The “Nerd” Herd Cometh…

Just read a very interesting article in Advertising Age on the “Agency of the Future”. I couldn’t help but find it fascinating since I had held a Ted talk at JWT last year with the exact same title and theme. However, my own speech was a lot more mundane compared the the high–falutin‘ spiel an Advertising Age writer can spin. After all, it is the advertising business so one comes to expect a reasonable amount of razz-matazz, but this article really laid it on thick. The basic giste of my own premise was, like any other business, technology is here to stay, not only to stay, but eventually to rule. Usually that means fear and panic to all those “non-techies” out there. This article is no different.

Following are some direct quotes from the article:

“We’re looking for a higher degree of consolidation to make integration and interdependence more effective”

“There will be dedicated client teams and a greater degree of open-sourcing of talent and capability”

“The most effective creative will come from the integration of content creation and distribution, and greater in-house content publishing resources.”

Blah, blah, blah…

When advertising executives start using this many buzz-words and neo-cliches it can mean only one thing…run for the hills before the smoke clears boys…the jig is up! In other words, to quote, they are “…predicting a 25% reducution in head count for holding companies in
the next 5 to 10 years as a result of the ‘power or automation’ in content creation and distribution and the impact of artificial intelligence on adminstrative roles”. In plain english, tech is taking over, kids, get with it or get out. Its ironic, that advertising execs are starting to sound like rust-belt execs 20 years ago. That’s no coincidence. We are coming to the end of one era and the beginning of another. The smug, aloof Madmen of the past are slowly, but ever so surely, being replaced by smug, aloof “techies” secure in there insular knowledge of systems, servers and code. I’ve written about this before and I have the feeling I’ll be writing about it for some time to come. Almost 7 years ago I wrote about the natural phenomena of “creative destruction”. In short, as a new industry arises (usually due to new technology) old ones fall by the wayside.

Totally Awesome, Dude…

In that article, I try to point out that in the 20th century it was a relatively slow albeit, inevitable, process of an entire industry dissolving into others that generally takes a generation or two to complete. But in the 21st century those processes have been speeded up considerably by the “digital age” and the expectations that come along with it. What all the above Ad Age double talk really comes to is that the “old” way of life in advertising is coming to a close…big agencies, big budgets, big dinner checks is coming to a close and a whole generation, maybe two, better start either taking as many General Assembly tech courses as they can or start working at Starbucks.

I’ve been a “techie” my whole career, in a variety of businesses, not just advertising, I know first hand what a closed in, self-purporting little group of anti-socials “nerds” can really be. They can’t help themselves, in a knowledge economy its natural for an “I know more than you” psychology to thrive among the techies themselves. You can imagine what manifests itself when “hard-core techies encounter “non-techies”, bean-counters and anyone over 30. This will eventually include C-level execs, boards of directors and the rest of the human race as a whole. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating. Soon it will be 20-something content producers producing content for 20-something content consumers. Not bad if your a 20-something developer who can explain how to code a binary tree or a hash table. But not so much for everyone else.

As in any culture to much “in-breeding” is not a good thing. Eventually, when we have a culture dominated by 30 year old men in tea shirts and sneakers buying and selling to each other, when every form of media takes the form of a video game or something equally juvenile, and programmatic becomes automatic, hopefully, there will still be some spark of actual creativity, maturity and human emotion. Yes that’s always been a lot to expect from advertising in general, but language has a way of turning into actions and cultures have a way of turning into reality. Cultures are only a group point of view, but from the inside out, they are as tangible as the warmth from the sun. However, cultures also have a tendency to be somewhat myopic and jingoistic. Western culture invented phrases like “Third-world” and “Red Menace”, but when closely examined, are just perspectives that suit those who are comfortable with such divisions. Unfortunately, most “techie” cultures aren’t warm and friendly. They are usually competitive, cliquish and harsh, Google not-withstanding. But more and more, it is that culture which is beginning to prevail in corporate culture, social culture and, yes, Western culture as a whole. Finally, the most ominous quote from the article for me: