A Nation Of Shopkeepers
Shopping may be the new religion, but should the media market be worshipping at the shrine of commodity culture? Jon Wilkins of Naked Communications says we should heed the warning of a short, dead Frenchman and strive for “le bespoke”.
Napoleon once famously highlighted us Brits as a ‘Nation of Shopkeepers’, much to the collective displeasure of all and sundry. Who knows what the Gallic innuendo of this was meant to be, but you can be sure it was not a compliment (even if Maggie’s dad was a grocer!).
Napoleon saw us as a nation bereft of ideas, creativity, and joie de vivre. He saw our obsession with commercial transaction as our fatal flaw; one to be exploited.
So it gives me little pleasure to pass a rather Napoleonesque judgement on the state of the media market for 2002 (partly as this will mean I could risk being exiled!)- we are becoming a nation of media shopkeepers, obsessed with transaction.
This doesn’t sit too comfortably with all the macro trends that we face in the noughties. Our clients have realised that manufacturing is no longer where they can differentiate their products. Differentiation comes from real creativity, real innovation, real invention, not via commoditisation. They are increasingly dedicating research and development budgets to unlocking new creative ways of moving themselves ahead of their competition, whether they be a financial service, a car, a pair of trainers etc etc.
Clients are increasingly looking for bespoke solutions to their brand development, and increasingly, we as media agencies are feeling that ‘bespoke’ pressure upon ourselves. Clients no longer see their way of creating standout through media as being a case of he who shouts loudest (technically known as share of voice!), and want crafted solutions around their brand and their proposition.
We love this as it makes our jobs more interesting (albeit much harder); it makes us think, challenges our approaches, means we have to use our innovation, and different perspectives. It also means that a lot of the normative measures we have at our disposal become virtually irrelevant. It means we have to craft our solutions, to spend time understanding our customers and potential consumers, and generally get really stuck in.
The take out of this approach is we tend to come out with quite bespoke solutions to their briefs, and this is quite often where the problems start.
We pick up the phone to the ‘shopkeepers’ of the media brands that we want to work with, and at first everything is rosy. We share the strategy with them, we share our perspective on how the idea may work (often across several different media), and generally give reasonable brief. We always stress the fact that we are looking for a bespoke approach, and in a funny kind of way we expect the same level of thought to go into the media owner approach as our own, however it’s not always the case.
In these days of the centralised media sell, sales practices have become somewhat distant from the content creation side of their businesses, and as such often the ‘shopkeepers’ don’t really know what they have on offer to sell. Either that or our ‘shopkeepers’ promise the bespoke approach, only to be confounded by their own myriad of internal decision makers.
Many of our shopkeepers seem too distant from the products they are selling. They are becoming obsessed with deals, obsessed with market share, and this is to their detriment, when the majority of clients are screaming ‘bespoke, bespoke, bespoke!’ Our shopkeepers HAVE to offer deli service, acting like a hypermarket doesn’t help us, or our clients.
The same thing happened to advertising and media agencies about 20 years ago, and now all we do is reminisce about the good old days, and rue the day we commoditised our industry.
Let’s not let media owners go the same way, or Napoleon will be laughing from the ‘other side’ at our ineptitude!
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