The Achilles Heel of Marketing -- Agencies

First, a disclaimer about my stance on this topic: I dislike marketing. Not necessarily the concept of branding and promoting something, but more the pervasive nature of advertising itself. The metrics, the strategies—it all feels like snake oil to me, no matter how you approach it. Perhaps this comes from my background in engineering, where projects are straightforward and tangible. There’s far less room to be misled by a flashy pitch or a good salesman. Unfortunately, the marketing industry is vastly different and thanks to agencies, it's currently quite broken.

Let me explain. My senior design project at the Ann H&J School of Aerospace Engineering was to design an all-electric small passenger aircraft. We were given specific requirements and had to alter and optimize our design until it met these specifications. Only math could guide us to the there, and “there” was a clearly defined point. Sure, we had decisions to make regarding the placement of the wing and the style of the battery array, but we knew the direction we were heading. This is how many engineering project go and it leaves engineers with little room to bend the rules. They focus, get paid for the work they do, and accomplish something, rarely with discrepancy.

In the marketing space, the goal is to increase exposure and sales, but the methods to achieve this are infinite. They are so infinite that doing the exact opposite of what seems logical can often yield better results. For instance, the numerous million-dollar Yeezy ads, all outperformed by Kanye West’s $0 production in the back of a taxi. This vast ambiguity allows ad agencies to choose any direction they want, and the prevailing belief is that the more money spent, the better the performance. So agencies persuade brands to pour as much money as possible into any project. This approach fails spectacularly when the investment is directed toward a poor vision, often produced by agency veterans who have lost touch with the industry.

Because spending is the only bet marketers can confidently make, they allocate 1-2% of their entire campaign budget to production costs. For enterprise companies, this translates to spending 1-15 million dollars on a single campaign shoot. This can sometimes produce beautiful and impressive works of art. However, more often than not, it results in horribly distasteful, grossly overpriced, and underperforming ads, such as the infamous 2017 Kendall Jenner & Pepsi video. The core issue is that brands refuse to take responsibility for their own creative direction, outsourcing it to agencies whose primary goal is to maximize spending. This is crucial to the agency business model because if they don’t exceed their bid, they can’t justify higher bids for future projects.

So the achilles heel of marketing efforts for most brands, are the agencies they work with. Occasionally due to poor productions, but more typically because of a misdirection of funds. Genuinely creative advertising, artwork, and major productions should indeed be costly for those who produce them. Unfortunately, the producers and directors—the ones who actually bring the project together—see less than 0.5% of the production budget. Instead, the majority of the budget goes to aging "creatives" who charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for storyboarding yet another unoriginal idea. While I may digress here, my point remains: the agency space is fundamentally broken and in dire need of reform. The actual creative talent in production should be centralized to a platform that hosts them as “freelancers.” Allowing unique ideas to be proposed directly to brands. Then when an agreement is met, modern tech can be used to streamline pre-production efforts. Leaving more than enough budget to pay the talent more while still delivering a better product to the brands at a lower cost… That would put every Ad agency out of business. Check it out :) Global Media Assets.