Make Room, Make Room!

Approaching Babylon
Buzzwords are not always the domain of frivolous teenage pop cultures. They hold equal importance, status and popularity in what is called the “corporate world.”

Closely related to this post-modern capitalist phenomenon is advertising, which, in fact, reflects perhaps the corporate culture’s most “creative” sides.

Ad agencies are a company’s or a multinational’s creative and media partners, and within these agencies lie (pun not intended), the “creative” representation of the corporate culture’s otherwise posh but “straight” mindset and behaviorism.

Thus, it is not surprising to see the frequent coining and coming & going of various buzzwords in the advertising world as well.

These days, especially in many developing countries of Asia, the hot words in advertising are “breaking the clutter” and “out of the box thinking.”

These two terms are doing the rounds in most Pakistani advertising agencies as well. And why not, because quite like in many Asian countries, in Pakistan too advertising agencies and their clients are working overtime churning out all sorts of advertising material like never before.

This is being done to meet the demands and attentions of a growing consumer culture and the many new advertising avenues in the electronic media (i.e. private television and FM radio channels).

Another popular avenue is hoardings and billboards and these along with newspapers have seen a tremendous growth as advertising placement opportunities in the last five years or so.

Unfortunately though, all this has also plunged the country’s brand new taste for post-Cold-War corporate capitalism into a state of arrogant, careless and smug disposition. An attitude that is least concerned about issues such as environmentalism, social sensitivities and simple aesthetics.

Trees are being cut down by city governments to accommodate the raising trend and need of advertisers and their clients to erect humongous billboards; newspapers and magazines, some highly respected ones, are freely allowing the availability of large spaces on their front pages (and even on certain magazine’s front covers!), for agencies to splatter their clients’ brands and ads upon; and almost all television channels (private and state-owned), are running more commercials than programs. Many of these commercials suddenly pop up in-between programs, and these include certain supposedly serious political talk shows and even during the news.

Nothing is spared. Agencies and specialized media planning companies like Mindshare hardly do any planning, while slotting their clients’ commercials wherever and whenever. So do not be surprised if you see a hip cola ad or a bubblegum ad smack dab in the middle of a religious program, and/or a Rooh Afza ad or a cheap washing soap commercial between stylized pop shows or a fashion program. All are welcome, anytime, anywhere. What planning?


Clutter vs. Clutter
Now coming back to the two buzz terms (“clutter breaking” and “out of the box”), the irony is that both the agencies and their clients often use these while planning their campaigns, but they usually end up contributing to the clutter!

Not that they are not conscious of this. Because if one attends the various advertising seminars and conferences in this country, these usually end up being a cribbing session in which the agencies accuse the clients of not allowing them to experiment and be different in their advertising, while the clients complain that Pakistani agencies are not as good/creative as most other Asian agencies (especially like those in India).

Both are correct. But the problem is not that simple. Both the agencies and the clients have suddenly been caught in a storm whipped up by the rampant advent of post-Cold-War capitalism and the widespread effects of what came in as the “Information Age” in the early ‘90s.

The dynamics of preparing an advertising campaign have changed too. “Strategy” (Creative and Media), now plays a major role in helping the clients determine an effective course in all that “clutter” and rush in trying to make a name and a buck in the new consumer-oriented economics.

Product to the people!
Most agencies and clients are aware of this as well. So what’s the problem?

Research. Credible research. Research on how exactly these economic changes are affecting the sociology and economic behavior of the people (especially the urban middle and lower middle-classes that make the bulk of the consumers these agencies and companies are interested in).

The “insights” that emerge within the agencies and their clients regarding their consumers’ social and economic habits are usually based on either superficial research or on assumptions that may not be true any more.

That’s why if, for example, an agency prepares a supposedly “clutter breaking” campaign, the clients are reluctant to go through with it assuming that the “average Pakistani” would not understand it.

This is ironic because on most occasions than not, it is the same average Pakistani who clearly appreciates a “good, clutter breaking” Indian ad and understands it as well.

Unfortunately most agencies have also found themselves being a bit too presumptuous in this respect. Because even when a campaign is in the strategy stage, a red flag goes up warning the creatives to remain direct and “simple.” Which is fine. But only if a hundred other campaigns are not sounding almost as direct and simple!

And even when the client does break out and demands a genuinely “clutter breaking” blockbuster, the agencies (and as well as the clients), look no further than India, eventually ending up making pale versions of popular Indian advertising campaigns.

It all goes back to square one. With the agencies cribbing about the clients’ lack of creativity and vision and the clients whining about the agencies’ lack of creative initiative and understanding.

In other words the clutter is never broken.

Pakistani cities, especially Karachi, are covered with numerous gaudy hoardings, and the television channels and FM stations seem to be playing more ads than either programs or songs during that ubiquitous “choti si break” (that is anything but choti!).

All these may be about various different products and brands but seem to be saying the same things and almost using the same words and imagery. So much so that these words and images have lost all their meaning, relevance and power.

The reality today is not suitable for the kind of advertising, for example, David Ogilvy, applauded and promoted. Because with so much advertising and brands doing the rounds, advertising requires to be entertaining as well if it wishes to be seen or heard without the consumer flipping the channel.

But even when a campaign is designed keeping in mind the above mentioned scenario, quite like most private TV channels, even here the insights regarding the taste of the “masses” in entertainment is tainted by half-baked assumptions or beliefs that may not be relevant anymore.

Elephant men
Advertising agencies have always cribbed about unimaginative clients. So much so that in many agencies blaming the client for mediocre advertising has become a convenient excuse.

But this is changing, even if the clients aren’t. Well, at least in many mid-level agencies that are strengthening their strategy making sides, enough to sometimes end up convincing their clients to do something new and daring.

Ironically, (or maybe not), things in this respect have come to a standstill in most larger agencies as opposed to the mid-level ones.

It is these large agencies that have started to seem like docile white elephants even to the point of the top management failing (or refusing) to comprehend or implement the rapidly changing dynamics of modern advertising.

Because strangely many of these agencies still depend on old and worn out ideas about making a campaign or sustaining a client. The result being that these agencies may seem impressive physically and populated with perfumed hip personnel, they continue to lose ground and clients to various mid-level agencies.

In the middle of it all
It is the mid-level agencies that have started to have a time of their lives. These agencies which, if the trend continues, will become a lot bigger and more powerful than ever within a matter of maybe two years?
And these are also the agencies that are setting the standards of that much required and effective middle-ground between big agency lethargy and small agency inexperience.

It is not surprising then to witness mid-level agencies like, Adcom, Synergy, Bull’s Eye and Conquest sprinting ahead of big names such as Orient, Interflow, Lowe & Rauf (formerly R-Lintas) and JWT-Asiatic.

These “giants” seem to be standing still, held together by a couple of their long-standing clients and not by a vision or a modern, dynamic modus operandi.


Survival of the fleetest
Well this sort of an expansion is at least one way of going about making some intelligent and visionary sense in the quicksilver scheme of things out there.

The other way is the one adopted by mid-level agencies: To make the (Creative and Media) strategy part of advertising their major strengths and taking a rolled-sleeves and extremely hands-on policy towards the whole idea of constructing (more than merely making), a campaign. This is working too. Each one of these agencies has enjoyed unprecedented growth recently.

Then there is a third way. A way that has little to do with visions or dynamic action but more with hammering on a mentality set by agencies whose expertise lie in the handling of large government accounts.

This requires an extremely narrow but consistently street-smart mind-set. A mind-set that is able to survive and drive through the kind of vicious politics and whiplash that usually accompany government accounts.

But what ails players who have failed to make any good at all from the recent boom in advertising?

It can be as simple as stubbornness on part of the top management to evolve their worn out understanding of the business into a new vision and their insistence on relying on equally worn out and jaundiced criteria to judge the employees’ true potential.

No wonder then most large agencies today seem quite void and hollow from the inside, with employees who go about looking seamless and aimless, cocooned in a compartmentalized culture build with hopelessly half-baked ideas about advertising and about the modern-day ground realities that govern it. At best, their knowledge in this respect remains highly superficial. Lowe & Rauf is a glaring example.

The same can be uttered about a number of multinationals as well. Particularly Unilevers (formerly Lever Brothers).

If you are a Pakistani, have you ever wondered why (comparatively speaking only), campaigns made for local companies seem a lot more “with it,” vibrant and motivated when judged (both for its creative and strategic content), against the many lavish, posh and epic campaigns run by multinational clients?

Is it true then that these large agencies and their multinational clients are suffering from an advertising myopia?

Maybe they are in a state of denial at the reality of mid-level companies and agencies not only catching up fast, but on occasions, outsmarting them.

The Mini Me’s
With the larger agencies gradually stumbling into myopic lethargy and the mid-level ones squarely concentrating on the ever-important strategy aspects of modern-day advertising, it was natural that small agencies would emerge concentrating head-on at the creative sides of the business.

And many such agencies/ “concept houses” have appeared in the past few years. But apart from maybe Bull’s Eye, most of these agencies have not shown any symptoms at all of understanding what amounts to “good, effective advertising.” They seemed to have totally missed the point in this regard, failing to comprehend or appreciate the whole idea of strategy playing the central role in dictating the nature of a campaign’s creatives and its media-related determination.

Unfortunately most small agencies have been no more than either being about coming up with campaigns that are just pretty or worse, mindlessly churned on the one-sided demands of a client.

The result is that if one stumbles over the many advertising seminars I was talking about earlier, interestingly, the most cribbing and whining comes from the large agencies along with these small ones!

It’s all boo-hoo as far as these two are concerned. Not that their complaining about “confused clients” is completely invalid. But the truth is they have missed the point that in this day and age clients are won through the validity and strength of an agency’s strategy making capabilities and their strategic understanding of the products and brands of the client. Clients are not won anymore by presenting pretty creatives only!

What most mid-level agencies have polished in themselves is the careful unfolding of a comprehensive strategic map.

A map that leads to the creatives, making sure that it is not only the larger concept of a campaign that emerges from this map, but every colour used, every word written and every image laid also incorporates the consequentiality of the route, especially regarding the desired position of the brand and what it means, or should mean to the consumer.

And it is this strategic and conceptual consequentiality that is also derived from a clear understanding of certain vital social, economic and sometimes even political make-up and mindset of the targeted consumers.

Such are the complexities of modern-day advertising. Complexities that are refusing to bag attention from large agencies.

Thus it is not surprising to note the gradual decline and in some cases the vanishing of certain very good creative agencies.
MNJ, Sasa, Paragon and Wings, all once upon a time leading agencies in the ‘70s and the early ‘80s, have simply been wiped off the map.

Then smaller agencies like Di’ Hamidi Partnership and Brand Partnership, mid-level ones like Circuit and bigger ones like Spectrum, Lowe & Rauf, and Prestige, all of them once spearheading the pack in terms of smart creativity, are struggling to stay afloat in the new strategy-centric advertising environment.

Taking Tiger Mountain by strategy
Clients today do not accept agencies as being their creative and media partners if their respective agencies are not involved with their brands on a strategic level.

This is easier said than done. Because with most larger agencies stubbornly refusing to swallow the rules of the new scenario, and the smaller agencies left totally baffled by the same scenario, it is not surprising that at the moment there are only a handful of worthy experts available in the field of advertising strategy in Pakistan.

And interestingly, (if not surprisingly), all of them are stationed in the more aggressive and strategy-friendly mid-level agencies.

But I should also mention here that even though most agencies do arrive at the doorstep of the clients claiming to be strategy buffs, much of it turns into embarrassing eyewash.

Because even when many agencies do recognize this most important aspect of modern-day advertising, many of them unfortunately treat it as something having a fixed formula and layout which can be followed without much thought and made to look “impressive” if dotted with statistical fanfare.

Most “genuine” strategists like say that even though a lot of agencies try to make a total fool out of clients in the name of strategy, most clients are not exactly getting fooled.

And they are also right to suggest that not only should the client service people be thoroughly trained in how a solid strategy and the consequential concept/campaign takes shapes, the creative department too should be made aware of the process.