Advertising's Real Problem Is the Agency Commoditization Crisis
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Agencies are confronting a crisis of commoditization that could unravel the business. The sink-drain of commoditization keeps eroding margins on media and creative services, backing agencies into a position where they need to cheat to stay alive. That’s the real cause of the production transparency (aka fraud) issues that the ANA has alleged. Any solution that doesn’t address this isn’t a solution at all.
Yet lately a few voices, most prominent among them consultant Michael Farmer, have proposed that fixing the ad business requires adding a layer of project management and accounting of the creative enterprise. Execs who give creative teams free rein, and the client’s unreasonable demands wanting more for less, they argue, have nearly destroyed the business. Apportioning and measuring creative time by producing more elaborate statements of work and detailed pricing, on the other hand, will restore accountability and get clients to truly value the work again.
That’s dead wrong for two reasons. The first is that project management and detailed specifications don’t really work.
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