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Agencies might be trying to push their differences in a crowded market, but if there’s one thing they share it’s their disagreement on the use of the word ‘advertising’. Rachael Micallef takes a look at the widening vocabulary agencies are using to define themselves and why.
If you work in an agency and had to explain to your mum or elderly uncle what it is you do, chances are you’d call it “advertising”. But take a look at the ‘about us’ page of any agency website or motto painted on an office wall and it might say something else: multidisciplinary; integrated; disruptive; connections; impact; activation; communications.
Increasingly, agencies and global networks are adopting multi-syllabic adjectives in lieu of the word that has defined the industry since invention: advertising.
Shakespeare would say, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but it’s been nearly two years since Cummins&Partners CEO Sean Cummins, spoke at length at the AdNews Media Summit on this change. And he was in firm opposition.
“It seems as soon as our industry gives something a name, it fucks everything up and we all start using that name to look like we’re up with it all,” he said at the time. “It’s not content, it’s advertising. It’s not social media, it’s advertising. It’s not activation, fulfilment, behaviour change, hashtag, it’s advertising, advertising, advertising, advertising.”
Maybe. But is it semantics or does it really have an impact on business?
Disrupting the status quo
Whybin\TBWA CEO Paul Bradbury said the agency’s motto ‘The Disruption Company’ is far more than just compelling wording. The phrase is shared across the entire TBWA global network and isn’t anything new. It’s been its modus operandi since 1992 when worldwide chairman Jean Marie Dru published an article about disruption – using the term long before the likes of Uber and Facebook.
It has, however, had a renewed focus within the network in the last 12 months and is used to inform every aspect of the TBWA business, including a practical way of working called Disruption Live.
“As ‘The Disruption Company’ we have a clear purpose to create cultural impact for brands,” Bradbury told AdNews.
“We believe placing brands in culture creates a powerful competitive advantage and source of growth. Therefore we don’t regard our competition as other agencies – creative or media.
“Our competition is everything in culture because we are competing for time and attention.”
More than a year ago, UM rebranded its positioning as a ‘creative connections agency’ to reflect the broader shift in the industry towards owned media as a result of paid media declining.
CEO Ross Raeburn said while the agency obviously still buys media, defining it in the traditional media agency bucket would be wrong given it works outside of those boundaries and actually benchmarks against other definition-defying agencies like Soap, R/GA and One Green Bean.
“Are we a media agency? If you take the narrative that everything is media,” Raeburn said. “If a client’s owned assets drive a better outcome than what we would typically call media, then yes, we are a media agency.
That’s the bit that seems to be getting lost in the discussion.
“We’re a media agency that starts with owned, earned and shared, so we’re more about creative connections than media.”
Is ‘advertising’ facing extinction?
The point many people in the industry have made to AdNews is that ‘advertising’ has become a fairly unsexy word in a world where advertising’s tools, channels and expectations are getting broader than ever.
The Works creative partner Paul Swann believes the term has Mad Men connotations and given advertising needs to be a very futurefacing business, this could be the reason its usage has waned.
“We’re an industry that loves newness and the word ‘advertising’ does feel a little bit old,” he said.
Penso CEO Con Frantzeskos said the change is a result of evolution in the space. Where there used to be advertising agencies and PR agencies “broadly divided by ‘pay for space’ or ‘pray for space’” 10 or 15 years ago, digital meant there was this idea that advertising was all about different channels. Now what has happened is there has been an evolution back to content,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what the channel is, the channel isn’t the focus. It’s about getting the outcome, whether it should be called advertising or any other description.”
He calls Penso a “growth agency” because describing it as creative doesn’t adequately reflect where it has moved to in this environment need to grow the business and that is the only reason we’re here,” Frantzeskos said. “That solution may be advertising, it may be content, it may not be.”
DDB Sydney MD Nicole Taylor said the problem with the ‘advertising’ tag is that it tends to only be associated with traditional channels.
Taylor explained that her agency is happy to be in the creative agency camp, but she doesn’t see the term as limiting, noting the agency operates in a way that crosses channels and disciplines.
“These days agencies are quick to disassociate with the term ‘advertising agency’ because it somehow has earned a negative or limited association with 30-second TV ads,” Taylor said. “We have a different view. We believe that advertising is the art and craft of building brands, in any channel, in many ways, so in that sense we’re very proud to be called an advertising agency.”
While the TBWA group might have a specific agency slogan, Bradbury is adamant that Whybin’s core business is advertising and that ‘The Disruption Company’ simply highlights its point of difference in the market.
“We are proud to be called an advertising agency,” he said. “Advertising by definition is communication used to promote or sell something. That’s what we do. We employ creativity to deliver exceptional commercial impact for our clients.”
Is there an impact?
If agencies are branding themselves in different ways to better communicate their offerings, does it have an impact on client relationships?
Swann said what an agency calls itself might be part of the equation, but it’s more likely that clients will look at the work. He pointed to Droga5 and Wieden+Kennedy as examples.
Both are known in the US for their creativity, but both use the traditional term ‘advertising’ to define what they do. Swann said it is unlikely clients are avoiding either networks for using the term, given that their output speaks volumes about their innovation.
“When clients are looking to find someone to pitch their business to they want someone progressive and forward-facing. What you call yourself is just a part of that,” he said.
“But what probably overrides that for clients and intermediaries, and for the employees you have, is the output that you’re putting in the world. Definitions are a factor but I doubt anyone making those key decisions is doing it based on how a company articulates itself.”
But Raeburn said one area where branding beyond the term ‘media agency’, has benefited is recruitment. “Would you like to come and work for a media agency or would you like to work for an agency that has its roots in media but can see that everything is media?” he asked. “Here, you can literally come up with an idea that has touchpoints across everything.”
Next on the chopping block?
‘Advertising’ isn’t the only term that might be in a current downswing.
Taylor said that with digital and social growing in importance these terms “in their current form” will become an expectation of how agencies work rather than points of differentiation.
“They will simply be part of the business plan and the mystery and hype will have subsided,” she said.
The blurring of lines makes it increasingly difficult to define agencies – something which rears its head more each year at the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards judging. It’s hard to draw the line.
Swann agreed that change could be coming in the future, but noted the term ‘advertising’ “still has life in it” – at the moment.
“Whether or not the line has been completely blurred I’d say not yet, but I can see a time where the terms have almost no weight because it is just what we do,” he said.
“But we’re not there yet.”
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