Unlikely change agents

The fact that most of us are resistant to change is hardly new news. The advertising industry is full of prophets of doom lamenting how the industry is well and truly screwed. And yet paradoxically this is a sector whose business it is to provoke change, provide breakthroughs, and even coined the term disruption. It appears however that we are much happy when it’s somebody else’s business that’s being disrupted rather than our own.

Many people, in many industries, yearn for a return of the glory days. Times when individuals, businesses and whole sectors were flourishing. The times when it felt like we were unstoppable. It’s all to easy to ignore those rose tinted spectacles we so love to adorn when discussing such things. It’s a proven (ish) fact in my own industry that most advertising in the 70s, 80s, 90s or any other allegedly glorious decade was, in truth, shit. Many more sectors will be the same.

Change comes from movements, from numbers of disaffected people wanting to make things different. Yet for many, the most desirable change is to halt the inexorable speed of process and leave things just as they are. In other words, do nothing at all. If we simply turn to our peers for inspiration, more often than not that’s the response we’ll get, at least implicitly.

The virtual agency I work with from time to time, Pimento, is growing at an exponential rate. Others with new and different models, such as Oliver and Harbour, are seeing similar success. Their growth is being driven not from within but from the markets in which they operate. And as Kevin Chesters of Harbour points out, it’s often not the usual suspects of marketing directors that are leading the charge, but old adversaries such as procurement or project management departments that are looking for different ways of doing things.

Purists would say their relentless drive for efficiency is killing the industry, but it could be argued they are fuelling innovation and change through insisting on new structures that deliver greater speed and client responsiveness. And it’s a moot point anyway, the disruption clients bring is here to stay and we’d all better get used to dealing with it.

Years ago I had the distinction of working with Kodak, who ironically had built the world’s first digital camera. But film and processing made better margins than cameras, so they locked it away until it was too late. Change is often driven by the unlikeliest of sources. Rather than fearing it, perhaps hunting we’d do better hunting it out instead.