Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? For a Loeries virgin, the annual weekend of awards and debauchery was something of an eye-opener. The work was inspiring. The dress code was suitably kooky. And the awards ceremonies were big. Certainly bigger than expected. With uber-graphics, pounding audio and a massive, people-dwarfing stage.

The response from the attendees was less so.

I was expecting a kind of competitive chaos of cheers and jeers as the evenings wore on.  But it was more like general rumble. Something to do with drinking all day, I’m sure. The only Agencies who made any serious noise were Jupiter and Ogilvy. Perhaps because, for the first time in its 31 year history, the Loeries was held in Cape Town, home to a sizable portion of these agencies’ headcount.

The Cape Town location had its pros and cons, according to Loeries veterans. Younger ad hipsters lamented the lack of intimacy that the mini-mecca of Margate afforded. While older dudes gushed about the widened range of activities: smaller, invite-only parties and a lead up of fringe events hosted by local agencies. Much nicer than mingling with the hoi-palloi in a tent, darling.

For those new to Cape Town, the mercurial weather was also a dampener, no pun intended.  Unseasonably, – but still predictably – wind and rain lashed Camps Bay and Long street, the centres for Saturday’s smchoozing and cruising, resulting in cancelled events and streaky makeup (although, I’m not sure the latter wasn’t deliberate…creatives!)

It didn’t stop the party. Marquee clad Long Street was at the heart of the late night action. But I heard more than one “VIE” (Very Important Ego) ticket holder wonder what they were really getting for their money. Organisers gleefully extolled the virtues of free transport and entrance to the ‘free food and booze’ areas of the events, but one has to wonder if one can really eat a grand’s worth of fish samoosas. And while I don’t doubt that hiring Goldfish as the entertainment wasn’t cheap, you didn’t need to be inside the Marquee to enjoy their groovy sounds.

Speaking of the free booze, I can understand keeping your mouth shut about what’s being poured for you gratis, but I did get a little annoyed forking out over R15 for a Heineken, the only beer allowed at the Long Street and Battle of the Bands events. And I wasn’t the only one raising an eyebrow at inflated prices. One hotel guest told me that he could only get room service if the order was over R120. A bit steep when you just want a toasted sandwich. This doesn’t bode well for 2010.

This is no low key event – the lavish spending was obvious. Good for Cape Town, as the Mayor, Alderman Dan Plato and Helen Zille, Premier of the Western Cape both happily pointed out. But it rang a little hollow as agency folk stood around the champagne, oysters and top of the range sound equipment, talking about tightened budgets, the effects of the recession and the challenge of finding great diversity talent. And I couldn’t help wondering if the ad industry is so keen to lose its ‘ponytailed, coke sniffing’ image, why it’s most high profile event of the year is mostly about the hangovers.

- Kate Wolters lives a hybrid life. She’s the group communications manager for a brand consultancy and served as the MarkLives & MandyLives social editor at the 2009 Loerie awards. Kate is riveted by how digital and social networking is changing the way we communicate, but wonders how she’s going to remember all her log in details.  Follow her occasional tweets on twitter www.twitter.com/katewolters

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? With Loeries 2009 just past Mandy de Waal looks at how digital and mobile technologies are forcing the reinvention of advertising.

Before you lift that glass of bubbly to your lips, take a look around your world. Everything you know is about to change. Forever. The continued growth of the mobile market together with the coming broadband boom and rise of telecommunications entrepreneurs and competition to Telkom means that cellular and internet connectivity is going to be more pervasive than it ever has been. This as key municipalities and government (at last) start their own broadband initiatives to get cities wired. Even Knysna and Royal Bafokeng have got in on the act realizing that broadband is directly connected to regional economic growth and development.

What this means for marketers and agencies is a complete revision of the advertising model as consumers begin to live in channels that are social, connected and dynamically changing all the time. And as they do South Africa’s top experts offer insight to agencies about how the coming revolution will affect them.

MARK SHERRINGTON: “The whole advertising model is inappropriate. Advertising agencies think in terms of media, they just can’t help themselves. When TV started 50 years ago agencies took radio ads and put visuals onto them. The same thing has happened with the internet. If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. What we are dealing with is not just a media but a social forum, a distribution channel, an aggregator, a connector. An exchange that has technology at its heart so it is changing all the time. If what you are doing is writing ads to distribute via media channels then the entire way you are looking at digital is wrong. Although traditional advertising talks about attitudes and behaviours, fundamentally what agencies are doing is trying to change what people think about a brand. When it comes to digital you are interested in what people think, but you are fundamentally trying to change what they do. This is why digital is so measurable and accountable because it affects what people do. Then the sheer pace of digital is overwhelming and the traditional model works completely differently to the way digital works. Digital is more dynamic, immediate, and demands real time thinking. Because of this you have to experiment in a way you can’t in traditional advertising. The heart of advertising is creativity; the creativity you apply in the traditional advertising world is having an idea and finding an expression for that idea. In online creativity is crucial but it is about reconfiguring and finding different connections – you have to be creative in a three dimensional way. Digital brings together a multi-verse of tools, applications and solutions like search, social media, commerce, and aggregation, so creativity is about finding fresh and interesting connection in the way that things work together.” – Sherrington is the Non Executive Chairman of Quirk eMarketing was a brand manager for Unilever and found global brand and market insight company Added-Value.

MATTHEW BUCKLAND: “To decide whether you should advertise online and how much, a brand should ask: what is the internet penetration of my particular target market? That should determine the level of your investment in web, mobile or social media advertising. National internet penetration figures are in fact, and have always been, irrelevant.” – Buckland heads up an innovation start-up called 20FourLabs for Naspers’ 24.com and is the former GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

MIKE STOPFORTH: “There is a growing aversion by consumers to traditional advertisers. It is not a conscious aversion, more a natural, primal response to a serious lack of capacity to consume all the messages and communication that consumers are required to take in on a daily basis. It is not so much a battle between consumers and advertisers nor an uprising. In advertising what is required is a natural progression away from the patterns and behaviour we have come accustomed to. It is about rethinking the approach to consumers as consumers, who simply don’t have the time and space to pay attention to what advertisers would like them to pay attention to. Attention is a scarce commodity that we now have to vie for.” – Stopforth heads up Cerebra, and is a technology commentator for local media. A co-founded of Afrigator and 27dinner Stopforth lectures on social networking at business schools and universities.

ANDREA MITCHELL: “Advertisers are already moving into the digital realm, as they know it’s more cost effective and of course, measurable. Other mediums are feeling the pinch, but I’m pleased to say, digital is smiling as a result! And of course, there’s the matter of consumers no longer tolerating being “told” what they should or shouldn’t – do/have/get/be – thanks to digital’s influence. Advertisers are realising this. But a lot of education is still required though.”
- Mitchell has been actively involved in digital marketing since 1997 and is hugely respected in the digital marketing field. She is the founder of digiVOX, a specialist digital marketing agency.

GRANT SHIPPEY: “Is traditional media measurement an ineffectual stab in the focus group dark? Broadband and mobile is here. Experiment. Measure everything. Make profit… and know where it came from.” – Shippey is the CEO of Amorphous New Media. Shippey serves on the e-commerce committee of the Direct Marketing Association and speaks on the conference circuit.

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? Loeries 2009 happened this past weekend and as creative directors popped corks and downed shooters Jarred Cinman tells us why he believes their job prospects are no longer what it used to be.

I have noticed a strange change in the attitudes of “traditional” advertisers toward digital and mobile over the past year or so. I used to hear them saying that digital would be a niche, more akin to direct mailers, and that nothing would challenge the dominance of the big TV ad.

Now they seem considerably more contrite. Suddenly they’re talking about the need for “integrated” campaigns and lauding the digital dream, whilst still emphasizing the need for traditional advertising methods for brand building and emotive messages.

Personally I think we’re seeing nothing short of the slow death of an industry that has basked in its own glory for 100 years.  From the mad men of the 50’s to the massive conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom, these bloated, self-congratulatory businesses have cynically shaped the world’s ideas on everything from the weight you need to be to be happy to the car you need to drive to get sex. And their time is ending.

That doesn’t necessarily mean their values and agendas are being subverted. Instead they are buying digital agencies like crazy and reshaping their stories to sound like they were ones that invented the internet. But it does point to the devaluing of one particular animal: the Creative Director.

These days he is as likely to be asked for an ROI spreadsheet as he is to recommend a good place to get your forehead pierced. And this is the gift and the sword that digital has wielded. To open the eyes of business to the idea that marketing and advertising can be measured, and that smug and self-satisfied post-modernist perfume ads with anorexic women embracing swans probably don’t sell products.

Digital is all about measurement. About truth. And about using that truth to make better decisions, refine messages and calculate your engagement with customers. And as that happens, and the world speeds up, the time allowed to produce ads will decline, along with the budgets to do so, and the great creatives will, I believe, be a thing of past. Replaced by a different kind of genius who understands statistics instead of emotion, and twitter rather than glitter.

And it would be senseless to lament this because, after all, this is not art. It is selling toilet paper and tampons and cheap holidays to Greece. And the less money and energy that is wasted in euphemizing that the better for us all.

- Jarred Cinman is software director at Cambrient. He co-founded Johannesburg’s first professional web development company and was one of the founders of VWV Interactive, for many years the premier creative web business in the country, winning numerous Loeries and international awards.

At least the T&A was equal opportunity at some parties #Loeries 2009 (Kate Wolters as @marklives)

Mayoral-party #Loeries 2009 (Kate Wolters as @marklives)

Long Street Ego Graffiti #Loeries 2009 (Kate Wolters as @marklives)

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? As you party at the end ofthe world here is a guide on waving former clients goodbye (hint: no middle finger involved).

In advertising it is inevitable that agencies will win and lose clients. Not everyone takes it equally well. There seems to be a genuine disconnect in how clients and agencies respectively react to the breaking up of their work relationships. For the agency it is often bruising. Egos are upset. The spin begins – “We are divorcing our client” is how one industry executive spun the recent loss of an account his agency held over several decades. Word circles town of how heavy-handed/anti-creative/abusive the client actually is. Anonymous forums like that of BizCommunity offers ample opportunity for packing some punches. On client side there is a polite shrug and vague press release thanking past contributions…We asked some industry veterans from the agency world for their best tips to breaking up etiquette.

* Do not enter into a ‘divorce mentality’. It’s only business.

* It needs to be fair, direct and quick for both parties.

* Be open and honest about the issues that have caused the break up – both agency and Client will learn a lot from it.

* The balance of intellectual depth and strategy rests with the client these days. Changing agencies is really not as cumbersome as it was years ago when the intellectual depth lay with the agency. This shows how the power has shifted in the past 30 years. It’s sad but true.

* Remember that at some future stage that account could be back in the circuit and you might be sexier and more competent than before.

* This is a very small industry and not only do people talk, but they move into new roles that could land them in the potential new client’s head of marketing position that could influence the pitch you’re working on.

* Always have a reason to stay in touch.

* Secret pitches, when the incumbent agency is not even aware that their client is out looking for alternatives, isn’t cool. Clients get a bad name – and so does the replacement agency.

* Ensure that mutual respect is maintained.

* And post break-up no bad mouthing….

- With thanks to Fraser Lamb, Group CEO of Y&R SA; Alistair King, Group Chief Creative at King James Group; Claire Cobbledick, Deputy Managing Director at The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town; Danni Vos, Chief Executive Officer at Hello World Agency; Charl Nel, Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Capitec Bank

Why thinking ‘none of my business’ may mean you should get out of the Business.  By Mike Abel, CEO Australia, M&C Saatchi

In my early years in the advertising agency industry, there was a poster on the wall of the office where I worked that read: “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” I believe John Le Carre got it right when he wrote these words as they sum up the manner in which some members of the Agency world have lost their way.

We’re in an era when creative has been dumbed down through process and formulation and where we rarely see a truly original Big Idea freshly executed.  We’re operating at a time when many agencies – and even some clients – seem to have forgotten the fundamental needs of the consumers: to feel valued and value, loved, affirmed and rewarded. They don’t seem to grasp that the WHAT hasn’t changed but the HOW has. The key word is ‘relevance’. To be truly successful you must have a fundamental ability to help grow your clients’ market share.

Yet for too long, there has been a tendency to focus on what’s irrelevant at the expense of what is important. What do I mean by irrelevant? I am talking about a skittish focus on elements like channel, Web 2.0, winning awards, and ‘me too’ campaigns.  At the same time, there is a dearth of trust between agency and client (remember ‘trust’?) and, with that lack of trust, too little focus on the consumer.

It’s important to realise successful advertising outcomes are achieved not through dumbing down the creative process or ramping up the latest technology but through good old-fashioned approaches such as understanding needs. I include in this, understanding the client’s objectives; understanding their business; understanding what makes them and their markets tick.

Some agencies may have lost sight of the need to get inside their client and learn about the market factors that affect its sector, and its growth potential. Some don’t even think it’s their business. They are too often pursuing a passion for tinsel (read Awards) when they should be passionate about immersion, participation, and resonance.

What ever happened to the good old days when the account executive and the creative got into the car with the company sales rep and went out into the field? That was a great way to get inside a client’s business and really understand its drivers. Yet these days, that function is largely fulfilled by promotional agencies.

I once worked with an account director who came to me complaining he was bored with working on his fuel account and needed a new challenge to keep motivated. I asked him, “What’s happening on the fuel competitor’s forecourts? What do their convenience stores look like? What’s their biggest selling item?” Needless to say, he couldn’t answer any of these questions. Five minutes later he was in his car heading off on a tour of the forecourts – and he found some valuable answers out in the field.

The key message is this: agencies are only valuable when you don’t know where the agency begins and the client ends; where the two function as one effective team and when your business is their business. That’s when you know why you’re in business; and as long as it’s your focus you’ll probably always be in business.

So as you attend this year’s Loeries ceremony, you might reflect upon the sound you’re hearing. Would you rather be listening to the applause of your peers and colleagues – or the loud ringing of the cash registers of your clients? I can tell you which one will keep you the business.

Part 4 of our special Loeries coverage. Check back daily for new stories.

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? With Loeries 2009 looming Mandy de Waal speaks to Gareth Leck of Joe Public about how creativity is being sold down the river by marketers obsessed by advertising to sell.

As the recession bites deep and advertising spend is slashed, the temptation to trade creativity off for a quick sell is overwhelming.  MD of Joe Public, Gareth Leck says only brave brand builders are standing firm and not bowing to the pressure of going for the quick buck.

“The world needs more creativity and advertising is essentially creativity, but it goes without saying that it is creativity based on strategy, well thought through scientific principles and a sound business. I strongly believe if you don’t have creativity then advertising won’t work,” says Leck.

“The 80’s were the golden age of brand building in South Africa but now everyone is more concerned about selling and meeting quarterly targets than building brands. A lot of the work is pure sales generation.

The average tenure of a CEO or marketing director is nothing more than two to three years. When they come in these directors are under an unbelievable level of pressure from shareholders and the board, which effects advertising. The recession has worsened this and now only the bravest are doing good work. Generally marketers are cutting budgets and doing sales promotions. For the most part local advertising has become mediocre.”

This at a time when the rise and rise of social networks and pervasiveness of information together with advertising saturation is seeing consumers crave authenticity and real connections.

“Speaking authentically to your market is highly creative. It is all about creativity. Consumers want to consume authentic brands. They want to be communicated with in a real and authentic way, but for the most part all they’re getting is mediocre sales promotions. Brands aren’t cottoning on to the need for authenticity and connection, and in these tough times tend to stick to old formulas. This is exactly the time that brands need to understand consumers, meet their needs and become a whole lot more creative.

Marketers need to realize that consumers consume creative. That creativity is the product. It should be the only measure of advertising. People largely think the Loeries are a wank filled with drunken kids celebrating advertising. They’re missing the point. You need a driver of creativity in order to celebrate it. Great creative that is on strategy will always deliver to the business that it works on, but this is discounted. The alternative is to do mediocre work and currently there’s more than enough of that on the market.”

Part 3 of our special Loeries coverage. Check back daily for new stories.

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? With Loeries 2009 looming Herman Manson asks if the ad agency business model remains sustainable.

Has the business model of ad agencies evolved and innovated to keep up with a changing world? Ask its own executives and the answer seems to be a resounding no. Former agency man and now Marketing Executive for Capitec Bank, Charl Nel, goes so far as to backdate the agency model to the ’70s, with little interest from agencies in evolving their business models (buying a digital outfit doesn’t really cut it), expanding on their intellectual capital, financial models or general management practise. Most could not even be bothered to build their own brands.

“Most advertising agencies still use the business model from the ’70s, when advertising started to become the big boom industry,” says Nel. “Here and there we have cosmetic changes to agency business models. The industry has not kept up with the changes in business and also not with how the marketing departments they serve have evolved over the years.”

Jerry Mpufane, MD of Draftfcb Johannesburg, agrees that the way agencies organise to service its clients is not sustainable.  “There exists an alarming scarcity of talent in key areas, our fees don’t represent of the worth of our work, many agencies are not financially viable, and in the main we still talk (not walk) the through-the-line approach to communications,” says Mpufane.

This says Nel is the reason for the plethora of smaller niche businesses supporting this field and why the real drivers in the industry, the big agencies, are not playing the same role that they did in the past. “Agencies have thus let their own power slip from them by not adapting to the needs of the situation over time,” says Nel. “Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle and this power-shift will never be corrected.”

It’s not only the agencies that are at fault. Marketers share the blame. “Client compensation models pay as little as possible for ads and only a very few pay for innovative thinking,” says Edward W. Russell, Assistant Professor of Advertising at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “As they say, you get what you pay for.”

Russell says that as soon as agency talk compensation models at the client, you get a different department that buys commodity products and doesn’t know one from another. Marketing and Finance (or worse, purchasing) don’t talk, as he points out.

Alistair King, Group Chief Creative of King James, believes that the ad industry must be the one industry in the world that doesn’t get paid according to the quality of the product it produce. “Some agencies make steak, some make meatballs, but we all charge burger prices,” says King. He maintains that in the current model there is no role for measuring and rewarding quality ideas. The agency simply hands over its intellectual capital in return for an hourly fee.

Nel says he used to believe that agencies should be remunerated in the same way as a Deloitte’s or KPMG. Now working on client side he has come to realise that agencies are a supplier like any other and should be remunerated part for its hours and part a professional/experience fee.

Looking towards the future King says he believes agencies will generate ideas, register and own them as intellectual property and sell or franchise it to clients to use.

Agencies need to change in tandem with the expanded role of marketing departments in the corporate environment. Marketing departments enjoy considerably more power than in the past, with increased capacity, intellectual capital and a say in the strategic management of the companies they serve. How this passed agencies by is anybody’s guess. What is clear is that to survive they will need to adapt their business models – and fast.

Part 2 of our special Loeries coverage. Check back daily for new stories.