Traditional ad planners and strategists are facing a unique set of pressures as the worlds of creativity and technology merge ever more closely together, finds Leo Rayman, CEO, Grey London.
At Cannes, as with the industry more widely, our fascination with technology is taking our eyes off the power of a brilliant idea. But what is the ratio of signal over noise? There is just so much noise.
WARC interviewed more than 500 planners for this upcoming report and one of the findings, according to its head of content, David Tiltman, is a feeling that, increasingly, in-house client teams are perceived to be the biggest competitors to traditional ad agencies – even though they lack the skills and experience.
Another trend was the dichotomy between big picture brand building and the day-to-day reality of executional issues. “It’s a case of fast and cheap at the expense of smart,” he warned.
eBay’s Dan Burdett also spoke of the pressure on marketers for accountability and of a shift to performance channels, towards direct response and paid search, which has relegated traditional brand building efforts further down the priority list. He warned that marketing departments are ‘drowning’ in too much information and sacrificing longer term strategy for short term gains. “We’re an industry still fascinated and preoccupied with media innovation,” he said. “But that seems to have come at the detriment of creative innovation… tactics are driving strategy.”
Rayman, L. (2018, June 22). The Pressures on Planners: The Future of Strategy. WARC.