I got into advertising at the tail end of physical delivery of the material: veloxes, match prints, 1/4 inch reels for audio, Beta SP for video. Saw all of it for a couple of years. It's all very stone aged compared to today. In some ways the industry has gotten better, in others worse. Clients have no imagination. They have been spoiled by the computer. They used to approve a pencil sketch possibly drawn on a cocktail napkin because they could visualize the concept. Nowadays they need to see layouts that are so close to actual ads just to be able to say yes.
66 Polara Commercial
- Thread starter Fishfan
- Start date
This is what happens when "the client" employs people to interface with the ad agency guys who (a) aren't old enough to understand what "the brand image" of the vehicle they're trying to sell represents, (b) how the current vehicle is perceived by the buying public and (c) along with being too young, are poorly paid (Client management says "Gee, if I fire this old guy with 40years experience, I can hire 2 or 3 twenty somethings and pay all of them less than I paid the old guy") and just generally couldn't GET a clue if you spotted them the C, U and E.
They also don't understand that nothing matters except the product. When the car sells well, it's the car that's the star. When the car sells poorly, it's the ad agency who catches hell because the ads aren't bringing buyers into the showrooms. No car company will ever say "Gee, our TreeBark 200 didn't sell, because it was a crappy car". They'll say "damn ad agency let us down again. Time for an agency review" which is car exec speak for "We're gonna fire those bums and get ourselves a new agency that knows what it's doing."
Yeah, I've never worked on a car account but as in any industry success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. The idea of cutting costs by laying off veteran talent is as old as the day is long. The problem of course is that there are a lot of older employees who are examples of the peter principle, collecting big salaries for jobs they should have never been promoted into. So it's not always clear. Best approach is case by case. What are you paying the person, what are they contributing and what would it cost to replace the contribution based on likely caliber of replacement talent.
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
No more Mad Men
The car biz and their agencies are NEVER going to run out of Mad Men.
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