Madison Avenue Needs to Rethink Advertising
Since the days of Mad Men, the creative minds of Madison Avenue have been the driving force in the advertising world. Agencies fight hand over fist to attract the best creative minds to come up with award winning campaigns. For this scarce resource, agencies earned a handsome profit.
I’m sure that advertisers would say that they are innovative - just look at the latest campaign they came up with. I’m not arguing this, but the focus of innovation has always been pushing the boundaries of an established medium.
That was then…
Then the internet came around and things started to change. Agencies weren’t sure how to deal with this new channel so they took what they’ve always done and put it online.
But new companies appeared on the scene. Instead of lots of creative minds, they were filled with analytical minds – engineers, programmers and mathematicians. And they changed, and continue to change the nature of advertising, leaving Madison Avenue to play catch up.
All of the innovative capability on Madison Avenue has focused their collective creative genius on a medium they knew, instead of developing a new medium. The Googles and Facebooks of the world have changed the business model of advertising, leaving Madison Avenue with two choices: apply their creative skills to these new forms of advertising or create an entirely new way of advertising. Both of these are possible and potentially successful.
Personally, I hope that they do both.
Ben Wise