Over the years of multiple client and prospect pitches I’ve earned a bit of a reputation for a love of boxes and triangles. It’s true. As a visual thinker and a prolific doodler, I do love my boxes and triangles and the infinite doodles worked around them.
In my professional life, this particular one was an oft used favorite, always accompanied with the famous adage (not mine), that, as a client, you may pick any two sides of the triangle to the detriment of third. You require great work, quick? Doesn’t come cheap. Great work on a budget? Requires patience. But need to bang out some quick formulaic DR ads cheap? No problem. And on it goes.
For many years, this simple formula, helped client leaders manage demanding clients and sticky beak procurement bods, with this simple supply and demand structure.
It’s been a while since I’ve used this particular triangle in the advertising world, but recently re-reading David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man (now in it’s impressive 51st year of publication) reminded me of how much and how little has changed.
Today you can have great work, quickly, at an affordable price. The BIG BUT being…..if you are doing genuinely authentic, impactful and fulfilling work.
Here’s 3 quick reasons why:
- Speed of delivery. Aided by the advancement of both mechanical and electronic technologies we can move at an accelerated pace without premium. Pre-production planning, rights management, equipment rental, edit facilities are all platformed and can be booked, operated and edited at speed, without premium.
- Quality of delivery. The advertising industry is full of exceptional talent governed by increasingly mediocre leadership and conditions. Great talent, old and new, is more willing to bet on themselves than their management. And a global pandemic gave many the nudge they needed. Gather great minds, rally around a purpose that genuinely matters, and ask the team to charge hard. It’s not practically difficult. What is difficult is forming absolute belief for the mission. Because too many impact agenda’s are shallow and fractious. And great creators are great great BS sniffers.
- Cost of Delivery. With an iPhone 15 Pro you can film in Dolby Vision 4k, shoot stills with 48 MP, record sound in stereo and edit in CapCut, all from the back seat of a cab. The cost of professional equipment has similarly improved. Even the more complex multi-camera shoots can operate with a handful of great freelancers. The only production costs that have increased significantly are insurances. We have ourselves to blame for that.
In a space increasingly lacking in authentic impactful story-telling, any purpose driven organization offering great creative minds the opportunity to make a difference in the world, will not find resources uninterested, unavailable or unaffordable.The greatest issue we face in advertising is the growing chasm between genuine intention and impact-badging. Having recently resigned a key client for impact-badging, this particular quote from David Ogilvy (accepting the Mad Men gender bias) still rings very true:
“I also resign accounts when I lose confidence in the product. It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.”
In today’s world there are plenty of shallow vacuous advertising briefs to keep the most mediocre agencies in business. But the true craving and exceptional talent increasingly lies in the small but growing world of genuine, authentic commercial impact, or compassionate capitalism, as we like to think of it. It’s a special place where you’ll find available, affordable and ambitious creative talent in abundance.