steals the attention. I’ve been in numerous meetings over the years as a junior whereby I’ve heard managers say to their client that a huge prize is extremely important or else no one will want to engage and clients have started to believe that over the years as well.

Are you telling me that these people who see your ad running on Facebook offering a huge incentive to play/participate are going to like your page or even view it after the contest/campaign has stopped running and the huge incentive is given out? The answer is no. Agencies, stop with the bu***** of telling your clients that they were fake profiles and it’s just a trend for people to  ‘unlike’ your page and have the engagement drop after a campaign has ended.

I’ve seen how agencies that were once built to get creative and independent thinkers together, to work together in order to create something spectacular….to build and sustain a brand’s rep, to be the digital face of the brand, to understand the brand more than their significant others, these same agencies have made their employees corporate slaves. They’ve created hierarchy beyond imagination, they’ve put account managers who look good on paper at a pedestal when it’s the account execs and the community managers who actually understand the brand. They’ve put the word ‘strategy’ in the horror section, made people scared of the word, made people think that strategists are the Adonis in a pool full of mortals. The word is so overused, overdone and misused that I’d put it alongside bae in the urban dictionary.

A few days back I wrote about how visiting agencies these days are pretty much on the same lines as going to a funeral. Creative minds are overlooked, people don’t ‘work together’ anymore. Internal communication tools are now used to talk to your colleagues as opposed to swinging by their desk and actually talking, exchanging opinions….! Thing will not be discussed unless put on a task that’s assigned with a ‘detailed brief,’ questions will follow which need to have detailed answers and the process goes on and on. The creative department is tormented to get designs and ideas out in 20 minutes, if a brief can’t be cracked in a day, they’re told that they’re not creative. Account execs are not even included in things like pitches and ‘strategy’ because you know, they’re account executives, and what could they possible know, right? Account managers are dumped with 10 brands to manage, 7 of them they secretly hate and have no interest in. People who love fashion are managing cars, writers are stuck project managing, animators are stuck with static designs…….which makes me wonder whatever happened to specialization? Whatever happened to agencies finding the perfect fit for the accounts they have and who would work best on them? Now a days, agencies are paying recruiters huge sums of money to find someone who is extraordinary on paper and has a track record that would put Einstein to shame. And sadly enough, the passionate ones who want to work with the brand, who eat and live the brand or perhaps even want to work with the agency are left out. The people who could actually make a difference are looked over because they either don’t have experience or they don’t come from a better agency or are not the right nationality.

Let me put this across, I’ve worked with a team of all freshers on a regional account that probably shelled out more money than 5 global brands put together. It was demanding, it was exhausting, it was constant chaos but the team I had were the most passionate set of people I had ever come across….they brought ideas to the table, gave their opinions, knew the fans by names, got mad (a bit scary) when someone ‘dissed’ the brand…they just got it….I valued their opinion more than any other person because they understood the brand, each and every single day they lived the brand, they engaged with the fans, they talked to them, they understood the fans and in spite of all the money we had on campaigns and to do ‘big things’ our success was in the engagement and how we would all sit together and discuss about what the fans wanted, how we’d communicate this to the clients, phase out what was working and what wasn’t, improvise (not with more budget but with time and passion) And when we all put our heads together to create something, magic happened. They were my colleagues not my account executives, I didn’t regard myself as their manager, I was one of them. Nothing was above me and I thoroughly enjoyed doing community management with them so I could understand the people who engaged with us...also 40 platforms to manage and 10 accounts wasn’t a joke but the drive these individuals had were incredible and we were satisfied.

That is what digital advertising, should be. I miss working with people on things they’re passionate about. I miss advertising when it was simple not how everyone seems to over-complicate the most simple of thing to appear like they’re doing an important job. I miss agency culture and I miss that overall passion that people needed to have in order to work in this industry.

To the clients out there, hire an agency based on the people they have who will take on your account eventually, don’t hire an agency because of its name. The agency is not handling your account, the people are.

In the words of Ogilvy, I sign off with “The public is more interested in personalities than in corporations.”