Agencies and clients came together at the Paris headquarters of Twitter recently to be transported to Los Angeles, where the AdForum Summit was held in April. The regular summits allow search consultants to visit agencies and networks and hear about their various approaches to the business.
For those of us who were not lucky enough to be in L.A., Pitchville’s Stéphanie Pitet summarized the trends she’d detected during the tour of 20 or so selected agencies. In her introduction she noted that the West Coast agencies seemed more relaxed and optimistic than their New York counterparts. And of course they benefited from the proximity of the entertainment and tech industries.
Here’s what we jotted in our notebook:
- New behaviors and new targets are breeding new agency formats. One example was Collab, an agency that deals exclusively with YouTube content creators (about 300 of them). It provides production facilities, steers their relationship with brands and also guarantees “brand safety” for clients. Its workshops and programs help creators perfect and diversify content.
- Creativity and production are becoming one. Born out of brand content, agencies that work directly with clients to both devise and produce entertainment-style content are becoming more common. Virtue, an arm of Vice, is a good example. Rather than chasing year-long contracts, the agency works on a project basis. But its clients keep coming back for more.
- Advertising is not dead – it’s just starting to look different. From Deutsch and its “growth planning” approach for clients; to Mullen Lowe and its YETI production facility – which even has a kitchen for food shoots – via the 90% female agency Summerjax, the industry is showing a reassuring ability to evolve with clients, consumers and society at large.
- Holding companies want to be horizontal, not vertical. Various holding companies are trying to erase silos, reduce touch-points and work more closely with clients, effectively behaving like giant agencies. WPP, for one, said it was being organized “as a company, not a holding group” and that its new positioning was as a “creative transformation company”. Similarly, the US holding, Stagwell said it aimed to “connect and synchronize client strategies”.
- Keep it human. The agency The Many said it treated brands from a human perspective, notably pointing out that brands have a persona with a voice, a look & feel and actions. Meanwhile FF Creative expressed a desire to pitch less in order to form closer relationships with brands, as well as to help small brands grow bigger.
- Keep it simple. Agencies with a simple and comprehensible approach – provided it’s broad and modern enough to resonate with advertisers – often perform well in pitches. A classic example is BBH with its slogan (derived from one of its famous Levi’s ads) “When the world zigs – zag.” In other words, do what the others don’t. Another interesting approach was that of Circus – a micro-network of 270 creative minds across Los Angeles, Madrid and eight Latam countries. It positions itself as “transcultural” rather than multi-cultural. For example, while multi-cultural implies a set of labels and national values, transcultural is about freedom and diversity.