John Winsor

Advertising is About the Right Questions, not the Perfect Answer

I recently spoke at a conference and, right before I went on stage, I listened to a well-known chief creative officer talk about his process. He pontificated about his love of the creative process and ended by saying that advertising was art. For him, the 60-second spot best articulated the art of advertising. He then went on to say that if an advertiser didn't want to buy his art then it wasn't the right client and he'd find another client who would appreciate his craft.

While I was inspired by his clarity and certainty that he had "the answer", the process of crafting advertising is certainly more commercial today than he would have liked it to be. There are still vestiges of having "the perfect answer" that exists at the core of many agencies. Many pitches are essentially exercises in saying: "My advertising product is better than everyone else's." As he continued to talk about his "art", I noticed that the audience leaned back and started to drift, looking at their smartphones and email. The audience had heard this shtick 1,000 times before. It's at the core of what marketing used to be: "Buy mine. Mine's better." After his session, the crowd was asked to participate but they were already mentally disengaged.

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Agencies are Becoming a Closed, Shrinking Creative System

I'm not sure what's happened in the last few years but the agency business has becoming a closed, shrinking creative system. Every day the best and brightest young talent leaves the industry to join (or just bypass the industry all together) digital alternatives from start-ups to established digital players and other, more innovative established players in other industries (IDEO is an example). They might think of themselves in the marketing and advertising businesses but they don't want to take the traditional path. Working their way up through the creative ranks not only seems too slow but much too political and bureaucratic.

Likewise, it's hard for many of the long timers in the Agency Industrial Complex (AIC) to understand. The long held and established career path with its rewards and perks seduces them. A great example of which came across the industry's social media feed with posts from the #Andys50 judging, a boondoggle of sorts for the industries creative elite.

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When Fake Campaigns Bring Real Results

Back in May 2013 ,Victors & Spoils got a call from Bolthouse Farms asking if we’d be willing to work with them and Michael Moss, the author of “Salt, Sugar, Fat,” to create a “fake” campaign to promote and reposition the lowly vegetable, broccoli. The question was intriguing: If you used the same tactics and skills used to promote the biggest and most powerful food brands, could we move the needle on broccoli sales? If it worked, it might be a blueprint for how produce marketers can turn healthy foods into fun foods and in the process fight the U.S. obesity epidemic.

We applied the Victors & Spoils open philosophy and got over 100 people — from food experts and farmers to chefs and school lunch experts and of course a few marketing experts — involved in the strategic and creative process.

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5 reasons why brands are cutting out agencies

Agencies lean on their status as “valued partners” of clients, but the reality is that your brand might not need an agency anymore.

There’s already a shift taking place. A recent Association of National Advertisers study which found 60 percent of Fortune 500 brands are thinking about replacing agency work with in-house capabilities. Building an in-house agency might be a large task, today, as many agencies cling to their old business models a whole new crop of alternatives are there to help brands both strategically and creatively.

Here are five reasons to rethink whether you need an agency:

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