The Australian | By Simon Canning | October 17, 2003
MAURICE Saatchi, a pioneer of globalisation in advertising, has warned of a global conspiracy by multinational networks to commoditise the industry and eliminate creativity as a point of difference between agencies.
In Sydney this week to attend a global management conference of his agency Group M&C Saatchi, Lord Saatchi, who founded Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother Charles in the 1970s, said he feared the pendulum had swung too far and the agency network structure he helped drive in the 1980s had become a "Frankenstein". The statement was an astonishing about-face by a leading advocate of globalisation. Lord Saatchi said the removal of creativity from the equation would free global agency networks to sell on price alone 20 years after he first latched on to globalisation theories published in The Harvard Business Review.
"We took this up and became prominent exponents of this new business direction," Lord Saatchi said . "But we are just beginning to feel that maybe that phase has run its course.
The networks' "thinking is that if they can eliminate creativity as a discriminator between agencies, they can sell bundled-up services at a discount price. What I am trying to say is there is a world conspiracy and what I'm trying to do here is for the first time attribute a motive to it", he said.
"Network groups have a vested interest in driving out creativity. They want advertising to become a commodity market where price is all. While it's true that we were definitely great advocates and exponents of a global approach, and we still are, we always took the view that it is possible to impose on the processes the priority of creative importance. Although that was very hard to do, we were devoted to it as a mission, a cause.
"This is very different. This is a completely new twist in the history of advertising which is that advertising is being sold on price in a way that really wasn't dreamt of in the earliest days, and even in the recent past, when we were putting forward globalisation. So you may say we have helped to create a Frankenstein monster." He said clients were beginning to understand the perils of commoditising the advertising market and eliminating creativity as a factor in decision-making.
"We are beginning to sense clients know that this is the last thing that they want to happen to advertising. They know the perils of commodity markets in their own businesses." The Australian's Media Forum, covering the challenges facing above-line and below-the-line marketing, takes place in Sydney todayThe Australian:
