The advertising agencies and the internet
I never worked in an advertising agency, so I only know this as an outsider, lurking and catching information with one corner of an eye. Our agencies have considerably grown up in the last years. Fly the tie for this! Our advertisers won at famous festivals, they became regional chiefs and they managed to place Romania on the world’s advertising map.
But from here, from where I’m standing right now, advertisers look like they are really outsiders too when it comes about the web. And this is not a reproach I can assure you, because I always believed nobody could know everything, and nobody should even try that. But the reason I mention this, is because I think they regard the web as an over-stuffy little thingy, a sort of “come on man, what should we do about it? You think that we should also post something on this web-site?”. And they act accordingly! Why this attitude?! Because those people in charge of the “online matter” are just some web viewers who suddenly woke up with a task that is real “Chinese” to them and of which they tend to get rid as fast as possible.
And all these in the context of the Internet being the most pretentious amongst all the other advertising fields. In order to create an effective online advertising, one definitely needs a better knowledge when it comes about TV, radio or print. The Internet offers many things, but not for free. It requires equivalent payment in return. All its advantages, like interactivity, targeting, monitoring, can only be exploited with knowledge of the in-depth environment.
Extending an advertising online campaign is no more a simple problem of mobbing bits’n’pieces from company’s visual identity into a 468×60 px space and then stuffing the banner on a website. Or it really shouldn’t be like this.
‘Till nowadays, I didn’t saw on the Romanian web any advertising campaign in which an agency had invested a great deal of effort. Everything that is made on web has a feeling of leftovers from a delicious print and TV ad meal. The proof is that Romanian agencies have no obvious web entry within the festivals (and I say obvious because there are some shy attempts like “The urinals’ unwritten code” – Leo Burnett for Golden Drum, but they are lost between the way much more superior foreign outputs). What a pity, because there are really good genuine web people who could do all the hard work with an admirable passion.