[🎶 It takes the same time to do it wrong that to do it right.]
Borrowing a phrase from a well-known personality is usually a good ploy to start an opinion article and, in some way, to be legitimized by their prestige. In my case, I opt for a derivative that maintains its predicament: this fragment starts from the letter of A song of The Sweet Vandals -one of the best funk and soul groups of today- and, on the other hand, It gives me the opportunity to test if this sentence is fulfilled in something I know well: companies that are dedicated to digital marketing.
And that's just the first reflection: Does it really take the same amount of time to do it wrong as to do it right? In general terms, the statement is perfectly defensible: whether or not to close a window so that it doesn't get cold into your house is not something that needs a lot of argument; but: is it the same if what we are evaluating is not something so easily solvable? , how does it work on something more complex? That is to say, What happens when we apply this danceable maxim to the world of marketing?
My answer, taking my own experience as a reference, is that no; it doesn't cost the same: it costs a lot more. Doing it wrong is more expensive, less flexible, worse for teams and the organization and, to top it off, every glimmer of obtaining correct efficiency is burdened. Nor is an international consensus needed to conclude that doing it wrong usually leads to a commensurate result, but we are going to introduce a subtle change in the formulation: Many times doing it as it has always been done is more expensive, less flexible, worse for teams and the organization and, to top it off, every glimmer of obtaining correct efficiency is burdened.
In reality, the progressive loss of quality in marketing work matters little or nothing to agencies and their clients. Or, at least, that's what's being transmitted.
It's clear: no one has a problem choosing in a marketing agency between doing it right or doing it wrong (or so I want to think), but the answer changes, and not a little, if the question has that nuance, that of doing it “as always”. This addition completely changes perception because it highlights something natural: that systems defend themselves to try to perpetuate themselves.
Examples of this that I say? Surely one sounds familiar to you:
- Perennial annual strategies
Of course, I'm talking about those strategies that fill slides and slides of Power Point or derivatives where -as Arsenio Iglesias said- there's a lot to say and little to tell. Percentage of ideas, proposals and improvements to that document that are carried out throughout that year of work in my experience? Discouragingly low. Of course, the following year, like the tides, you will have to perform the same work with a sense of eternal galloping return because “the client will not accept those changes” even if I hired you for it.
- Reports that are sold by peso
Also known as: when something that has to be a tool in search of improvement and quality becomes a kind of throwing weapon that works with weight. Reports are negotiated and used as a bargaining chip. Do they serve to heed trends and take action? No, because they usually work with temporary criteria that make you go several steps behind. So they become what no one wants to do and no one is going to read, but that is being asked for month after month. The custom, you know.
- Competitions you apply to because you have to apply
Another classic in marketing agencies that happens frequently and for various reasons: favors, making the client look better, prestige of the agency or company... all quite arguable, but less defensible if you consider the amount of resources, hours and, at worst, people employed in something that is already known to be lost in and of itself. Paraphrasing “Howl”: “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”; and by contests, we may add.
- Presentations or credentials to cover the file
Do you know the magic man who lives in the happy country? Yes, the one in the gummy house on Calle de la Piruleta. Well, his world is less fantasy than these presentations. I understand that we have to put a little bit of sheet metal and paint when we teach what we do to others. (and even more so when they are going to evaluate us), but in this category we are moving right on the other side of the coin: we can hardly move forward if we sweeten to the extreme what is happening in our own house.
Each of these examples (and any of those that are going through your head right now) are perfect representatives of the true corpus of this article: the progressive loss of quality in marketing work. And how, in reality and to my sadness, this fact doesn't matter much; what's more: it matters less and less.
Now is when it's time to talk about solutions. Are there any? I recommend going to people who are much smarter than servant to talk about successes, structural changes and company reconversions. I can only comment on my experience, which could be limited to three types of remedies:
The one that has to do with methodology, call it Agile, Kaban, Lean, Waterfall... This is where I can agree more because I am one of those people who need a plan even to go to the bathroom (like the Russians in The Hunt for Red October), but the reality is quite different: I have a lot of doubts as to whether this type of work organization can marry a marketing agency, for example, where being guided by efficiency has never been an objective in itself. As a witness to their use, I have always had the feeling that these types of practices are fantastic to discover that your problem is that you can't solve the problem (because you lack resources that you don't have or can't get). And I say this with knowledge of some cause: a few years ago I witnessed how a working group created with these methodologies celebrated that they had reduced overtime for a very demanding client (very numerous and unpaid, of course), So that the next day a member of that same Squad I asked me at 8:00 in the morning for a favor with a presentation that they “had been working all night”. I remember a superior once telling me that all these kinds of problems can be solved with more people or with a better organization. A good answer that always takes the second option as a solution. For whatever reason.
Other times, it's true, That the cards are marked and little or nothing can be done. As a person in charge of Social Media strategies, I have experienced how campaigns have been created that had a direct influence on my work without counting on me (imagine my room for maneuver there) or How a customer was limited -due to legal reasons- to track the conversion of their users on their website. No problem, except that later a digital strategy was requested that necessarily had to live on that. That is to say, a multinational company that deliberately dispenses with an essential fact to do its job and that they ask you to ignore in the document in which you have to mark the steps to follow. When I wrote it, I still don't see the logic, but for the record, I tried.
And finally, you have the solution to always look like an atomic precision clock, in which whatever you do is an unprecedented continuous success and, without forgetting, that you are the Best Place to Work in any galaxy. The best example of this can be found in LinkedIn, where we move between prizes; canvases; resounding successful campaigns; more prizes; contests won; more canvases, even more prizes and, of course, the arrival of tools and technology that would change the sector and about which (oh, surprise!) Are you a pioneer. It is in those moments that I hold on to the mantra that I read to Delia Rodriguez (she was talking about AI, but it fits just as well) a while ago: professionalism is indistinguishable from self-confidence.
75% of the professionals surveyed cannot imagine working in an advertising agency in 10 years
In the end, it all boils down to the fact that the framework itself feeds on itself (come on, which reproduces the overdose of Yo so common in networks): each agency seems to work great and stress that they are the most handsome and that what a wonderful place to work. Fantasy that comes face to face with reality, for example, with the data extracted from the study “Why are you leaving” carried out by the association More Creative Women, where they say that, in 2023, 57% of the people surveyed (creative, but 100% extrapolable to any other profession in marketing) who worked in an agency went on to Freelancism (feel you, brothers and sisters) or went to another agency (31% and 26% if we break it down into each category); that the 75% of the professionals surveyed cannot imagine working in an advertising agency in 10 years or the reasons why people give up: exhaustion, long working hours, mismatch between salary and position, or absence of real professional development. The other important point of this study, the gender gap, It would deserve a separate article done by someone who has experienced it firsthand.
I don't know if the solutions described above will help to recover quality and efficiency, But I am sure that the living force to achieve that comes from the people you have working with you (that “talent” that I like to talk about and brag about). The same people who abandon their jobs due to the impossibility of performing it with efficiency, what it has been: to do it with professionalism and doing your best without leaving your life in it. It seems like an easy goal and a good deal between company and worker, but it's not, and anyone who has spent five minutes in this world knows that. And here are the numbers to confirm it.
If you have come this far looking for answers, I already tell you that I am disconnected or out of coverage, but I can speak from my experience (and also from my innocence): I know that companies are, that is, companies and they live on making money, but also that none of that is against doing better the job for which they hire you. And with the better it is understood to be more efficient and that people want to live that experience; talent leaks occur for the reasons mentioned above, something known, assumed and perpetuated by conscience.
I think that changes occur if there is a will to make them. And the question that assails me is just that: is there? Is it something inherent to Spain? Does it occur in other countries? Because listing everything that is wrong is quite simple, but producing those changes is already another matter (I'm aware of the irony, yes) and that's the speech that nobody wants to hear.
We have been thinking for so long that efficiency is directly proportional to what we do out of habit that we defend it almost like a creed, something that I experienced in my flesh when they came to argue that proposing a report automation model shared between several countries would require more work and would require more staff than leaving everything as it was, that is, by hand and each one on his own. That said, it's not easy to get off the beaten path, but I firmly believe that there is always an opportunity to stop, reflect and change pace.
My point of view on this is that: in order to try to build good foundations, it is important to know what you need from the start; in that I bet on one of the formulas that have worked best for me personally, and that is none other than asking directly the people who have to deal with daily life (but who many remain silent because they feel that their opinion will not be heard or, worse, they will never be listened to). It's nothing spectacular nor does it have a name of its own, I know, but it has been extremely useful to me when I had to know what to do to achieve maximum efficiency from the people who worked for me). Starting from what you need and seeing how scaling it up helps all parties to be involved in the process; so that some come out of “we need more time or more people” and the others value new points of view. In the middle is the work of assembling and searching for the points of union between these two perspectives. (which can range from automations, uses of tools to synergies between different departments). Well, or we can also ask everything to one I was going to see if I hit the key (I bet on efficient collaboration and time management that always look good).
