Tim Lindsay on Advertising's Learning Curve

Does everyone look back at the earlier phases of their career with rose-tinted spectacles? I know I do. I started as a graduate trainee at Grey in 1977; spent nine years from BBH’s foundation to 1991 at that great agency (obviously it was their finest period) running, amongst other things, the Levi’s account; followed by 12 years in total at the mighty Lowe Howard-Spink. With one or two other minor stops along the way, I finally ended up at D&AD in 2011. It’s a fine vantage point from which to consider the industry.

Two things that BBH and Lowe had in common were oceans of talent and the (almost) complete trust of their clients. At the former we made 12 commercials for Levi’s 501s between 1984 and 1991 and presented 13 scripts. We didn’t make the one that got away because the budget wouldn’t stretch to three launch ads. Of course we wrote and rejected dozens if not hundreds of scripts. But that’s part of the point. The agency repaid the client’s trust by striving to do the best work possible, creating a virtuous circle.

At Lowe we had the Stella account. In one pre-production meeting we told the client that if he wanted a different ending to the commercial he would have to go to another agency. He backed down. (Actually he was right. Jon Glazer rewrote the script, which became Last Orders and John Derkach was vindicated. Clients are occasionally right). There was an embarrassment of talent in every discipline and a clarity of purpose and process that was totally focussed on the work. It was a privilege to work at both agencies.

But the talent and the trust has gone.

It’s a bit boring to go through the reasons – we’re all very familiar with them. But the downward pressure on remuneration began with the unbundling of media from the creative agency, an irreversible process that many people regret (and a few agencies have sought to reverse, with varying degrees of success). Thus began the never-ending conversation with procurement which, as we all know, only ever goes in one direction. 

The consequences? A reduction in the talent pool, less money for more work, ‘tissue sessions’, where the client becomes the creative director (thanks for that, HHCL), and a slow journey down the food chain and away from the ‘C-suite’.

But there’s a subtler influence at work and it’s this…

We live in a world where Earth Overshoot Day advances ominously and apparently unstoppably every year. We‘re currently using resources as if we have one and a half Earths to fulfill our greedy needs and by 2020 it will be two. Millions more humans each year join the aspirant classes and who are we to deny them the TVs, cars, refrigerators and phones we enjoy? The reasons for this are well beyond the advertising industry’s powers to control.  But at the very least we are complicit in it, arguing the right to act as ‘advocates’ for fizzy drinks and fatty foods, pushing tobacco to the third world; in short, selling people shit they don’t need.

And millennials look at this and ask themselves; do I really want to work in an industry like that? One that seemingly lacks a conscience and a moral compass? It’s no accident so many young people who might previously have thought of advertising as a stimulating and satisfying career now look elsewhere for fulfillment.

But here’s the thing. What we’re really good at is what the world needs. We need to create behaviour change and a lot of big businesses, like Unilever and P&G, have woken up to the fact that if they don’t change their behaviour and seek to grow sustainably, while still delivering profit to their shareholders, we are all, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked.

So there’s a great opportunity staring us in the face. And maybe, just maybe, it will resolve the trust issue and start to win back some of the lost talent.

We need, as an industry, to put our skills to work in the interests of more sustainable paths to growth; to develop the language, strategy tools, creative processes and metrics to help our clients towards a more sustainable, more ethical future. The consumer pressure is there, as heroes like Paul Polman and many others have recognised and the need is irrefutable. It’s happening but too slowly, in too fragmented a way, and not ‘open source’, not shared. At D&AD we have tried to play our part with the White Pencil and other programmes but a stronger, more concerted, more co-ordinated effort is required.

It will happen. Actually, it has to happen. And when it does perhaps some of the trust and talent will return.