An infinite scroll of continuous activity
How the internet is killing the ad agency model and changing marketing
Only 15 years ago, marketing was different.
Digital marketing was a new phrase for most of the world. Even in the economies where the internet first churned up things, the ramifications of marketing moving online were little understood.
One of the reasons for this was also that the old model was so entrenched that no one could quite see beyond it.
Let me explain.
For a long, long time in modern capitalism, messaging and communication was outsourced. This was because of the relative simplicity of the post-war world: companies produced stuff, the consumer came to the store to buy said stuff, and advertisements to help sell this stuff were broadcast on TV/radio, and printed in newspapers.
The creatives for these advertisements were made by agencies. These agencies had copywriters, designers, and generally clever people, who thought through the problem of how to make people buy more of these products, and produced creative campaigns.
They then bought time in the only mass market communication channels possible: TV, radio, and newspapers. The message reached the consumer, and they were influenced to buy, consume, and flaunt.
And then the internet upended everything.
Newspapers were the first to go, with the internet taking over the classifieds - the bread and butter of the newspaper industry. Radio still holds its own locally, but the large public radios that used to drive opinion and commerce have long since been decimated. And as TV gets fragmented with cord-cutters and the move to streaming, even that dominant platform does not have the centrality it once enjoyed.
In a world where companies relied on mass market advertising to reach consumers, the old model made sense. And for the kind of products that need that kind of marketing, they might still do.
But the internet has democratised both production and distribution. There are more markets for different kinds of things. And all of these things are advertised differently: On Instagram, on Twitter, on dedicated websites, on streaming platforms, on podcasts, and so on.
To natively advertise for specific consumer segments on these platforms, you need different kinds of talent, and an innate understanding of the platforms themselves. You need influencers and taste-makers; you need specialisation of a sort that is still finding its feet. Even at the edges of this shift, everything is not clear yet.
And the agencies are simply not ready for this.
Does that mean marketing itself has changed? No, but form and reach have become so important and powerful that I would be a fool to think I could take the old model and apply it to the new world.
It just won’t work.
Back at business school, all we wanted to do was work at an ad agency.
Mudra, Lowe Lintas, Madison - the names rolled off our tongues easily. It was all we marketing majors talked about. We were still the children of the 90s, and we had all watched Dream Merchants, the Zee show that went behind the scenes of the great campaigns of the time. We were deadly serious in our marketing competitions, where we would write clever copy and act in our own ads.
One memorable night, the legendary ad director Prahlad Kakkar was in Coimbatore, and our professors somehow got him to come speak to us. We sat up on our university lawns with him until 1 am, enthralled by his stories of a world we all desperately wanted to be part of.
The campaigns that he spoke about and we were influenced by, were recognisable milestones in Indian consumer culture. Think the Zing Thing of Gold Spot, or the emotional appeal of Hamaara Bajaj. Think Rahul Dravid in the Jam Jam Jammy spots of Kissan Jam, or Suzuki Samurai’s No Problem. We had grown up with these ads, we wanted to make them too.
But few of us actually had the gumption to have a go at an advertising career. Even then, we knew that it was a long, tough road. A couple of us tried, and only one got somewhere.
And then the shift that I describe above happened.
Two years ago, I was in a room where the Madras office of one of India’s top agencies was presenting ideas for a campaign. I was excited, I had heard about this creative team, and I wanted to see what these people, professionals at this, had dreamed up. This was my chance to have a look at the world that gave me the iconic advertisements of my childhood, to understand the creative process, and to work with them.
To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. All of their ideas were half-baked versions of things we had given them as examples, a couple of which I had worked on. There were spelling mistakes on the slides, the design work was shoddy, but most importantly, the measurement, targeting, and distribution models were archaic.
I realised that they simply did not understand.
Does this mean ad agencies themselves are dead?
No, to write off an agglomeration of some of the most creative people on the planet would be a mistake.
But there is a churning underway, a reorganisation of the landscape. There will be more specialisation - Instagram or TikTok agencies, design houses that will work exclusively on D2C products, even Twitter specific copywriting talent. This could also mean smaller agencies, or highly specialised freelancers.
More talent will also move in-house, a result of companies realising that marketing is now an infinite scroll of continuous activity, and that they need full-time creatives to keep it going.
I could go on with these, but you get it.
We are so used to the online world now that we fail to remember that even 10 years ago, the world was a completely different place. The secondary and tertiary effects of the internet are still reaching us, and as marketers, we need to be aware of the change already wrought on our profession, so we know to adapt when the next shift comes.
Because it will come.
And the world will change again.