Death of the AdMan

Advertising is a funny industry. Full of creative characters, drinking, wild concepts, drinking and of course drinking. It’s fair to say that if anyone was to take a complete outside view of the Ad industry, you could be excused for wondering what else it does other than be the number one consumer of Heineken^®!

While it’s true the industry has a reputation for some pretty wild parties, it needs to be said that there is a significant shift in the way things are done and the traditional ‘AdMan‘ that could guarantee you a quick result with a snappy headline for a press ad is well and truly over.

In the event of the last decade, the digital world has played a significant role in re-fabricating the industry. When once the landscape was simply made up of television, newspaper and radio (and let’s be honest…not immense competition in any of those categories either…especially in WA), it wasn’t terribly difficult to gain penetration into your designated market.

Today, consumers are gaining information from different sources and our whole way of life has changed.

Internet, Email, SMS, Smart Phone and of course the much publicised Social Media.

The AdMan of today, and indeed of tomorrow, requires a much more dimensional approach to consumers. A ‘jack’ of all trades, so to say. They need to understand, appreciate and have an understanding of how a well combined mix of all these medias, both online and offline, can contribute to the success of a campaign.

While many of the principals remain, there are a whole new suite of ground rules and multidiscipline creatives who have the ability to think strategically and technically who are now at the forefront of AdLand.

To us, this comes as no real surprise as the industry itself comes up to speed with forward thinking agencies such as Jack in the box. The concept of wholistic practise and strategically driven creativity is now gaining traction which is nice to see after preaching this to clients and the industry for well over a decade now.

For you, as a client, it’s now time to analyse the effectiveness of your advertising and who is leading this process. As I’ve harped on about in many blogs before, advertising is not about putting one advert in the newspaper and expecting a result. Advertising is about building a multi-attack campaign that seeks out consumers and ensures that your message is being consumed via a mutli-level approach.

Combining strategic thinking, clever creative, digital technologies and savvy media buying is no easy feat but it’s the whole reason that Jack in the box is structured around those 4 core disciplines.

The era of the AdMan that we knew has been and gone…some of them just don’t know it yet