Upheavals

What happens when communications agencies lose the creative monopoly?

It’s interesting what captures your eye. Right at the bottom of this article about Google’s plans to launch an ad campaign to promote its apps to the business world was a para that has disquietening overtones for communications agencies around the world. It was the fact that the creative part of the campaign had been designed in-house by Google’s own Creative Lab team led by former Ogilvy & Mather executive Andy Berndt.

At Audacity, we’ve noticed more and more companies shifting creative resources in-house to teams sometimes headed by ex-industry insiders. The idea itself makes complete sense for some companies - but it also represents a potentially massive shift in the power balance for the traditional ad agency-client relationship if it gains a lot more traction, because it means that the one of the things that creative companies have always seen as their key competitive advantage - their access to creative minds - could be under real threat.

Take away that creative monopoly, and the shift in media spending trends to online actually becomes a relatively minor matter. Of far more concern surely if you’re an advertising agency, and the research is organised in-house by your client, the creative work for your client is done in-house, and the media is planned and placed by a specialist agency is - what’s your role now?

The real rub is that the companies that spend enough to now find the prospect of bringing this resource in-house are the very people that the ad industry has always depended on. And if this is an idea that works for Google, would it work just as well for other Fortune 100 companies?

When talent has the means and the incentive to move beyond its traditional industry silo, a whole lot of things have the potential to change.

POSTED: Tuesday, 20 October 2009

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