

20 ad agencies in Belgium go on strike,  produce artful protest - terra_t
http://www.aironair.be/

======
cwan
Sounds like they fear the outcome of a 99designs.com type world - and
legitimately so. But, why wouldn't they just refuse to pitch to clients who do
this? Alternatively, as they suggest, they should spend less on pitching - but
my guess is that if the prize is big enough they'd do it anyway.

A strike seems like a silly response that could also be interpreted to
attempting to reduce competition in a specific region and in effect form a
cartel - a cartel that would seem to be counterintuitive especially when the
barrier to good ideas is no longer limited within borders.

I have to wonder if "major players came together to design rules of the game"
in the US in any industry group that it wouldn't be considered to be anti-
trust.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _But, why wouldn't they just refuse to pitch to clients who do this?_

So allow big businesses to ruin the smaller ad agencies by getting them to
pitch just in case?

------
rajat
What a stupid design! Clicked 5 or so links and gave up.

Question: is there a reason for using Flash when it's just static content
being displayed? I'm using ClickToFlash on my Mac (Flash sucks on the Mac) and
that made this just that much more of a pain...

~~~
bombs
I've worked for another office of one of the agencies involved and the reason
that they use Flash is that ad agencies love Flash, because they get to use
buzzwords like "rich media" and "interactive" and HTML/CSS/JS isn't "rich" or
"interactive" enough.

------
patio11
If you're doing the Internet and _that_ is your idea of effective
communication then your business needs killing.

~~~
mey
And one of the servers in the chain is not responding...

------
eam
I admire how all the agencies are working together to protest a cause.
However, I really don't like how they chose to do so. First of all, as rajat
mentioned (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128286>) why use flash? Not
only is it slower to load than an image such as a png, but what about those
browser's/phones (ahhem the iPhone) that don't have flash capabilities?

I attempted to read the messages on each site, but many times I would get
connection timeouts as I jumped from site to site, which became annoying after
a while so I stopped even trying to continue reading.

With that said I don't think it's very effective. I think a better way would
have been to buy a domain and have all the websites protesting forward to it
and show the protest message there.

------
c1sc0
This is the full text. (Did they purposely chunk it up to avoid open
discussion or what?!)

Dear visitor,

As you can see, we have replaced our regular website with this letter. It's
going to stay up one week to express our discontent.

Allow us to explain. In the 1990's the UBA and the ACC developed a charter.
All the major players signed up to it, and it defined the rules of the game
for agency pitches for over a decade.

There's not much left of that charter now. For example, one of things it
states is that no more than three agencies (plus the incumbent) should ever be
invited to pitch on any piece of business. but in recent competitions, we've
sometimes seem more than 10 agencies throwing their names into the ring.

Why does that matter? Well, Pitches, like boxing, work in rounds. You get
through one round, and go onto the next. Last man standing wins. Unlike
boxing, however, pitches rely on the participants punching themselves in the
head.

A big pitch can cost an agency upwards of 80000 euro. Just getting into the
second round takes huge amounts of energy. And if you're lucky enough to get
that far, you then have to invest even more resources just to have a chance of
getting something out of it. And if 10 agencies are taking part, that's a 90%
percent chance that you're taking a bruising for nothing.

If that were the end of it, who would care? Nobody's going to lose any sleep
if there are a few less advertising in the world. But the thing is it's not us
who'll suffer: it's you we're worried about.

Pitches us up energy. Energy an agency would normally use to provide its
existing, paying customers with the best possible work. So the logical
conclusion of the system as it now stands is that at some point you will
become a victim of it yourself. The day will eventually come when your agency
has to divert the creative and stategic energy you're paying it for into a
pitch for someone else's business.

Our idea of a sane world is where you do your best work for the clients you do
have. Not the ones you don't. So we think it's in everyone's best interest to
get back to where we started: the charter.

The charter that was put together by wise men not to protect themselves , but
to protect their industry. The charter that makes sure a downturn doesn't turn
into the demise of Belgian communications. The charter that ensures are
matched. With the agency they need. And that agencies are protected from their
instinctive hungers not to miss out on opportunities.

Besides, judging an agency isn't rocket science. Our work is on every street
corner, and all over the internet every day. (Except, today, of course). Our
reputations, our beliefs and our individual visions aren't exactly trade
secrets.

And our awards ... Well if you haven't heard of them you soon will. Talk to an
agency and you'll see right away if they see things the same way you do. But
don't delude yourself. Asking an agency to pitch is not the same as briefing
one. In a pitch, the only target audience is you. The only question an agency
can ask itself is, "What do we need to do to get the client?"

But it's never too late to change. We recently confronted a major advertiser
with how they were running their pitch. And they changed a speculative
competition into a much more motivating an much lower-cost procedure.

Great idea. Great result. but we didn't think of it. It was just in the
charter. So let's not all lose hope just yet. Thanks for listening. View the
competition charter here:
[http://www.accbelgium.be/Content/acc/charterscodes/competiti...](http://www.accbelgium.be/Content/acc/charterscodes/competitioncharter/index.html)

------
mattwdelong
I couldn't be arsed to read it all due to the fact that none of the pages
wanted to load in a timely matter. Seems like some of those agencies should
take some of the money they invest into their "creative and strategic
processes" and divert it to a much more functional technical services team. :)

------
Tichy
It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out how
to get clients. If they were good, couldn't they just advertise for themselves
and make clients approach them, without the pitching madness.

Also, the needless use of flash completely disqualifies them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out
> how to get clients._

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:.be+advertising+agency> shows that
they're some of the top advertising agencies operating in Belgium.

They're complaining not about not getting clients but about getting potential
clients who insist the agency outlay a large amount of time and resource
before committing. This is simply abusive as all the ad agencies work is out
in the open for the client to determine if they like it and so the pitch is
simply about deciding if the advertiser can work with the agency.

It seems a reasonable complaint. Trying to return a sense of decency to
business practices is probably a tough road though.

~~~
Tichy
It seems ridiculous to go on strike. If they don't like their client's
business practice, why don't they just refuse to do business that way? If they
are so good, surely they could afford that?

------
ytinas
As far as I got, they had some good points (i.e this race to the bottom is
going to impact the consumers themselves at some point), but I think it's part
of a bigger overall issue and is probably better (and less frustratingly)
covered by e.g. "The Walmart Effect".

------
c1sc0
When will people finally get that this is inevitable? Supply in the creative
arts increased massively, so prices WILL come down. Photographers had
iStockphoto happen to them, coders had their eLance moment, design had
99designs. Photography, coding & design survived. So why should I care about
advertising? I you can't make your business lean enough to compete with the
crowdsourcing world, you probably deserve a little beating-up. Oh, and coming
from you, Mr. AdMan, it just sounds like whining: get over it, big media buys
are over, it's all about metric-based advertising. Good luck anyway with your
venture from a fellow Belgian

~~~
terra_t
... tries to overlay his avatar in the physical world with a picture of a
purple cow

------
sheraz
Too bad. I tried to read the whole thing but things stop when you get to
publicis.be.

I'll try to write something insightful and witty when the whole tattle-tale is
complete.

~~~
derefr
Change the id= parameter to get the rest of the slides (where you start is
arbitrary; all the hosts serve all the pages, but each host only has a pointer
to one other host.)

------
jey
Why are they so intent on throwing their hat into every battle? Shouldn't they
understand their industry well enough to pick their battles sensibly?

------
jrockway
TL;DR. And it made my browser crash.

