I recently took part in the IPA/Wharton survey about the future of advertising. Their flyer for the survey included some quotes from my answers, so I though't I'd post it here.
What will the term advertising mean in 2020?
Much as it does today, but with more intelligent and extreme forms. By intelligent, I think we'll still see broadcast advertising as it looks now but it will have to recognise the way people will content and advertising. I honestly don't know anyone under the age of 25 who uses the TV set as the predominant form of viewing TV content. It's all laptop, tablet, and even phone. These technologies allow people to filter content - and filter out things they don't find interesting.
At the moment, advertisers (and the media conduits) force advertising on viewers as a price to consume content. I think people will get smarter, work-arounds more sophisticated, and content will be available elsewhere if they prefer. Advertising needs to maintain a high quality threshold (be at least as interesting as the content that surrounds it), or be more embedded and natural within that content itself (requiring better brand storytelling and deeper relationships with non-branded content creators).
And that's where extreme forms might come in to play. Being able to experience a virtual test drive in your 3D goggles isn't just a more convenient way to test drive your next car, it's a more rewarding, richer form of advertising. Advertising not just with a narrative but with a purpose. Consequently, we may see more advertising-as-a-service, or advertising-as-a-product.
What will advertising agencies look like in 2020?
Extrapolating current trends, I think we'll see continued polarisation - more consolidation of the global networks which get bigger, more corporatised, and try to move further up the value chain with their clients. On the other hand, more global clients are looking for better local insight. As long as the brand is well handled and having multiple local agencies doesn't cost more, this might create a renaissance for boutique integrated agencies.
Structurally, departments will disappear as clients want to speak to fewer, more skilled, specialised people. Agencies will look more like cooperatives of associated skill-sets. White-labelled (or exclusively contracted) talent networks become business as usual, changing the nature of supplier relationships and client transparency. Agencies will be makers not just creators. They will be able to deliver a wider range of outputs through their talent networks. Agile will be the norm not the exception. Clients will become more embedded in the creative process - perhaps a fully integral part of the agency team - as a fight-back against the threat of in-house client agencies.
Visiting an agency, or working there, might look different as a consequence. More project space, for small cabals of people, that can constantly adapt. The space will be increasingly virtual as global minds replace bricks and mortar networks. The idea of a 'desk' seems laughably 2012.
What should we be doing now to get ready for this future?
We should be scrapping departments and forging projects teams. We should be creating agile processes, and building cooperative skill-centric teams in-house. To compensate for less time and greater diversity in our challenges, we should be able to throw more resource, more skills, from a wider range of cultural and technological backgrounds at problems, more quickly. We should be forging partnerships with external but increasingly vital talent, from Hollywood to the City, from Google to Maker Faire's. We should get rid of proprietary ways of working as each client or future advertising challenge will be so different that the process will need to be defined each time, and the team coalesced around that. Creative teams should involve strategists, makers, technologists and even clients, not just a writer and art director. The role of strategy becomes central to identifying opportunity, creating structure and process, and driving momentum.
