Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The Future of Advertizing Companies


I had a very interesting chat with the director of a French advertizing company, especially about all the new technologies which allow one company to create its own communication tools. Hence, anybody can create a website, an emailing campaign or even a brochure by its own, without asking for any advices to those companies.

Moreover, the results are most of the time high quality and low costs. Actually, it is this CEO which came to the conclusion that soon companies will no longer need advertising and/or communication companies.

I found couple of months ago this very funny movie which tells the story of the last advertising company, as if it was an en danger specie.



As a blogger, added to my entrepreneur mentality, I like to create things by my own, and I master all those tools which allows you, for free or for cheap, to design great communication tools. But I must disagree with this person. I don’t think that we will see the end of those agencies soon. Sure that those of them which are not able to manage the great shift which is occurring to the Internet sphere, on mobile phones, social networks, geolocalization, augmented reality, they will disappear without any question. But our world is ruled by communication. And more and more we’ll need to have experts to advice us on how to do.

I remember Henri Kaufman in one of his class used to say that it was important to have external advices instead of inside expertise, because those people which works on several different clients and different industries, may provide you with open minds, and new ways to see your business. It is very important sometimes to step aside, and seek for outside insights and advices, to move forward.

Hence, one of the key added values of those companies is the department of media planning, which helps define the new consumption trends, identify the strategy of competitions and so on. This department will become more and more important as the communication will become difficult as the number of communication channel is multiplying.

Therefore I don’t think advertising companies will die, if they succeed in thriving on social media and new communication tools. They should focus their expertise on communication in overall.

Also, one of the thing they should change, is the way their pricing method: They should be more focus oriented, now that communication channels metrics are getting sharper and sharper.

What do you think about it?