Gruen Transfer – The Pitch

ABC’s Gruen Transfer, which screens each Wednesday night at 8:30pm charts the thinking, actions and rationale that drives the brightest lights in Australia’s advertising industry. Chaired by comedian Wil Anderson The Gruen Transfer has an industry based panel of notable Australian ad agency heavyweights, including Leo Burnett Sydney CEO  – Todd Sampson, George Patterson Chairman & MD – Russell Howcroft, Freelance Advertising expert Bridget Taylor and Neon Pidgeons Bram Williams. The program has received critical acclaim for its thought provoking commentary, observation and insight in bringing the formalised system and process which makes up the advertising industry.

One of the highlights each week is “The Pitch – Sell the Unsellable“. Top flight competing agencies are given a chance to show their inventiveness and creativity in communicating a succinct and clear message within the confines of a 30 second TeleVision Commercial (TVC). The opportunity to showcase creative talent for the respective combating agencies with more than 1.2 million viewers each week is an enticing draw card, particularly for the smaller, more agile and no holds barred outfits. Previous submissions to the Pitch have been creatively met, with some of the most memorable including: “Invade New Zealand” produced by the Marmalade & 303 agencies.

Invade New Zealand #1 = Produced: Marmalade

Invade New Zealand #2 = Produced: 303

In last nights episode, JWT & The Foundry were given the challenge to work out a way sell the concept of “Fat Pride” with the underlying premise of ending discrimination because of your body weight.

Fat Pride #1 = Produced: JWT

As can be seen by the above screening of JWT’s TVC, The Foundry’s own submission was kyboshed by the ABC’s censorship panel on the premise that it was racially, religiously and sexually discriminatory. The TVC was however posted on this ABC endorsed website, with the requisite bunch of warnings and cautions.

http://www.antiprejudicead.net

The entire 15 minutes is worth watching, as it has a spirited discussion with the incumbant panel members and the TVC’s creator, Adam Hunt from The Foundry

As stated by the above website, the below TVC was prefaced with:

“To provide a clear context for the ad, The Foundry and JWT agencies were asked to come up with a campaign for the idea of Fat Pride, to end shape discrimination and make overweight Australians feel less humiliated by the constant public disapproval of anyone who isn’t a size 10 or under.”

Fat Pride #2 (Banned for TV Broadcast) = Produced: The Foundry

A confronting ad by most peoples measure. It is confronting to mainstream society because of the visual composition and the context that every single one of the stated “jokes” or comments is something that as the TVC’s producer Adam Hunt has pointed out, something we overhear in conversation, whether contextually “as a joke” or in the undercurrents of fringe behaviour. The requisite reaction of disgust and dismay at the first three dialogues is placed into sharper context by the ending Fat Pride commentary and it makes you pause and think. What adds significant gravitas and impact is the context with which each dialogue is shot – it’s not in the school yard with the peer group pressure of inflated bragadoccio or the pub scene where a bunch of inebriated red necks are jostling nor the locale of “that suburb” out west. They are shot in your face, directly, with stark backdrop, which reinforce the conveyance of  intense facial expressions of hatred, contempt and derision. As noted by the panel, you flat out don’t like any of the people in the ad. The impact of this dislike is so palpable you are left feeling dirty, nauseous and ashamed. This baseline message of dislike and contempt is clear for all to see and interpret.

Interestingly, something I found curious was that in the above extended discussion with Todd Sampson, Bram Williams, Wil Anderson, Russell Howcroft and The Foundry’s Sydney Creative Director and producer of the TVC – Adam Hunt was that these guys actually spend in their day to day a whole lot of time thinking up ways to create TVC’s that are memorable, engaging and in the literal sense “safe” so that they don’t suffer reprisals and recrimination for their agency from the wider public. The Foundry’s approach by Adam Hunt in tackling the hard hitting approach would have tweaked the sensibilities of this particular audience as they are hyper tuned and aware of the currents which affect and influence popular opinion. His very real, black and white, no argument assertion that making “fat jokes” is wrong, no matter which way you cut it, and there being no shades of gray strikes at the very heart of what everyone is objecting too. The panels general consensus of belief that he has crossed the line by rendering being fat with the same gravity as discrimination against Jews, Gays and Blacks, is jarring their senses brecause they don’t see it as being offensive to joke about fat people in the first place. The point is, that in portraying “Fat Pride”, the notion that ANY sort of commentary about someones weight is just as serious as the previous comments is the hard hitting point he is not trying, but succeeds in making.

The argument that people who have spent their lives being prosecuted don’t want to see/hear such behaviour perpetuated, is a strong one, however more directly to the point, I think it is fair to say that the most important aspect is that they don’t ever want it to be forgotten. Ever. Take myself as an example, I went to a very Anglo Saxon primary school on the outer fringe of Melbourne and rocked up in Grade 3. Consider that my sister and I were the only Chinese students, so much so that many of my peers had never ever met a chinese person before. I had my fair share of being beaten up, teased, taunted and singled out. But you know what? It wasn’t any different to the red headed kid, the kid that smelt, the kid that had that weird lunch. But my character was such that I knew at the core, the jibes were on the whole born from ignorance and a lack of perceived understanding. True minority singling out that Jews, Blacks & Gays endure is in a different realm in that they have been persecuted to the point of extinction and forced to occupy the fringe. I think that that existence, which still in parts of the world extends to this day, is behaviour and a history that no one should ever, nor would want to forget. Being Fat in today’s society is met with prejudice, inconvenience and ostrasisement to the extent that people who are fat are often documented as being so depressed and locked in their homes that this in itself is tantamount to a lifetime of misery, solitude and little hope. This can be construed in one sense as a societally imposed torture. A big call, but being fat for some, if not most people is not an option. Society has put them there, so society should be responsible for it.

Whilst I understand the ABC’s view on not broadcasting the TVC and applaud the release onto the Internet, in a very real sense, it is a shame that they caught this one and prevented it’s broadcast, because the very mainstream behavior of deriding people for being fat is that same audience who would have benefitted immensely in watching this hard hitting commercial. Having seen this, and the rationale that Adam Hunt put forward, I’m left in no doubt why The Foundry has been nailing so much work lately.

It is a brilliant TVC and deserves due recognition for raising in a mainstream context the fact that being Fat still remains a societal stigma.

Digital Agency Structure

I was watching the Gruen Transfer on ABC tonight and as usual, was suitably impressed, entertained and intellectually stimulated all at once. It is a great show. In saying that, I thought I would have a look at the website itself and was drawn to their section titled Adworkers. It lists out the different roles within your typical ad agency -

Ad Agency

• Production Manager, Flash Developer, Copy Writer, Art Director, Creative Director, Strategic Planner, Account Executive, Account Director, Personal Assistant, Managing Director, Finance Director & The Founder.

More pertinent are the summaries attached to each – succinct, accurate and precise. Working within a digital services agency as I do at Areeba, it has become more apparent that digital as a career is so young and immature relative to the more traditional realms of sales, operations, accounting, law, medicine, engineering and the arts that we have a bit of a task in explaining ourselves to a client about how we work and why. Ad agencies have been around since the 1850′s and if you tell someone off the street that you work for one, most people have a reasonable idea of the field of endeavour. They might not understand exactly what you do, but they get the context.

Digital is different. There are dozens of niche areas of endeavour, expertise and excellence in this burgeoning realm. To name a few: ad serving, portal management (think working for Yahoo!, Google, Ebay, Amazon, Sensis, Bigpond), social networks, data mining, data planning, customer relationship management (CRM), media buying, analytics, search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) strategy, design, development, campaigns, brand relaunch & alignment, stakeholder engagement… The list goes on.

From a digital agency perspective, structurally, there are similarities, but due to intent, there are differences to your classical ad agency. Web sites by their very nature, are a technical discipline, because if you build a website, it’s not just the visual that gets taken into consideration from a brand perspective, it goes deeper into the usabilty and the enticements that keep people engaged with your site that start to play a part. Websites are a derivation of software development, which has to take into account human interface aspects like usability, accessibility, ease of understanding, communications and audience assessment. Kick in there technical considerations. Think on this as one: Internet Explorer 8 was released last week. But consider that there are still 25%+ using IE 7 and 17%+ using IE6 (as at 26th March 2009). Then take into consideration this: if a website works on IE6, then it’s highly unlikely it will work properly on IE8. Introduce Safari on Mac. Firefox. Chrome. Opera….. That is ONE technical consideration. Next: Flash. Version 8, 9 or 10? Next: Javascript. Next: Form’s validation. Next: Data interoperability between website capture database and legacy environment like SAP, Oracle or Siebel. Each of these systems cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to deploy.  So back to the digital agency structure.

Many liken web studios to a software development house.

Yes & No.

• Yes: technical rigour, testing, rollbacks, disaster recovery, code standards, compliance and then the digital hallmarks of usability, accessibility and legibility, which had their underlying foundations in software development.
• No: Brand preservation. Brand extension. Brand enhancement. Brand iconisation. Campaigns. Engagement. Loyalty. Retention.

Software dev houses don’t give a toss (generally) about brand – a logo in the top left corner will suffice. People in Marketing, Corporate Comms, Public Relations and Sales WINCE at this approach because it detracts from the overall cohesive message of a unified, cohesive and consistant company.

So. To the digital agency structure. In my experience, they are structured, one of two ways, depending on the skew of their origins – technical or creative:

Software Development Agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Director, Operations Director, General Manager, Commercial Director; Alternatively CEO, COO, CTO/CIO, CFO, CSO
• Production Technical – Solution Architect, Senior Developer, Developer, Analyst Programmer, Programmer, Delivery/Release Manager
• Production Creative – Design Manager, Senior Designer, Mid Weight Designer, Designer, Junior Designer
• Production Compliance – Strategy Manager, Project Manager,  Senior Business Analyst, Usability Engineer
• Sales/Account Management – Business Development Manager, Inside Sales, Pre-Sales, Account Manager, Account Executive

Creative Services agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Partner,  Creative Director, Strategy Director, Planning Director, Group Account Director, Client Services Director,
• Production – Executive Producer, Senior Producers, Producers, Senior Data Planner, Data Planner,  Flash Developer, Database developer, Senior Art Director, Art Director, Senior Designer, Designer, Junior Designer

Digital Agencies can be either of the above or a hybrid of the above. In addition, you can count as additional roles that pop up by the uniqueness of web: User Experience Architect, Digital Strategist, Engagement Manager, Digital Planner, CRM Strategist, eDM Strategist….. Areeba is unique in that we don’t really have an account layer, preferring to get those senior individuals in the industry who actually enjoy dealing with the clients directly. If you are a developer, you deal with the client. If you are a creative, you deal with the client. If you are a business analyst, you deal with the client. if you are a digital strategist, you deal with the client.  If you are part of the executive team, you deal with the client. No hidden mushrooms or low level juniors hiding in the background working in the sweat shop. Works for us.

So in saying all that, what is my point? Ad agencys are turning to digital, because its the new “it” thing. It’s also where the money is shifting too, driven by the clients who want a tangible measure on their dollars spent verses the result gained. From a marketing and PR perspective, the internet is able to empower clients so much more from an analytics, peer permission and social network context, that the dollars being spent are miniscule and a raindrop compared to where we will be in the next 5 to 10 years. It is only the start of the evolution that is igniting our industry and the first step in this is to get our clients to better understand the value that the industries staff and the digital agencies themselves are able to offer.

Regardless of the structure of your agency, or the agency you are engaging, I see it very firmly that it is our job  and obligation  to communicate the value and worth of each and every staff member across the business, so that the old fashioned values of trust, value, friendship, loyalty and understanding are met. Simple.