The movement rethinking advertising

Opinion

It takes a particular kind of leadership and way of organising to get momentum behind any movement. Jan Gooding looks at the building blocks of ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’

Over the past year, I have been involved in a growing movement started by Brian Jacobs and Nick Manning with the unlikely name ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’  Well, if the attendance and conversation at their recent October Summit at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square is anything to go by, many people do. And what’s more, they are volunteering their time, expertise, and resources to help diagnose what is going wrong with the advertising ecosystem and to make suggestions for improvement. 

It is an extraordinary achievement to have assembled so many senior people and organisations into a coalition of collective intelligence. All are applying themselves to such a set of issues which have taken decades to weave their complex web. The roots of which are beyond the ability even of governments and regulators to grapple with, let alone a bunch of well-meaning advertising practitioners. 

Advertising is no longer as effective

I am no longer involved in the day-to-day realities of brand development and the deployment of marketing campaigns, but I certainly lived through the vast changes that have led us to where we find ourselves today.

People have spoken up and expressed their concerns at every point. But found themselves howling into the wind. It was extremely difficult to resist the forces of a technological revolution which is opening up new profit pools to be exploited, and where vested interests conspired to mask the downsides. 

To be able to harness the multiple sources of dissatisfaction and turn them into a meaningful response, as Brian and Nick have now done, is remarkable and welcome. There is something for us to learn from this, even at this relatively early stage of its existence.

Tackling a defective system requires many specialists, each working on different parts of it, with each individual effort adding up to a material change. And if we want to see them succeed and grow in influence, it is incumbent on each of us who cares to find a way of contributing to this community endeavour.

No low-hanging fruit

It is only too easy to accuse this group of trying to boil the ocean. Or as one of the summit delegates muttered to me, to want a few silver bullets that ‘everyone could get behind and would make a massive difference’.

The truth is that, because the problem is the size of an ocean, the usual management consultant speak of ‘quick wins’ and ‘select three signature initiatives that deliver disproportionate ROI’ doesn’t apply.

That is because we aren’t talking about transforming an organisation, we are talking about the need for the massive systemic change of incentives, margins, KPI’s, cultural norms and ingrained working habits. 

The vested interest in maintaining the status quo is not to be underestimated. Many of them are our colleagues, former colleagues and friends who don’t present themselves as obvious enemies. People we like and don’t believe are inherently bad people, but who find themselves complicit in perpetuating the wrongs because the benefits for them personally outweigh the consequences for others.  Most big systems survive because of the good people who can’t reasonably afford to look too closely.

The time is now

A movement starts when enough people decide that the existing state of affairs has become unacceptable. It’s not enough to share a sense of outrage; they must also share a picture of what could replace the old story.

It takes a particular kind of leadership and way of organising to get momentum behind such a movement. There are a number of defining qualities that I have observed in the way Brian and Nick have gone about galvanising support. 

The first and always the most important is that they have been able to clearly articulate what is wrong and why something needs to be done to change it. Without that widespread sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo, no movement will ever get off the ground.

For those who want more detail, I would invite you to visit their website for the story https://www.advertisingwhocares.org. It is a compelling case for change.

A federated alliance with able leaders

Next, they have organised multiple ways for people to get involved based on their personal passions and expertise through the establishment of workstreams led by respected people such as Caroline Marshall, Sally Weaver, Denise Turner, Jenny Biggam, Simon Rhind-Tutt and Crispin Reed, to name a few.

Each of these workstreams works independently in teams, sets its own agenda and ways of working and reports back regularly as to its progress. So, it is a decentralised model, giving heavyweight practitioners the autonomy to organise themselves, supported by regular contact and interaction with the leadership of Nick and Brian. 

A culture has emerged of hard work, respect for different views and opinions, humour and the constant expression of gratitude for people’s voluntary efforts. This is not easy. Anyone who has tried to lead a group of bright, opinionated leaders in their own fields will know that it can quickly fall apart if people get frustrated by a lack of progress.

No doubt people will come and go, as is the hazard with all voluntary efforts, but as long as there is a committed core group, the work will slowly get done until suddenly it seems to have an impact. 

The crowd can often boo at the start

One of the tough parts is coping with the inevitable criticism. It is part of the human condition to find fault with any initiative, let alone one operating without many resources or central controls.

One of the truths about a movement is that it can be slow to have a material impact.

Engagement, communication, conflict resolution and the gathering of resources take time, and not all achievements are visible. It’s a much messier business to collaborate and yet keep a forward momentum.

There will always be those who want to move faster and get frustrated by the time it takes to do the necessary groundwork. Quite apart from the vested interests who will want to undermine progress in any way they can. 

Nothing changes if you don’t start

I applaud this effort being led from within the advertising agency ecosystem, which aims to get its own house in order.

Nick has already written in The Media Leader that the foundational change needs to be the advertiser business model. ‘Not necessarily the economics but their organisation, operations, culture and ways of working.

Until that happens, many of the improvements sought by the eight other workstreams are either not possible or nullified.’ It will be exciting to see what happens next.

No one thinks it is easy to tackle the fundamentals, but if you care about advertising, there is no excuse for not trying.

The ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’ movement is shining a light on the way forward.