The Reality Work & World

Working in the media industry has given me the opportunity to broaden my knowledge from different perspective, especially the in depth working culture of respective media and ad agency in Malaysia.

Sometimes, while we were pursuing our knowledge from the text book during the time in school, teachers were always pre-advice us that the real world is just out there yet the textbook is just a bible for you to understand but not to practice as what real world is. So once day you will figure out the proper way to lead your career path. Recently, countless articles from outside contributors in the advertising and marketing industry were criticizing openly on the stories behind the general of each client – Ads & Media Agency. I still remembered one of the articles from Slaghammer mentioned about the corruption among this industry after the case involved of an agency paying his client dentist fees without his consent. It’s also an alarm warning for the agencies to take a reality check.

While an agency merely responding to clients request may not result in relationship renewal. The workload is getting bigger and bigger, ironically their revenue is getting smaller and smaller due to the rebate return back to client for retaining the account in a certain period. This has happened because agencies have allowed clients to believe that they themselves have better people consumer insights, and better ideas. In order to pitch the account successfully, they ignore the professions of being a strategic consultant in their field and even try to corrupt their client with different incentive in return. They are losing the tag name as “idea manufactures” or “solution providers”, they are so busy trying to re-invent themselves that they’ve lost sight of who and what they are. There’s no focus as business norm is no longer practiced properly in market. In fact, marketers are looking for agency leaders who can provide higher degrees of agency involvement in the client’s business. They want a business partners how can work hand-in-hand with them to manipulate and deploy the right strategy for its business. However, while money becomes the bail for pulling the buffalo, it is such a sadness that can’t even provide true strategic value to the marketing mix.