No Thought, Or Is It Just Profit?
by Paul McGoldrick
Things take time to change in many arenas. Some things are more obvious for change but behind many unchanged decisions are people who are stubborn in what they perceive are their roles at work and the way they need to achieve their goals. The Web, in particular, should be changing many things about our industry -- or is it?
The FedEx man no longer leaves four packets a day at my desk; and the interns at the agencies no longer call to make sure that I got their packages, because news releases are no longer the purview just of the professional journalist: they are available online 24/7 for anyone who is interested in news from any particular company; and the organizations that used to package news for journalists are anachronisms -- just in some cases they haven't realized their dotage.
But other things don't change; vendors still either take pictures of ICs for their releases or, worse, pay for someone else to do so. Even if the classical business-to-business trade print press might have used them from time to time in the past glory days they no longer have the space for them -- heck, not just product modules: they haven't got space for much content at all. But how about supplying, or making available, a block diagram of the product instead -- something an engineer would appreciate?
The vast majority of releases, even online (if the company gets to post the release in a timely manner), still do not include a URL to the product page(s) that are relevant to the release. Others go overboard and include a link every time the part number is in the text. And why issue a release online in PDF? What do you expect us to do with that? It's got to be really important to make me want to completely retype a release…
Those of us on the Editorial side of the fence know that there are few effective PR agencies out there, and the best are just a handful of individuals, basically working alone. The best get fired by -- or quit from -- a client at least once, usually when basic common-sense advice is ignored.
The same seems to be true among the advertising agencies. Few will offer the kind of advice that the client needs to hear -- about what is effective in the year 2005, and what is not, or what is needed to truly track results; to measure performance. More it seems that the agency is there as a buffer, to just enact the orders of the client and to do whatever needs to be done to keep that client's account.
In London a few weeks ago our hotel room overlooked the UK offices of one of the largest advertising agencies, with only one client (as far as I know) in analogZONE's space. The three senior officers -- chairman, CEO and Executive Creative Director, all white males, really far from representative of the neighborhood -- had identical chauffeur-driven high-end Mercedes available to them (that's one expensive perk in a place like London!) and the office dance card was fun to watch. One of the officers, probably the CEO as he was consulted a lot, had his office directly opposite our room; he spent his work day (when actually at the office) with his back to us at a huge desk with the customary leather furniture. He either had a very active wallpaper on his computer or he spent a lot of time watching movies. While his Mercedes was out front the vast majority of the employees stayed at their own work desks -- the few that left at the normal 5:30 PM pushed a bicycle or were other obviously junior staff. The remainder didn't leave until after the boss and even then there were still a few diehards moving around in the building late in the evening, or hanging out one of the top balcony windows with a smoke.
It's a bit like employees talking their heads off on the airplane after
a trade show -- you just don't know who might be listening. In this case
you just don't know who might be watching; but getting drapes would be highly
advisable. And what do you think of the tag line for a TV creative for one
of their UK clients: "There's no ball like a Wall's ball." Would
NBC run that one, or would it have to go on late-night cable?