RE: UKNM: Is UK Web site advertising campaigns set to go the way of

[Tim.Hayward]

the

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We took an active decision when I joined JWT to reduce the main agency's

exposure to .coms and it seems to have worked out well for us. There is a

strong

rumour amongst the London Agencies, though, that some have lost up to 50% of

this year's new business when .coms have had funding pulled.


I wouldn't expect anyone to admit it.


Two years ago we were having discussions on UKNM about the decreasing

relevance

of conventional advertising and the inability of Agency business models to


survive the change from mass broadcast to interactive media. Just as the

agencies were starting to listen (prompted by plummeting revenues) a huge

crowd

of chinless tossers came over the hill like the seveth fucking cavalry,

waving

gigantic cheques and lacking the marketing savvy to see beyond TV and

Outdoor.


Agencies have had six months of bliss in which stupid VCs have given stupid

'Entrepreneurs' enough money to send stupid ad agencies back to the Bahamas

for

coke fuelled shoots.


It's put advertising back 10 years.


Most agencies have been hiring staff like crazy, paying insane salaries and

funding it all on .com promises. Our own rag, Campaign, complained last week

that all the extra revenue from .coms had gone on increasing salaries to

prevent

people leaving for startups.The only people who seem to have remained sane

through all this are the Digital Units, most of whom seem to have worked out

that the promise of a 5M ad spend from a 26yr old marketing director who's

sole

experience has been promoting clubs is a quantitatively different

proposition

from a hard-fought half a mil from a seasoned old pro in a dog food company.


I remember a bizzarre conversation last month that went something along the

lines of 'Will a .com crash be like the Thirties?' The answer was no. The

'Commentator' figured that in the Thirties, the failure of a newspaper meant

the

failure of a pulp mill, the failure of a logging industry and millions out

of

work. The .com crash will affect no-one, he reasoned, but a bunch of over

optimistic kids who will still do well when they grow up and get real jobs

and a

whole bunch of venal yuppie fuck investors. Hard to shed a tear isn't it?


It's a nice thought and I wish it was that clean. I know a lot of people in

startups. The smart ones would be an asset to any new economy operation,

.com or

otherwise and are looking forward to working in a sane environment. The

stupid

ones will stop touting bad business plans and go back to film treatments,

gameshow formats, pyramid schemes and other ways to get rich without skill,

knowledge or effort. I also know some of the worst kind of money people.

Almost

to a man I wish they'd die horribly. Sadly, I know they won't, they're to

busy

counting the money and limbering up to jump on the next bandwagon. If it

just

stopped there it would be fine.


But there's going to be a LOT of collateral damage. Marketing, PR, TV

production, ad sales on and offline, events companies, DM, trade press.

Christ,

even estate agents in Shoreditch. Ad agencies have always known that in lean

years the marketing budget is always the first to be cut.


Let's just look at this iceberg of an industry for a moment and look at how

many

are actually IN startups and how many are making money servicing them. Most

of

these latter operations know precisely NOTHING about the market, they just

rub

their hands when another pillock with dodgy facial hair and eight million

quid

walks into reception.


They aren't just exposed. They're bent over and holding their cheeks open.


The shakeout is just beginning for the ad industry and nobody has begun to

look

at the effects on pension funds


 <RANTOFF>


 T



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