How to Save Advertising Agencies

Everybody seems to be looking for the next thing for ad agencies

They are correct in doing so.

Things aren’t right in Adland.

Google and Facebook are out for our lunch money. Clients are building in-house teams. Big conglomerates are shedding personnel and building a new narrative selling consulting services and, yes, even tapping the CRM bandwagon. The same area they were making fun of till a couple of years ago.

Let’s face it. We managed to put ourselves in the spot, and for once, we cannot campaign our way out of the problem. As an industry, we are in dire straits, but at its core, our fundamental issue is, we forgot what our job is in the first place and how to do it.

Due to Covid-19, developments in our industry accelerated. The global lockdowns, work from home, inability to produce content, cancelation of live events, depression, and a fast turn to digital were catalysts that rapidly changed the landscape in which we operated.

What we did to overcome all this? Actually, we coined the phrases “The new normal” and “We are in this together” and started trying to make everybody forget what our jobs were. We stopped trying to sell products and started selling vague causes that we weren’t able to deliver on behalf of…