Enfatico imploding. Agency of the future looking at doubtful future!!!

Jim Edwards over at bnet, has a great post today about how increasingly fucked up Enfatico is becoming. Lots of good stuff in there... A couple of highlights...

That it is incredibly inefficient to build an international agency from scratch.

That having the de facto boss of the agency — Jones — as the agency’s sole client puts Jones in the kind of conflict of interest that at best would lower the quality of the work and at worst ruin Dell’s marketing altogether.

I particularly loved this bit... Grey’s former vice chairman, Bob Berenson, who left on the heels of the Color Wheel scandal, was dragged out of his Sedona Manhattan retirement to get the thing going.

So what can you expect when you start a global agency and staff it with incompetents and criminals? The Poisoned Dwarf is not a happy chappie.

WPP goes back to original business model!

Comments

[Been There]

1) Mark Jarvis was CMO at Oracle when Casey and Berenson ran the account at Grey.
2) They all left their respective jobs under questionable circumstances.
3) They come together again at Dell WPP.
4) Casey wants to run his own agency and be the client at the same time. Since he failed so many times before, hes a good contender to do it on a much bigger stage. Talk about many conflicts of interest.
5) Martin agrees since money is his key driver, not the people or business itself.
6) The whole thing implodes as the underlying principles are totally flawed.
7) Moral of the story - when will BDAs learn from their failures? Never!
8) Back to the reason GP created this blog.
9) Thats evolution in the BDA world as told in 8 easy steps.

[slowmo]

Its not just incompetence. Its their staffing strategy.

I was one of those many grunts who were approached by Enfatico for our integrated and interactive expertise. The offer was decent but I had to turn it down when I found out that they had not proper digital workflow structure and support staff in place.

What these BDAs have to realise is that hiring a digital head does not mean the agency can now do digital work? Without good coders and bright interactive designers, your agency will go nowehere.

In fact, you dont even need copywriters or art directors to do digital work. All you need are exceptional coders. An agency I know proved this point by doing an award winning banner for an actual client and the creative credits all went to the programmers. No creative person beyond the CD was needed...

[George Parker]

been there...
Youre dead right... Enfatico pulled together more shady characters than Draft/FCB. As you say, BDAs never seem to get it right.
slowmo...
Dont let the douchenozzle CDs hear you say that!
Cheers/George

[Been There]

Ps: read Caseys BS respone to his departure on AdAge

http://adage.com/opinion?article_id=132469

[bg]

@slowmo - You’re kidding, right?

[Der Senator]

Edwardss comments on Isherwoods retirement from Saatchi were even more amusing. The Cannes hotel and restaurant community must be ready to ask the French government for their bailout ...

[adrefugee]

as i like to say, the BDAs have had only one strategy...

they keep trying to hire a new driver for a car (their business model) that is broken to the point of needing to be junked and all they ever get is an expensive new driver who still is sitting in a vehicle with an old engine, busted transmission, and leaks all over the place

like the U.S. banks, they put off institutional change and the expensive job of having to look at re-tooling their business model

if you look at the just-announced HP review--and the things that Hps and Schwabs and other CMOs have been saying about the agency model the BDAs have passed (and i hate this saying) the tipping point

the value that they one purported to deliver has been a romantic notion for quite d=some time--but a notion CMOs and CEOs were willing to live with and build into their costs

that is over

[don_draper]

Ah, the Color Wheel scandal.

If you know what it was, without looking it up on Google, you derserve a drink.

All the youngsters reading about it now, stop posting. This board is for big boys (and birls).ig g

[George Parker]

don-draper
Yeah, the good old days of kick backs and rampant total coruption. Now the big dogs just award themselves humungous bonuses and fuck the troops. In the immortal words of George Lois... I want my payola! And any young fuckers who dont know who he is... Get the fuck off my blog!
Cheers/George

[Richard-in-Russia]

This is actually a good, grown up debate (for a change George).

The interesting thing about Enfatico was that the vision was to change the model of the BDAs.

But, to Slowmos point above, their model was fucked in two areas:

1. Hiring the discipline talent in the BDA model (a Digital ECD = a digital creative department) kills the reason why you went after the talent in the first place.

2. But, putting management in charge who were from alternative non-BDA agencies (Digitas).

What they completely missed was that the people they should have hired to run the business needed to be from BDAs - as these are the precise people who do know how to run a global client and a global operation. Then surrounding them with media neutral, integreated talent to do the work.

What theyve done is put people who have never run a global operation in charge of a global operation.

Hang on, Ive got it. Heres the analogy: Theyve made Palin President. The rest doesnt need explaining...

[slowmo]

Richard, I agree with you but with 1 proviso.

The heads from the BDAs need to have some integrated campaign expertise i.e. some knowledge of managing the needs and egos of creative professionals working across different mediums.

BBDOs shoddy treatment of Big Spaceship for the award winning interactive/integrated Voyeur campaign is a good example not to follow. The BBDO ECD has shit for brains because the last thing he should want is for Big Spaceship to partner with another agency to go after HBO.

As for bg, I kid you not.

Its getting harder and harder if you are a pure ideas only creative in the interactive/integrated field.

It is so hard conceptualising complex sites, banners, widgets without working tech knowledge. You wont even know how to sell it if you are a tech noob.

Btw, interactive work does not just mean online work.

The challenge these days are for ads to provoke people to do something on the spot because their attention span is getting shorter by the minute.

And your target audience are possibly even more tech savvy than you.

So you have to talk to them online, outdoors, mobile and ambient. Fewer amd fewer people read newspapers or watch TV with ads these days.

As creative professionals, we have to face this reality and our own inadequacies in this environment.

Our choice will determine who will continue to receive job offers in the next few years and who will get pink slips.

I kid you not.

[slowmo]

George, too late. I have already told my CD :

[bg]

@slomo, Thanks for the heads-up on the online definition.(Saving now.)

;-p

Harder but not impossible, and still needed based on the many forest for the trees programmers/coders I see out there. Not everyone has their shit together like an r/ga, Barbarian Group, etc.

That wasnt your original point though.

“In fact, you dont even need copywriters or art directors to do digital work. All you need are exceptional coders.”

You talk about creatives being tech noobs. Flip that script (ouch): Have met hardly any programer/coders who understood life beyond coding relative to a brand’s overall offline/online picture.

Often/still, they get SO focused on the ONE cool thing that they’re site does—and that they can enter in awards shows—without caring for something as simple as how a customer’s actual in-store experience goes.

The reality is that neither side is going anywhere, traditional or interactive. During the next Super Bowl, 90-100+ million people are going to feel one way or another about a brand, and that mood will have almost nothing to do with how cool their flash site is, (unless it doesn’t work when people visit).

Unless theyve suddenly invented a way to beam me cereal or soda from the store, people still buy in the real world as much as they do online.

I cant agree with a point that bases its merit on banner ad(s), something the public is annoyed by. Maybe if you’d started with your last scenario outlining the ways interactive can infiltrate relative to life in the new post-BDA agency world.

The debate shouldnt be framed in the limited constraints of what media a person works in, but whether they truly know how to integrate a brand with consumers using all media possible. Those people seem pretty valuable.

Besides, what good’s a killer ride without someone to drive it? Oh yeah, Kit the Night Rider.

A robot, if I recall.

[bg]

GP - Wtfs up with apostrophes on the blog?

[victory26]

Ah Bob Berenson. Theres a guy whos really on top of the changing communications landscape that Dell needs to tap into. Perhaps he can recommend some radio soap opera sponsorships like Grey did for PG in the 30s when he was an AE.

[slowmo]

bg, I agree. R/GA is very good in what I call interactive work. They always start with planning out the brand experience within each media they use, be it as a website, mobile device etc.

Heres a good example. They proposed an interesting billboard recently. When people walk past this banner from the left, they will see Obamas picture and the words Make History. When people walk past it from the right, they will see a picture of McCain Bush and the words Repeat History. Nice, right?

[slowmo]

bg, thanks for your clarification and I ask for your patience in reading my long response.

I was serious about not needing copywriters or art directors to do digital work. The trend now is that a lot of production shops (coding-centric) in my region are being given work by ad agencies and they are no longer supposed to just to the hard core coding jobs. If the budget is too small for a BDA to work with, such jobs are even asked to independently develop the concept for the campaign, which range from websites, banners, mobile applications to integrated campaigns.

Our current agency cost structure/overheads is making most of us redundant here with such shops doing creative work who can better attract and keep good tech talents, who know that they don’t need to handle the nonsense at agencies and had a shot at real career development.

I know tech people with no branding sense but you shouldn’t hire those people in the first place. They will often say no to creative concepts if they think it’s too hard or time consuming.

These people are what they are due to their mindsets and the fact that they don’t see a point to do more than what they are supposed to in an agency environment. Good coders who want and can move into brand management or strategic leadership roles can do much better in a high tech enterprise.

Agencies need tech hybrids, who don’t work in silos and strictly defined work scopes. We are in a fight for such technological talents who can find work in traditional high tech industries, especially during recession time when people has less to lose in their career paths i.e. tech start-ups which offer tones of stock options and freedom.

If we want coders to think beyond what they are doing, they have to see the incentives in doing so, rather than the current agency climate where they are just viewed as grunts at everyone’s beck and call. Such incentives are needed to get them to think and move beyond their immediate work scope and skills.

I recently convinced my agency to hire an interactive art director who was a good middle-weight coder. His ideas are programming based and it takes conceptualizing into a new level. And he loves developing game-led campaigns.

I make it a point to hire tech project managers. Ever since the word “traffic” has been replaced with “project manager”, the PM’s role has been bastardized to the point that good PMs may not want to be PMs any longer as they are often stuck with account managing or traffic issues. Tech PMs are the key bridge between the agency and the client’s tech team and they are the tactical commanders who can find ways to trouble shoot the entire creative process via coding suggestions or the use of technology. Seriously, I’m not doing justice to a tech PM by what I’m writing here.

I found my agency a good hire recently with this tech PM that helped a telco set up an inhouse interactive ad agency. In terms of strategic and creative thinking, he seriously does not need my creative inputs for tactical and smaller campaigns.

Case in point, I don’t believe in “creativity for creativity’s sake” or “tech for tech state” people. Their thinking has to crisscross tech and creativity. That’s why I’m not keen on “stick in the mud” flash coders as their work makes SEO difficult and any good C++ programmer can replicate what they can do in Flash.

As a creative, I used to think that my job is safe as long as I can think of ideas that work across different media. But I’ve been finding my ability to visualize the end product of my concepts clouded by my lack of tech knowledge.

Let me give you one example. In the last 1-2 years, sites that require mikes to allow people to interact with sites have become popular. I’ve seen a lot of digital creatives jump on that bandwagon with lots of brand-centric ideas.

However, I can steal a march on them. You don’t need a mike to “talk” to a website. I know of a better tool that comes with a normal PC experience that allows 2-way interaction between people and the website.

My ideas can use that to its maximum effect and I’m pretty sure I can trump any “mikes-only” idea from less tech-savvy creative staff, regardless of how brand-centric they are.
As for people beaming things from the store, CNN’s recent foray into holograms may well make that possible i.e. 3-D representations of the things you like from an e-commerce site.

With technology, anything is possible. After all, what we do now is the stuff of science fiction to people who live a hundred years ago.

Creative people cannot afford to be complacent. We need to take a hard look at what we lack, rather than just focus on what we do well. If we dont, we will end up being marginalised by an increasingly tech-driven environment...

[bg]

@slomo - Comes down to size too. The bigger shops (BDAs) are position to transition to interactive/digital than the smaller/design-centric/interactive shops are to expand their brand ‘capabilities’ for lack of a better word.

Making the problem worse for the smaller shop though are brands still stuck on the idea that only a BDA can be trusted with their brand message. That’s the perception/fight facing smaller shops if they are going to a shot at running a large brand.

[bg]

“...are in a worse position to transition...”

[slowmo]

bg, I agree. I dont see Big Spaceship taking away HBO from BBDO unless they partner with another BDA? Or can they work with a second tier ad agency like Arnold or a brand management firm?

Theres indeed a perception that only big agencies can be trusted with big accounts. Maybe the recession and budget tightening will cause clients to think otherwise. This has been a good discussion for me :

[the lower depths]

what about the people that walk towards that billboard head-on? they get to see Russia?

billboard sounds nice, would have been a better web banner that reacted depending on which direction roll-over came from...

[the lower depths]

btw, there was a billboard like that on the BQE, heading to the city was a Sony ad, heading out to Queens was something else...

ultimately annoyed everybody so they made it one of those revolving boards with 3 or 4 different ads on the faces that turned in strips...

[slowmo]

LS, what about people walking towards head-on? Good point. I didnt take note of that :