Charlie Carpenter’s Post

It's A great point, and worthy of discussion, I think lot of things have happened. 1) People have become obsessed with immediate and short term results so the focus has shifted towards efficiency, not exploration 2) Data seems to be our god, not consumers, we seem ever more fascinated by data and ignorant to people. We are monkeys pulling levers to see what happens, not people observing and debating 3) We have lost of love of people, our industry used to respect and admire people, we'd love learning what makes them work. Since social media divided the world we've been told that other people are bad and to even try to see why they work the way they do, we are "bad people" - using stupid language to make the point. We somehow think people who prioritize other things or who vote for other people or who choose different strategies, are stupid or bad or racist or ignorant or woke or whatever. 4)Our industry seems to want diversity but doesn't really like it , we don't welcome other people in, we don't like people who see things differently, we don't like people asking big questions, we want to say we want it

The immediacy of a short term sales spike is being chased instead of longer term brand investment. Which is why you're seeing a lack of creative ambition. As we all know, if it's allowed to continue for an extended period, it ends badly. But it's a pressure that everyone is under in every aspect of life at the moment. When economic confidence returns generally it follows that brand building confidence follows it. People are just trying to get through this month. They'll worry about the rest of the year later. I often think that the advertising and communications industry lacks an understanding of the real world economic drivers of businesses, and just how brutal it is out there.

Really interesting view point here. From a hiring point of view we do see this also. Our business is split 50:50 with hiring across agency and also brand side roles, and we place Marketing Directors through to Head of Brand and CMOs into client side roles, at leading brands. Some of the talent we work with have a real ambition to want to make great work, and when we meet them they talk about work they'd love to make, and "what gets them out of bed." The challenge they face is when they're in their roles the reality is very different. I get the sense that the pressure brand side teams are under is huge at the moment, their budgets are getting squeezed, they're hugely overstretched and looking over the shoulder to see if they're next on the chopping block. It's quite a tough environment to work in. This is naturally having an impact on how they're getting their creative work made. But we're seeing some very interesting agency business models emerge and these partnerships that are forming will hopefully help to shape some success I think. These new ways of working we think should drive better, more effective work.

I think its a viscous cycle really. People are formed by the culture they are trained in. Most of the big brand building Clients have exited the arena now, too expensive, don’t get programmatic etc. The people coming through behind them have been forged in a more tactical world and don’t know what they don’t know. I do sense though it is coming full circle as the lack of competitive advantage from even well delivered tactics makes it a very expensive long term choice.

Hi Charlie, I agree with what you are saying. I think there a few macro trends that has resulted in this. 1) In many businesses 50%+ of the marketing budget is now spent on performance marketing that historically would have been designated 'trade marketing' or sales support. And so in real terms 'creative' driven marketing budgets are much smaller 2) Whilst data/ analytics are critical and has fuelled a revolution in marketing, there is a risk that it has led to 'marketing by numbers' which deadens creativity and can feed an ever more onerous task of justifying every penny marketing spend which demoralises the team 3) The fragmentation of media and the declining power of mass media events has taken away the very public area to deliver a high impact brand building action that everyone in the company will see. Great Brands are built by being very clearly defined and consistently executed over time and all touch points - plus high impact creativity that gives a memorable hook for the target audience.

I only speak from my humble opinion, as a DoP who’s worked on ads for the last 25yrs, so I’m not marketing per se, but the person they use to achieve their goals. Dominic Chambers said it perfectly…’marketing by numbers’…. I have also noticed in the last 5yrs+ that the people I’m dealing with are less creative and innovative, less brave and forward thinking, and more desperately trying to jump on the bandwagon of insta, TikTok etc. They are driven by numbers…full stop. Marketing/PR/advertising execs are now hired for their understanding of these short form social media platforms, and NOT for any skills, talents or creative flares of yesteryear. They are not trailblazers, they are likes/shares hunters. When your sole purpose is to copy and join an existing wave, then your focus isn’t creative or innovative. It’s being a copycat who’s following trends, but in a way that someone else has already done. So by definition I think the industry ends up with TikTok savvy, influencer flirting, desperate ‘hipsters’ just trying to get those numbers of view/shares. We all know that doesn’t equal sales. Brands making a stand, setting a style and making waves are few and far between, because innovation isn’t priority any more. :(

I hear you Charlie Carpenter and I would like to offer my POV as the person running the only portfolio school left standing in the UK. We get what we deserve. Brands and company owners will easily pick up the vibes, values and the behaviours of the agencies they work alongisde. The industry under-invests in teaching its own people new skills, behaviours or knowledge. This is particularly true in the creative department and organisations run by leaders who got there on intuition over education. School of Communication Arts 2.0 recently launched a professional training product called Creative Mastery for the industry. Thanks to some clever partnerships and product design, the course is free for most people reading this message. • Every learner gets their own superstar life coach • Every learner gets to design the job they want to have in two years time, and is then coached to get it • Every employer gets passionate employees who want to futureproof their organisation. The biggest resistance we found is TIME. We don't give our people time to grow and keep moving forward and feedback on proress. If we don't keep moving forward, we can't be suprised that we are being left behind.

They say that fortune favours the brave. But the vast majority are now too afraid to be brave. The status quo / tried & tested approaches will keep sales ticking over and their jobs safe. It won’t propel their brands beyond the competition, but it won’t create any friction in the boardroom either. The other factor is that the big ideas / giant leaps / game changers all tend to require a bigger shift internally, which also needs to be backed up by a bigger spend to activate them. And that’s much harder for those marketers to sell into the board. Totally agree it’s a real shame - but it’s hard to see how it can be overcome in the short term.

I think it mostly comes down to measurability - and whilst marketing needs to be accountable to the business, when every single decision is forced through the lens of ROI, it becomes much harder to get riskier or new thinking through. Every hour has to be accounted for, and giving space and time to the creative process, curiosity and exploration is frowned upon. Timesheets have to account for every single minute of effort, and the P&L rarely accepts wandering around the park to think about things as a justifiable expense. Strategy has been consistently devalued over the years, and poorer strategy leads to poorer creative. Teams are so lean and so overworked, that the work just "needs to get done", rather than having space to breathe. And hiring policies aren't helping either - curiosity and diversity of thought can be accelerated by bringing in external collaborators and partners, yet the major holding groups are saying "no more freelancers". If employees aren't allowed to go outside the building to spend time thinking, and you're not allowed to bring in external thinking from outside the building - it all becomes a recycled naval gaze, stealing ideas found on 90 seconds on tiktok. The value of time to think needs reaffirming.