May 25, 2005

Why Did the Subservient Chicken Cross the Road?

The brilliantly conceived Burger King Subservient Chicken has just won the uber Clio Award, a very high accolade in our industry. So, what's the message there?

Perhaps it's a shout...not a whisper...that the times they are a-changing.

The recent New York Times article on the changes in our business notes that over the past five years, ad spending has gone up, but its distribution is vastly different. While newspaper ad spending is down 18.8%, broadcast TV down 15.2%, and magazine ad spending down 9.9%, cable TV ad spending is up 79.1% and - get this! - Internet ad spending is up 203.9%.

It's just a totally different ad environment out there. And the Times points out that clients are pushing the change, not agencies.

I got a whiff of that this morning when we met with a client to whom we had promised a non-traditional approach to their challenge. While planning to do just that, we led off with a proposed mass media launch of the new brand position we had developed for them (and which they loved).

They recognized the value of the mass media effort, but they missed the non-traditional component that we had promised. They really wanted that too. They were pushing us. That was good. And they were willing to talk about it candidly and constructively. And that was very good.

My guess is that many clients and agencies are going through a similar exercise elsewhere. Fortunately, we are small enough and therefore facile enough to adapt to the massive changes that have occured over the past few years. We can respond quickly and well to a nudge from a client - like the one we got this morning. The big agencies have more trouble doing that; and their stock prices are reflecting those limitations.

The pendulum swings. Sometimes agencies drive clients. These days, clients are the aggressive ones. We've got to 'get with the program' and aim to meet in that sweet-spot middle, where each of us provides what we know and can do best, and we combine our complementary strengths to maximize the client's results.