When budgets are cut during tough times it’s always a bit disappointing. You can’t do exactly what you’d like, but in my opinion – it sorts out the men from the boys. What frustrates me even more however, is that smaller budgets breeds laziness. In meetings with other agencies over the last month I’ve heard people complaining about only having a couple of mill to spend. Yeah, it’s not the biggest but I’m pretty sure if you gave that to an entrepreneur they would wet their pants and make it work as hard as humanly possible.
According to the people in said meeting, you have to go for ‘maximum reach with such a tiny budget’ and ‘not get too cutesy as consumers won’t understand and miss the call to action’. Whilst I don’t think this is reflective of most agency attitudes these days, it does worry me that people are reacting this way as times get tougher. Agencies have a responsibility during this period to prove their worth and substantiate why they exist in the first place, not just save energy because we aren’t getting paid what we were. As society gets, err, well, more social. If we aren’t careful advertising spend could become an operating cost to clients who appoint community managers, conversation designers, or even Twitter Salesman to market its business. Case in example is Dell who has reportedly made $1m from Twitter alone to date.
Perhaps it’s not laziness, maybe it’s size? Complacency? Even a form of survival panic. Whatever it is I feel we need to push clients to become more relevant and more distinctive and not waste what budget you do have on buying as many eyeballs as possible and hoping a supposed ‘USP’ sticks. Come on people, a bit of optimism and hard work will get you through.
Recent Comments