Category: Uncategorized
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Must you merge?
WPP’s game plan is pretty clear – simplifying the holding company’s ‘holdings’, integrating agencies and driving for greater efficiencies. In the last few months, it has folded Possible into Wunderman (digital), merged Maxus and MEC into Wavemaker (Media), merged five design agencies into one Superunion (Design), amalgamated Burson Cohn & Wolfe (PR) and two attempts […]
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The sudoku problem and the delusion of conservative ad men
This is in response to Mr. Rory sutherland’s article about targeting in advertising. Read that article before reading this one. ______________________________ “By deluding everyone that the whole of advertising is reducible to “the efficient and inexpensive delivery of targeted messages” through the extensive use of data and algorithms, two companies have gained a multi-billion-dollar rent-seeking […]
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The Mad World of Monopolies Over Brains
Microsoft bought semantic machines. Google, FB etc keep buying smart companies all the time. A handful of global companies keep buying smart companies before they can get a product out to the market.They are essentially creating monopolistic moats over not just cutting edge intellectual property, but also the intellectuals – the men and women capable […]
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Advertising bros have a big problem: low self-respect
Yes. Self -respect, not self-esteem. They hold themselves in high enough esteem. Many of them could be rightly called out for their arrogance or over-confidence. It is not an issue of self-image as much as it is about an internal moral framework. I am specifically talking about the way the client-agency relationship is deteriorating and […]
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Sell the damn soap. Don’t ’empower’ anyone.
So the research suggested the consumer as a patriarchal housewife – a woman who listens to, and seeks her husband’s suggestion. A woman whose day revolves around catering to the needs of her children and the husband. Surprise surprise, patriarchy exists. But client won’t buy it as it is, won’t really engage with the reality, […]
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The knowledge grid
*this post is not related to advertising. Foucault (can’t understand him) says something interesting in this video. He talks about history of science (consequently progress of humanity’s thoughts) as discontinuous grids stacked on top of each other. which I didn’t understand until Chomsky clarified it – essentially how 19th and 20th century ‘sciences’ discredited psychology, […]
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2018: A good year to disrupt creative agencies
Two things happened recently, that have filled me with an existential dread as an advertising guy. I see a leak in the advertising industry’s ship. But instead of fixing it, the two indicators are telling me that advertising industry is busy being in denial – telling its employees, its clients that everything is fine, all […]
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The precariat agencies
I am interested in the changing dynamics of agency business. So I tend to read whatever I can about new efforts being made to reinvent businesses. Some of the efforts are truly astounding – the AI agency Born, for example – sounds very interesting. Then there is Maana, a big data company that helps make […]
Truth About Branding 