In the face of commercial efficiency, the feelings of advertisers are unimportant. Author Ermao Editor Yuan Ye 01 Entering the Rainy Season It was nighttime when host Han Yu went to Jiuxianqiao to interview Pan Fei, CEO of Blue Label, but the office area was still lit up. She asked Pan Fei if marketing was a tough business. Pan Fei only said, “It’s getting more and more voluminous,” and brought the conversation back to the beginning of the century, the golden age of advertising. At that time, advertising was very decent and profitable, and could change the fate of a brand or a young person. Generally speaking, reminiscing about the past happens in two ways: when the reminiscer realizes that he or she is getting old, that youth is gone, and that the present moment is difficult and has no answer to the problem. The advertising industry clearly falls into the latter category. The argument that advertising is dead, that the 4A is dead, is now a cliché, and many colleges and universities have outlawed advertising programs. Recently, an advertiser in his year-end summary directly lamented that the industry was being buried in a grave, which is laughable. Mocking advertisers seems to have become trendy, and practitioner A Leng was initially a bit defensive when he received my barrage of questions about the industry, but soon gave up. To a certain extent, this is a reflection of the psychology of many advertisers nowadays, who habitually maintain their professional dignity, while at the same time show compromise and lie down in the repeated sufferings during the trough of the industry. A Leng summarized the advertising industry in 2024 with the word “flat”. Although it seems to the outside world that this industry has a lot of unlucky news soon after the beginning of spring, there was the Excel table incident that caused an earthquake in the advertising circle, Banana cut down the brand department in the middle of the year, Blue Label moved its headquarters to the south at the end of the year, and the debt collection of Dixie PR was on the hot spot, but the industry has already been calling for misery for many years, and the year of 2024 did not get better, nor did it get worse. He skillfully listed the specifics of miserable The budget is getting harder and harder to get, more and more cruel than the manuscript, more and more earn less and less money, more and more difficult to serve the customer, more and more advances, but there is nothing out of the circle of the work. It may be hard for someone who isn’t in the middle of it to perceive the specific pain in this set of platitudes. But for advertisers who have experienced a good time, this change may be like moving from a single-family house to a 10-square-meter shared room with no windows, meals are still eaten, sleep is still sleeping, but everything is different, and even after getting used to the dimness of the shared room, the desire to vomit has disappeared. Many people choose to leave. In the past decade or so, under the siphon effect of the Internet industry, many smart young people bid farewell to 4A advertising agencies, and instead took pride in the big factory badges they wore on their chests. Producing a widely publicized jingle is no longer their ideal, and making a prettier PPT for the year-end report has become a more realistic vision It is directly linked to income. When a big factory absorbs enough good advertisers, it can set up a relatively perfect inhouse team within the company. For example, We Studio, the marketing department of Racer, has made 500 hometowns, a series of terrific hometown specialties, and other works, such as I’m going south after planting wheat, which have even been used by many advertising agencies to learn from. When Party A’s creative ability is strong enough, what is left for Party B is mostly the execution. Compared with the full case, this is also a more cost-effective operation. A popular refrain in the industry is The significance of advertising agency advances is mostly greater than creativity. The barrenness of the annual review can also illustrate the problem. At the end of the year, the advertising media where A Leng works will take stock of the wonderful cases of the year, but recently, when inviting big names in the industry to make recommendations on the cases, we all look a bit hesitant. There were a few good cases, such as BMW minicoop er endorsed by Yu Qian, B station’s Big Magician, Hungry’s New Year’s KV, but which one of them really made it out of the circle or was obviously much better than the others, it can be said that there is no such case. This is in stark contrast to when A Leng came in and out of the business. It was 2013, and he remembers almost weekly swipe cases. The decreasing trend started to show around 2018 and has become more pronounced since then. The advertising industry, which is an economic barometer, has thus entered the rainy season. 02 Obsolete It has taken four years for my Shake Voice number to prove that the past promo Advertisement films are obsolete in the short video era. Lei Jun, in a conversation with financial writer Li Xiang, directly expressed his bearishness towards traditional advertising. This is not a condescending critique by the big man. Throughout 2024, Lei Jun has made a name for himself on the short video platform, and after the release of Xiaomi SU7, he himself continued to break the circle, and then was flirted with for Xiaomi’s company to save marketing funds. Lei Jun’s model has been copied in bulk by entrepreneurs, but there has yet to be a second equally successful case A group of advertising agencies should be grateful for this, the rice bowl has not been lost for the time being. To be honest, many young advertisers are not as active as Lei Jun, who is in his 50s, when it comes to embracing change. Uncle Golden Gun, creative director of Red Production, once said that in the last decade or so, the mainstream creative content of the advertising industry has not changed essentially, and basically stays in the era of traditional media. Of course, one reality that needs to be recognized is that a lot of genius advertising ideas are piled up with money. A senior advertising practitioner has witnessed the glorious era of 4A companies, the monthly fee of more than 600,000 annual marketing expenses of more than 10 million, the team has enough funds to polish the creativity. Now, gouging is the industry theme. Probably from the beginning of 2019 Almost also the beginning of the high-speed rise of short video, the discussion about Netflix to kill the advertising agency has risen in the industry.2022, Andy Lau starred in the FAW Audi advertisement Life is small full , it was alleged that the copywriting was plagiarized by the jittery tone blogger Beidaimango, once this concern was pushed to a climax. Another manifestation of the lack of creativity is path dependency. Chichi is a media project manager, a year ago to receive an industry TOP3 level advertising company, the latter for a well-known factory launched a new technology product to do strategic planning, roughly the idea is to let the brand and a hip brand to do co-branding, with the concept of cool tide to open up the youth market. Chichi found it a bit strange Macro level, the tide brand business is being questioned, the tide brand’s sales performance that year also declined by more than 10, with a declining industry to do co-branding? At the micro level, the marketing purpose of cross-border co-branding is for the two brands to channel each other’s traffic and create buzz at the same time. However, there is a large differentiation between the user profile of the major manufacturer and the chichi brand. With needs and questions, Chichi contacted the Tide side, and sure enough, it was rejected. Yeh Ming-gui, who had planned the Left Bank Coffee and, with an advertisement, brought back to life Taiwan’s Popular Bank, which was on the verge of collapse at the time, once said The advertiser’s brain should have black magic, that is, the ability to solve problems. However, the ability here may mainly refer to the ability to help clients solve problems. When the subject of the problem becomes the advertiser himself, the difficulty of summoning black magic is infinitely magnified. Some advertisers have found that in this industry where freshness and creativity are most needed, many people choose to seal themselves in old patterns. An advertising agency has undertaken the promotion of a new energy luxury car brand, and Bob, a staff member, told me privately that he and his colleagues are still driving traditional luxury car brands, and that they have a deep-rooted knowledge of these brands. It’s up to the advertiser as an individual to choose which brand they want to use in their life. But this has to be considered a failure of the brand’s advertising. The Ogilvy quote is well known in advertising circles We Sell or Else is all about selling or we’re nothing. If the people who make the ads aren’t impressed themselves, then maybe they’re not so far from being nothing. Similar stagnation is also reflected in income In 2000, Ogilvy’s freshman monthly salary of 5,000 yuan, the same period, the average monthly salary of our employees in the workforce of 781 yuan. 23 years later, the latter figure has risen to 10,058 yuan, while Ogilvy’s freshman monthly income is still 5,000 yuan. The same 5,000 yuan, when the Ogilvy people can be used to buy 2 5 5 square meters of house in Beijing Huilongguan, now only enough to pay for a set of two-bedroom single-month rent in the same area. Salary starting point has not changed in 20 years, the ceiling is much lower than 20 years ago. Most of the wealth of the advertising industry is still in the hands of those who have experienced the dividends of the times. Bob, who drives a traditional luxury car, spent 8 years to realize a monthly income of 20,000, during which working overtime until 2:00 a.m. is the norm, and attending a friend’s wedding, but also at the dinner table to change the PPT. The enthusiasm of the industry has long since disappeared, and now that the industry has suffered a heavy blow, he just wants to keep his job. 03 active and passive change If you are still doing business the same way in 5 years, you are not far from closing down. Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, once said. Right now, the cake that originally belonged to traditional advertising agencies is being divided by multiple forces, including the first party that comes to the scene personally, the one-person company that wins by cost-effectiveness, and the MCN organization that is famous for its traffic. Between the turbulence, there are still traditional advertisers who believe that as long as they do a good job in content and service, the bullets will eventually fly back. Only, no one knows when this day will come. For most traditional advertising agencies, winter is the certainty of the moment. There is an industry consensus that an agency with 60 points in content but strong channels is more popular with brands than an agency with great content but weak media channels and poor use of tools. Chichi was impressed by a brand’s campaign for a store opening, which didn’t have any content-driven strategy or communication strategy, but only two pieces of information: the service team configuration and the resource list. The former is to tell Party A that there is enough manpower to do the delivery, and the latter is the list of cooperation, including different platforms of people and cast flow planning. Obviously, this is a channel agency. Chichi explains, but it took the A-side’s list. This would have been hard to imagine before. Channel agencies, as second-tier suppliers, or C-side, typically take work from ad agencies B-side. They are not known for their creativity, but they have strong media channels When the weight of the latter is rapidly increasing, the communication effect that Party C can achieve may not be inferior to Party B. More importantly, they are also cheap. In fact, this is one of the core reasons for Blue Label to move south. Beijing and Shanghai have their own characteristics as advertising centers. Beijing has the strongest media channels in the country. In addition to traditional TV stations and paper media, 7 of the 10 largest advertising platforms in China are headquartered in Beijing, which has gradually formed a pattern of emphasizing the media and focusing on creativity. Shanghai’s advertising industry is still centered on creativity, which has resulted in a large number of excellent creative hot stores and talents, and the continued birth of consumer brands, which are important clients for advertising agencies. Therefore, Blue Label’s relocation to the south can be seen as its initiative to stagger the competition with the media and further magnify its own advantages in creativity. More small agencies are also moving south. An ad agency that serves mainstream sporting goods brands retains only two employees in Beijing, with the rest relocating to Shanghai in 2024. Closer to clients, many ad shoots also take place in the southern city. Nick, the founder of the company, talked about his plan to complete the entire move in three years. He needs to work on reducing company costs. Low prices were bringing about a brutal involution. 2024 he went to Gansu to shoot a commercial and learned that one of his peers, a one-man company, was charging only 2,000 yuan for a day’s shooting. He was shocked by the price, “I can’t even turn the machine on for more than that”. Due to the market and other factors, the budget of Party A was significantly reduced in 2024, which made him more alert to the cost of everything, and he would never hire a full-time person to solve a problem that could be solved by a part-time person. Twenty years ago, China’s advertising industry, perhaps there is still the American drama Ad Maniacs presented by the United States in the 1960s a slight shadow sense of seniority sense of mission, then now, its competition has entered the era of catching up Seemingly abundant enough, but lack of cost-effective goods, not even qualified to be placed on the stall. Infomercials are the typical embodiment of this. A few years ago, advertising companies will still look for teams to build scenes, shoot a day to cut twenty or thirty, a cost of about four or five hundred dollars. But now, a live broadcast can produce slices, can be compressed to a single cost of less than 50 yuan, the efficiency is also significantly more than the TVC. In the view of traditional advertisers, slicing has no technical content, and a lot of people scoffed at this Of course, in the face of commercial efficiency, the feelings of advertisers do not matter. 04 Time is of the essence 20 years ago, 4A’s were charging international brands up to 1 million dollars a month. At that time, advertisers were also the golden collar of the golden collar. An advertiser recalled on a social media platform that the boss of his company used to accept clients on the principle that they were either interesting or rich. Clients who were a pain in the ass could be taken on, but at an extra cost. Later, advertisers also enjoyed the traffic dividend of the mobile Internet. Brand marketer Yang not bad had recalled the euphoria of that period in his public number In 2015 I was in Ali, do three or four big projects a year, each project needs three or four different parties, the core agency to go through three or four proposals than draft, then compete with the procurement budget, grab time with the advertising agency, and creative department overnight workshop, 12 months a year sitting on the workstation The time spent sitting at the workstation for 12 months of the year was not more than one month, and the rest of the time was spent fighting in the project room. Later, he returned to Beijing to work for another Internet company, and caught up with the good time of the company’s earning, and still could afford to hire an advertising agency with a monthly fee of 500,000 yuan, and could afford to shoot TVCs with a budget of millions of dollars, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year on media investment Fred, who had been working in the branding department of a large factory, had a sense of a lifetime when he looked up his diary of the previous few years. At that time, he often handled multi-million dollar branding projects, and in his diary, he recorded in detail his dislike of a multi-million dollar project. After being unemployed for more than 10 months, he looked back at that year and realized that it was all ridiculous. Although advertisers’ budgets are shrinking, they are still the golden fathers of advertisers. Ad dogs can only continue to lower prices and improve quality to compete for orders. The crisis doesn’t stop there. One of the hot keywords in the industry discussion in 2024 is AI. Compared with the trouble of changing cities, Nick is more worried that technology will take away his job one day. For the past year, he has been tracking the development of AI and trying to use it as much as possible in his work. Not long ago, there was some big news in the advertising world, the famous advertising agency Omnicom and IPG announced a merger to become the world’s largest advertising group. John Lane, CEO of Omnicom, said of this move This move allows us to take control of our future, rather than waiting for technology to beat us down in unforeseen ways. New technologies, such as AI, are impacting the entire advertising industry. Big brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Maybelline, Taobao, Nike, and many more are jumping on the AI-generated ad bandwagon. Toys R Us’ Sora-generated spot, which cost $200,000 for three minutes, is an eye-opener for ad agencies. In the past, it was not unusual for a 15-second ad to cost millions. Figure Coca-Cola AI ad Despite the current mixed reputation of AI ads, the technological trend it symbolizes is inevitable. One advertiser took to the social media platform to lament If you have mediocre talents, that’s something to be really afraid of. And if you have some good skills? Then AI will be a godsend. AI doesn’t have the kind of sophisticated intuition to recognize cultural trends before others, to empathize, or to capture the human connection of storytelling, play its part. An AI practitioner replied after brightening up Your point is very true. The pain of change did not end with the New Year. Multiple advertising practitioners have expressed concern about the outlook for 2025 and there is no clarity on when things will be good again. But from another perspective, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A new industry landscape may just emerge from the change. As the line from Mad Men goes, “Stability means regression,” and the way advertising was done 30 years ago is itself a form of stagnation, if not regression, if it is still being done today. It’s just that the manna for them is arsenic for us. Change that brings pain to some will inevitably bring joy to others. Advertisers are sung year after year against the backdrop of the number of advertising practitioners and the scale of advertising output climbed higher year after year Last year, the country’s advertising revenue of 131.27 billion yuan, an increase of 17 5 over the previous year. The practitioners now include many content creators. When traditional advertisers are still bemoaning The product of all commercial societies in which everything costs money to get, only advertising is paid to skip , Netflix Wang Qiye’s one advertisement, the number of likes easily exceeded 10 million, the single offer has reached 700,000, and her annual income last year was close to 25 million yuan. Similar examples are common in short video platforms. Advertising as a communication medium still shows its value at the present time. It may not be the entire advertising industry that plays the sad song, but the people in it who have not yet had time to turn. They are unfortunate enough to be the cannon fodder of the industry’s evolution, and to some extent, this is the result of an active choice. Header image credit AI Mapping
The feelings of advertisers are unimportant in the face of commercial efficiency.
Author Ermao Editor Haruno
Author Ermao
Edited by Harano
01 Entering the rainy season
It was nighttime when host Han Yu went to Jiuxianqiao to interview Pan Fei, CEO of Blue Label, but the office area was still brightly lit. She asked Pan Fei if marketing was a tough business. Pan Fei simply said, “It’s getting more and more voluminous,” and brought the conversation back to the beginning of the century, the golden age of advertising. At that time, advertising was very decent and profitable, and could change the fate of a brand or a young person. Generally speaking, reminiscing about the past happens in two ways: when the reminiscer realizes that he or she is getting old, that youth is gone, and that the present moment is difficult and has no answer to the problem. The advertising industry clearly falls into the latter category. The argument that advertising is dead, that the 4A is dead, is now a cliché, and many colleges and universities have outlawed advertising programs. Recently, an advertiser in his year-end summary directly lamented that the industry was being buried in a grave, which is laughable. Mocking advertisers seems to have become a trend, and practitioner A Leng was initially a bit defensive when he received my barrage of questions about the industry, but soon gave up.
It was nighttime when host Han Yu went to Jiuxianqiao to interview Pan Fei, CEO of Blue Label, but the office area was still lit up. She asked Pan Fei Is marketing a tough business?
Pan Fei only said, “It’s getting more and more voluminous,” and brought the conversation back to the beginning of the century, the golden age of advertising. At that time, advertising was very decent and profitable, and it could change the fate of a brand or a young person.
Generally speaking, reminiscing about the past happens in two ways The reminiscer realizes that he’s getting old and his youth is gone When the present is in trouble and there’s no answer to the problem.
The advertising industry clearly falls into the latter category.
The argument that advertising is dead, that the 4A is dead, is now a cliché, and many colleges and universities have outlawed advertising programs. Recently, an advertiser in his year-end summary directly lamented that the industry was being buried in a grave, which is laughable. Mocking advertisers seems to have become a trend, and practitioner A Leng was initially a bit defensive when he received my barrage of questions about the industry, but soon gave up.
To a certain extent, this is a reflection of the psychology of many advertisers nowadays, who habitually maintain their professional dignity, while at the same time show compromise and lie down in the repeated sufferings of the industry’s downturn. A Leng summarized the advertising industry in 2024 with the word “flat”. Although it seems to the outside world that this industry has a lot of unlucky news soon after the beginning of spring, there was the Excel table incident which caused an earthquake in 312 advertising circles, Banana cut down the brand department in the middle of the year, Blue Label moved its headquarters to the south at the end of the year, and the debt collection of Dixie PR was on the hot search, but the industry has already been calling for misery for many years, and the year of 2024 did not get better, nor did it get worse. He skillfully listed the specifics of miserable The budget is getting harder and harder to get, the comparison is getting more and more brutal, the money is earning less and less, the clients are getting harder and harder to serve, the advances are getting more and more, but there is not much out of the circle of the work.
To a certain extent, this is the psychological portrayal of many advertisers nowadays, who habitually maintain their professional dignity, and at the same time show compromise and lie down in the repeated torment of the industry’s downturn.
A Leng summarized the advertising industry in 2024 with the word “flat”. Although it seems to the outside world that this industry has a lot of unlucky news soon after the beginning of spring, there was the Excel table incident which caused an earthquake in the advertising circle, the brand department was abolished by Banana in the middle of the year, the headquarter of Blue Label was moved to the south at the end of the year, and the debt collection of DIS public relations was on the hot spot, but the industry has already been screaming for a lot of years, and it didn’t get better or worse in 2024.
He skillfully listed the specifics of miserable The budget is getting harder and harder to get, the comparison is getting more and more brutal, the money is earning less and less, the clients are getting harder and harder to serve, the advances are getting more and more, but there is not much out of the circle of the work.
It may be hard for someone who isn’t in the middle of it to perceive the specific pain in this set of platitudes. But for advertisers who have experienced a good time, this change may be like moving from a single-family house to a 10-square-meter shared room with no windows, meals are still eaten, sleep is still sleeping, but everything is different, and even after getting used to the dimness of the shared room, the desire to vomit has disappeared. Many people choose to leave. In the past decade or so, under the siphon effect of the Internet industry, many smart young people bid farewell to 4A advertising agencies, and instead took pride in the big factory badges they wore on their chests. Producing a widely publicized jingle is no longer their ideal, and making a prettier PPT for the year-end report has become a more realistic vision It is directly linked to income. When a big factory absorbs enough good advertisers, it can set up a relatively perfect inhouse team within the company. For example, We Studio, the marketing department of Racer, has made 500 hometowns, a series of terrific hometown specialties, and other works, such as I’m going south after planting wheat, which have even been used by many advertising agencies to learn from. When Party A’s creative ability is strong enough, what is left for Party B is mostly the execution. Compared with the full case, this is also a more cost-effective operation. A popular refrain in the industry is The significance of advertising agency advances is mostly greater than creativity. The barrenness of the annual review can also illustrate the problem. At the end of the year, the advertising media where A Leng works will take stock of the wonderful cases of the year, but recently, when inviting big names in the industry to do the recommended cases, we all look a bit hesitant. There are a few good cases such as BMW minicoop er endorsed by Yu Qian, B station’s Big Magician, Hungry’s New Year’s KV, but which one of them is really out of the circle or obviously much better than the others, it can be said that there is none.
Those who are not in the middle of it may find it hard to perceive the specific pain in this set of platitudes.
But for advertisers who have experienced a good light, the change may be like moving from a single-family house to a 10-square-meter shared room with no windows; meals are still eaten, sleep is still taken, but everything is different, and even, after getting used to the dimness of the shared room, one’s desire to even spit disappears.
Many people choose to leave.
In the past decade or so, under the siphon effect of the Internet industry, many smart young people bid farewell to 4A advertising agencies, and instead took pride in the big factory badges they wore on their chests. Producing a widely circulated jingle is no longer their ideal, and making a more beautiful PPT for the year-end report has become a more realistic vision It is directly linked to income.
When a big factory absorbs enough good advertisers, it can set up a relatively perfect inhouse team within the company. For example, We Studio, the marketing department of Racer, has made 500 Hometowns, a series of terrific hometown specialties, and other works, such as I’m going south after planting wheat, which have even been used by many advertising agencies to learn from.
When Party A’s creative ability is strong enough, what is left for Party B is mostly the execution. Compared with the full case, this is also a more cost-effective operation. A popular saying in the industry is that the significance of advertising agency advances is much greater than that of creativity.
The barrenness of the annual review can also illustrate the problem.
At the end of the year, the advertising media where A Leng works will take stock of the wonderful cases of the year, but recently, when inviting big names in the industry to make recommendations on the cases, we all look a little hesitant.
There were a few good cases, such as BMW minicoop er endorsed by Yu Qian, B station’s Big Magician, Hungry’s New Year’s KV, but which one of them really came out of the circle or was obviously much better than the others, it can be said that there is none.
This is in stark contrast to when A Leng came in and out of the business. It was 2013, and he remembers almost weekly swipe cases. The decreasing trend started to show around 2018 and has become more pronounced since then. The advertising industry, an economic barometer, thus entered the rainy season.
02 Obsolete
It has taken 4 years for my Shake Shack to prove that the past promo Advertisement films are obsolete in the short video era. Lei Jun, in a conversation with financial writer Li Xiang, directly expressed his bearishness toward traditional advertising. This is not a condescending critique by the big man. Throughout 2024, Lei Jun has made a name for himself on the short video platform, and after the release of the Xiaomi SU7, he himself continued to break the circle, and then was flirted with Saving marketing funds for Xiaomi.
My Jitterbug number has spent 4 years proving that the promos of the past Advertisements are outdated in the short video era.
In a conversation with financial writer Li Xiang, Lei Jun directly expressed his disdain for traditional advertising. This is not a condescending critique by the big man. Throughout 2024, Lei Jun has made a name for himself on the short video platform, and after the release of the Xiaomi SU7, he himself continued to break the circle, and then was flirted with Saving marketing funds for Xiaomi.
Lei Jun’s model has been copied in bulk by entrepreneurs, but there has yet to be a second equally successful case A group of advertising agencies should be grateful for this, and their jobs have not been lost for the time being. To be honest, in the matter of embracing change, many young advertisers are not as active as Lei Jun, who is in his 50s. Uncle Golden Gun, creative director of Red Production, once said that in the last decade or so, the mainstream creative content of the advertising industry has not changed essentially, and basically stays in the era of traditional media. Of course, one reality that needs to be recognized is that a lot of genius advertising ideas are piled up with money. A senior advertising practitioner has witnessed the glorious era of 4A companies, the monthly fee of more than 600,000 annual marketing expenses of more than 10 million, the team has enough funds to polish the creativity. Now, gouging is the industry theme. Probably from the beginning of 2019 Almost also the beginning of the high-speed rise of short video, the discussion about Netflix to kill the advertising agency has risen in the industry.2022, Andy Lau starred in the FAW Audi advertisement Life is small full , it was alleged that the copywriting was plagiarized by the jittery tone blogger Beidaimango, once this concern was pushed to a climax. Another manifestation of the lack of creativity is path dependency. Chichi is a media project manager, a year ago to receive an industry TOP3 level advertising company, the latter for a well-known factory launched a new technology product to do strategic planning, roughly the idea is to let the brand and a hip brand to do co-branding, with the concept of cool tide to open up the youth market. Chichi found it a bit strange Macro level, the tide brand business is being questioned, the tide brand’s sales performance that year also declined by more than 10, with a declining industry to do co-branding? At the micro level, the marketing purpose of cross-border co-branding is for the two brands to channel each other’s traffic and create buzz at the same time. However, there is a large differentiation between the user profile of the major manufacturer and the chichi brand. With needs and questions, Chichi contacted the Tide side, and sure enough, it was rejected. Yeh Ming-gui, who had planned the Left Bank Coffee and, with an advertisement, brought back to life Taiwan’s Public Bank, which was on the verge of collapse at the time, once said The advertiser’s brain should have black magic, that is, the ability to solve problems. However, the ability here may mainly refer to the ability to help clients solve problems. When the subject of the problem becomes the advertiser himself, the difficulty of summoning black magic is infinitely magnified. Some advertisers have found that in this industry where freshness and creativity are most needed, many people choose to seal themselves in old patterns. An advertising agency has undertaken the promotion of a new energy luxury car brand, and Bob, a staff member, told me privately that he and his colleagues are still driving traditional luxury car brands, and that they have a deep-rooted knowledge of these brands. It’s up to the advertiser as an individual to choose which brand they want to use in their life. But this has to be considered a failure of the brand’s advertising. The Ogilvy quote is well known in advertising circles We Sell or Else is all about selling or we’re nothing. If the people who make the ads aren’t impressed themselves, then maybe they’re not so far from being nothing. Similar stagnation is also reflected in income In 2000, Ogilvy’s freshmen earned 5,000 yuan a month, while the average monthly salary of workers in the same period was 781 yuan. 23 years later, the latter figure has risen to 10,058 yuan, while Ogilvy’s freshmen still earn 5,000 yuan a month.
Lei Jun’s model has been copied in bulk by entrepreneurs, but so far there has not yet been a second case of the same success A group of advertising agencies should be grateful for this, the rice bowl is not lost for the time being.
To be honest, in the matter of embracing change, many young advertisers are not as active as Lei Jun, who is in his 50s.
Uncle Golden Gun, creative director of Red Production, once said that in the last decade or so, the mainstream creative content of the advertising industry has not changed essentially, and basically stays in the era of traditional media.
Of course, one reality that needs to be recognized is that a lot of genius advertising ideas are piled up with money. A senior advertising practitioner has witnessed the glorious era of 4A companies, the monthly fee of more than 600,000 annual marketing expenses of more than 10 million, the team has enough funds to polish the creativity. Now, the theme of the industry is to be stingy.
Probably from the beginning of 2019 Almost also the beginning of the high-speed rise of short video, the discussion about Netflix to kill the advertising agency has risen in the industry.2022, Andy Lau starred in the FAW Audi commercial Life Xiaoman , which was accused of copying the copywriting of the Shake tone blogger Beida Mango, once this concern was pushed to a climax.
Another manifestation of the lack of creativity is path dependence.
Chichi is a media project manager, a year ago to take on an industry TOP3 level advertising company, the latter to do strategic planning for the launch of a well-known large manufacturers of new scientific and technological products, probably the idea is to let the brand and a hip brand to do co-branding, with the concept of cool tide to open up the market for young people.
Chichi thought it was a bit strange.
Macro level, the tide brand business is being questioned, the tide brand sales performance that year also declined more than 10, with a declining industry to do co-branding?
At the micro level, the marketing objective of the cross-border co-branding is for the two brands to channel each other’s traffic and create buzz at the same time. However, there is a large differentiation between the user profile of the major manufacturer and the chichi brand. With needs and questions, Chichi contacted the Tide side, and sure enough, it was rejected.
Yeh Ming-gui, who had planned Left Bank Coffee and, with a single advertisement, brought back to life Taiwan’s Public Bank, which was on the verge of closure at the time, once said that an advertiser’s brain should have black magic, that is, the ability to solve problems.
However, the ability here may mainly refer to the ability to help clients solve problems. When the subject of the problem becomes the advertiser himself, the difficulty of summoning black magic is infinitely magnified.
Some advertisers find that in this industry where freshness and creativity are most needed, many people choose to seal themselves in old patterns.
An advertising agency has undertaken the promotion of a new energy luxury car brand, and Bob, a staff member, privately told me that he and his colleagues are still driving traditional luxury car brands, and that they have a deep-rooted knowledge of these brands.
It’s up to the advertiser as an individual to choose which brand they want to use in their life. But this has to be considered a failure of the brand’s advertising. The Ogilvy quote is well known in advertising circles We Sell or Else is all about selling or we’re nothing. If the people who make the ads aren’t impressed themselves, then maybe they’re not so far from being nothing.
Similar stagnation is also reflected in income In 2000, Ogilvy’s freshmen earned 5,000 yuan a month, while the average monthly salary of workers on the job in China at the same time was 781 yuan. 23 years later, the latter figure has risen to 10,058 yuan, while Ogilvy’s freshmen still earn 5,000 yuan a month.
The same 5,000 yuan, when the Ogilvy people can be used to buy 2 5 5 square meters of house in Beijing Huilongguan, now only enough to pay for a set of two-bedroom single-month rent in the same area. Salary starting point has not changed in 20 years, the ceiling is much lower than 20 years ago. Most of the wealth of the advertising industry is still in the hands of those who have experienced the dividends of the times. Bob, who drives a traditional luxury car, spent 8 years to realize a monthly income of 20,000, during which working overtime until 2:00 a.m. is the norm, and when attending a friend’s wedding, he also changed the PPT at the dinner table. The enthusiasm of the industry has long since disappeared, and now that the industry has suffered a heavy blow, he just wants to keep his job.
The same 5,000 yuan, when Ogilvy and Mather can be used to buy 2,5 5 square meters of house in Beijing Huilongguan, now only enough to pay for a set of two-bedroom single-month rent in the same area.
Salary starting point has not changed in 20 years, the ceiling is much lower than 20 years ago.
Most of the wealth of the advertising industry is still in the hands of those who have experienced the dividends of the times. Bob, who drives a traditional luxury car, spent 8 years to realize a monthly income of 20,000, during which working overtime until 2:00 a.m. is the norm, and attending a friend’s wedding, but also at the dinner table to change the PPT.
The enthusiasm when he first joined the industry has long since disappeared, and now that the industry has been hit hard, he just wants to keep his job.
03 Active and passive change
If you’re still doing business the same way in 5 years, you’re not far from closing your doors. Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, once said. Right now, the cake originally belonging to traditional advertising agencies is being divided by the forces of many parties, including the A party that comes down personally, the one-person company that wins by cost-effectiveness, and the MCN organization that excels by traffic. Between the turbulence, there are still traditional advertisers who believe that as long as they do a good job in content and service, the bullets will eventually fly back. Only, no one knows when this day will come. For most traditional advertising agencies, winter is the certainty of the moment. There is an industry consensus that an agency with 60 points in content but strong channels is more popular with brands than an agency with great content but weak media channels and poor use of tools. Chichi was impressed by a brand’s campaign for a store opening, which didn’t have any content-driven strategy or communication strategy, but only two pieces of information: the service team configuration and the resource list. The former is to tell Party A that there is enough manpower to do the delivery, and the latter is the list of cooperation, including different platforms of people and cast flow planning. Obviously, this is a channel agency. Chichi explains, but it took the A-side’s list. This would have been hard to imagine before. Channel agencies, as second-tier suppliers, or C-side, typically take work from ad agencies B-side. They are not known for their creativity, but they have strong media channels When the weight of the latter is rapidly increasing, the communication effect that party C can achieve may not be inferior to party B. More importantly, they are also cheap. In fact, this is one of the core reasons for Blue Label to move south. Beijing and Shanghai have their own characteristics as advertising centers. Beijing has the strongest media channels in the country. In addition to traditional TV stations and paper media, 7 of the 10 largest advertising platforms in China are headquartered in Beijing, which has gradually formed a pattern of emphasizing the media and focusing on creativity. Shanghai’s advertising industry is still centered on creativity, which has resulted in a large number of excellent creative hot stores and talents, and the continuous birth of consumer brands, which are important clients for advertising agencies. Therefore, the relocation of Blue Label to the south can be regarded as its initiative to stagger the competition with the media and further magnify its advantages in creativity.
If you’re doing business the same way in five years, you’re not far from closing your doors. Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, once said.
Right now, the cake that originally belonged to traditional advertising agencies is being divided by multiple forces The A side that comes down personally The one-person company that wins by cost-effectiveness The MCN organization that excels by traffic.
Between the turbulence, there are still traditional advertisers who believe that as long as they do a good job in content and service, the bullets will eventually fly back. Only, no one knows exactly when this day will come.
For most traditional advertising agencies, winter is the definite item of the moment.
An industry consensus is that an agency with 60 points in content but strong channels is more popular with brands than an agency with great content but weak media channels and poor use of tools.
Chichi was impressed by a brand’s campaign for a store opening, which didn’t have any content-driven strategy or communication strategy, but only two pieces of information: the service team configuration and the resource list. The former is to tell Party A that there is enough manpower to do the delivery, and the latter is the list of cooperation, including the different platforms of the Darren and the planning of the casting flow.
Obviously, this is a channel agency. Chichi explains, but it took A’s list.
This would have been hard to imagine before. Channel agencies, as second-tier suppliers, or C-side, generally take work from ad agencies B-side. They’re not known for their creativity, but they do have strong media channels. When the latter’s weight increases rapidly, the communication effect that party C can achieve may not be inferior to that of party B.
More importantly, they are also cheap.
In fact, this is one of the core reasons for the blue label to move south.
Also as advertising heavyweights, Beijing and Shanghai each have their own specialties.
Beijing has the strongest media channels in the country. Besides traditional TV stations and paper media, 7 out of the 10 largest advertising platforms in China are headquartered in Beijing, which has gradually formed a pattern of emphasizing on media but not on creativity. Shanghai’s advertising industry is still centered on creativity, which has resulted in a large number of excellent creative hot stores and talents, and continues to give birth to consumer brands, which are important clients for advertising agencies.
Therefore, the relocation of Blue Label to the south can be regarded as its initiative to stagger the competition with the media and further magnify its advantages in creativity.
More small agencies are also moving south. An ad agency that serves mainstream sporting goods brands retains only two employees in Beijing, with the rest relocating to Shanghai in 2024. Closer to clients, many ad shoots also take place in the southern city. Nick, the founder of the company, talked about his plan to complete the entire move in three years. He needs to work on reducing company costs. Low prices were bringing about a brutal involution. 2024 he went to Gansu to shoot a commercial and learned that one of his peers, a one-man company, was charging only 2,000 yuan for a day’s shooting. He was shocked by the price, “I can’t even turn the machine on for more than that. Due to the market and other factors, the budget of Party A was significantly reduced in 2024, which made him more alert to the cost of everything, and he would never hire a full-time person to solve a problem that could be solved by a part-time person. Twenty years ago, China’s advertising industry, perhaps there is still the American drama Ad Maniacs presented by the United States in the 1960s a slight shadow sense of seniority sense of mission, then now, its competition has entered the era of catching up Seemingly abundant enough, but lack of cost-effective goods, not even qualified to be placed on the stall. Infomercials are the typical embodiment of this. A few years ago, advertising companies will still look for teams to build scenes, shoot a day to cut twenty or thirty, a cost of about four or five hundred dollars. But now, the slices that can be generated by a live broadcast can compress the cost of a single strip to less than 50 yuan, and the efficiency is significantly more than that of TVC. In the view of traditional advertisers, slicing has no technical content, and so many people scoff at it Of course, in the face of commercial efficiency, the feelings of advertisers are also unimportant.
More small ad agencies are also moving south. One agency that serves mainstream sporting goods brands retains only two employees in Beijing, with the rest moving to Shanghai in 2024. Closer to clients, many ad shoots also take place in the southern city. Nick, the company’s founder, talked about his plan to complete the entire move in three years.
He needs to work on reducing company costs.
Low prices were bringing about a brutal involution. 2024 he went to Gansu to shoot a commercial and learned that one of his peers, a one-man company, was charging only 2,000 yuan for a day’s shooting. He was shocked by the price, “I can’t even turn the machine on for more than that”.
As a result of the market and other factors, Party A significantly reduced its budget in 2024, which made him more alert to the cost of everything, and would never hire a full-time person to solve a problem that could be solved by a part-time person.
Twenty years ago, the Chinese advertising industry, perhaps there is still the American drama Ad Maniacs presented by the United States in the 1960s a slight shadow sense of seniority sense of mission, then now, its competition has entered the era of catching up Seemingly abundant enough, but lack of cost-effective goods, not even qualified to be placed on the stall.
Infomercials are the quintessential embodiment of this.
A few years ago, advertising companies will also find a team to build a scene, shoot a day to cut twenty or thirty, a cost of about four or five hundred dollars. But now, a live broadcast can produce slices that can compress the cost of a single strip to less than 50 dollars, and the efficiency is significantly more than TVC.
In the view of traditional advertisers, slicing has no technical content, and many people scoff at it Of course, in the face of commercial efficiency, the feelings of advertisers do not matter.
04 Time is of the essence
Twenty years ago, 4As were charging international brands up to a million dollars a month. Back then, advertisers were also the gold collar of gold collars. An advertiser recalled on a social media platform that the principle of the boss of the former company in accepting clients was either interesting or rich. Clients who were a pain in the ass could be taken on, but at an extra cost. Later, advertisers also enjoyed the traffic dividend of the mobile Internet. Brand marketer Yang not bad has recalled the euphoria of that period in his public number In 2015 I was in Ali, do three or four big projects a year, each project needs three or four different parties, the core agency to go through three or four proposals than draft, then compete with the procurement budget, grab time with the advertising agency, and creative department overnight workshop, 12 months a year sitting on the workstation The time spent sitting at the workstation for 12 months of the year was not more than one month, and the rest of the time was spent fighting in the project room. Later, he returned to Beijing to work for another Internet company, and caught up with the good time of the company’s earning, and still could afford to hire an advertising agency with a monthly fee of 500,000 yuan, and could afford to shoot TVCs with a budget of millions of dollars, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year on media investment Fred, who had been working in the branding department of a large factory, had a sense of a lifetime when he looked up his diary of the previous few years. At that time, he often handled multi-million dollar branding projects, and in his diary, he recorded in detail that he was full of dislike for a multi-million dollar project. After being unemployed for more than 10 months, he looked back at that year and realized that it was all ridiculous. Although advertisers’ budgets are shrinking, they are still the golden fathers of advertisers. Ad dogs can only continue to lower prices and improve quality to compete for orders. The crisis doesn’t stop there. One of the hot keywords in the industry discussion in 2024 is AI. Compared with the trouble of changing cities, Nick is more worried that technology will take away his job one day. For the past year, he has been tracking the development of AI and trying to use it as much as possible in his work. Not long ago, there was some big news in the advertising world, the famous advertising agency Omnicom and IPG announced a merger to become the world’s largest advertising group. John Lane, CEO of Omnicom, said of this move This move allows us to take control of our future, rather than waiting for technology to beat us down in unforeseen ways. New technologies, such as AI, are impacting the entire advertising industry. Big brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Maybelline, Taobao, Nike, and many more are jumping on the AI-generated ad bandwagon. Toys R Us’ Sora-generated spot, which cost $200,000 for three minutes, is an eye-opener for ad agencies. In the past, it was not unusual for a 15-second ad to cost millions.
Twenty years ago, 4As were charging international brands up to a million dollars a month. Back then, advertisers were also the gold collar of gold collars. An advertiser recalled on a social media platform that his boss used to accept clients on the principle that they were either interesting or rich. Clients who were a pain in the ass could be taken on, but at an extra cost.
Later, advertisers also enjoyed the traffic dividend of the mobile Internet. Brand marketer Yang Bu bad once recalled the prosperity of that period in his public number.
In 2015 I was in Ali, do three or four big projects a year, each project needs three or four different b parties, the core agency to go through three or four proposals than the draft, at that time with the procurement of the budget, with the advertising agency to grab time, with the creative department overnight workshop, 12 months a year to sit on the workstation time is not more than a month, the other time in the project room fighting.
Later, I went back to Beijing to work for another Internet company, and caught up with the good time of the company’s earning, and I still could afford to hire an advertising agency with a monthly fee of 500,000 RMB, and could afford to shoot a TVC with a budget of several million RMB, and spent several hundred million RMB on media investment in a year.
Fred, who used to work in the branding department of a big factory, also felt like it was a lifetime ago when he read through his diary in the previous years. At that time, he often handled multi-million dollar branding projects, and in his diary, he recorded in detail his dislike of a multi-million dollar project. After losing his job for more than 10 months, he looked back at that year and realized that the paper was full of absurdity.
Although advertisers’ budgets are shrinking, they are still the golden fathers of advertisers. Ad dogs can only continue to lower prices and improve quality to compete for orders.
The crisis does not stop here.
A hot keyword in the industry discussion in 2024 is AI.
Nick’s immediate concern is that technology will one day take away jobs more than the hassle of changing cities. For the past whole year, he has been tracking the development of AI and trying to use it as much as possible in his work.
Not long ago, there was some big news in the advertising world, the famous advertising agency Omnicom and IPG announced a merger to become the world’s largest advertising group. John Lane, CEO of Omnicom, said of this move This move allows us to take control of our future, rather than waiting for technology to beat us in unpredictable ways.
New technologies, represented by AI, are impacting the entire advertising industry.
Big brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Maybelline, Taobao, Nike, and many more are jumping on the AI-generated ad bandwagon. Toys R Us’ Sora-generated spot, which cost $200,000 for three minutes, is an eye-opener for ad agencies. In the past, it was not unusual for a 15-second ad to cost millions.
Figure Coca-Cola AI ad
Despite the current mixed reputation of AI ads, the technological trend it symbolizes is inevitable. One advertiser took to the social media platform to lament If you have mediocre talents, that’s something to be really afraid of. And if you have some good skills? Then AI will be a godsend. AI doesn’t have the kind of sophisticated intuition to recognize cultural trends before others, to empathize, or to capture the human connection of storytelling, play its part. An AI practitioner replied after brightening up Your point is very true. The pain of change did not end with the New Year. Multiple advertising practitioners have expressed concern about the outlook for 2025 and there is no clarity on when things will be good again. But from another perspective, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A new industry landscape may just emerge from the change. As the line from Mad Men goes, “Stability means regression,” and the way advertising was done 30 years ago is itself a form of stagnation, if not regression, if it is still being done today. It’s just that the manna for them is arsenic for us. Change that brings pain to some will inevitably bring joy to others. Advertisers are sung year after year against the backdrop of the number of advertising practitioners and the scale of advertising output climbed higher year after year Last year, the country’s advertising revenue of 131.27 billion yuan, an increase of 17 5 over the previous year. The practitioners now include many content creators. When traditional advertisers are still bemoaning The product of all commercial societies in which everything costs money to get, only advertising is paid to skip , Netflix Wang Qiye’s one advertisement, the number of likes easily exceeded 10 million, the single offer has reached 700,000, and her annual income last year was close to 25 million yuan. Similar examples are common in short video platforms. Advertising as a communication medium still shows its value at the present time. It may not be the entire advertising industry that plays the sad song, but the people in it who have not yet had time to turn. They have unfortunately become the cannon fodder of the industry’s evolution In a way, this is also the result of an active choice.
Despite the current mixed reputation of AI advertising, the technological trend it symbolizes is inevitable. One advertiser lamented on a social media platform
If you have mediocre talents, that does need to be feared. And if you have some good skills? Then AI will be a godsend. AI doesn’t have the kind of sophisticated intuition to recognize cultural trends before others, to empathize, or to capture the human connection of storytelling, play its part.
An AI practitioner replied after brightening up Your point is very true.
The pain of change did not end with the New Year. Multiple advertising practitioners have expressed concern about the outlook for 2025 and there is no clarity on when things will be good again.
But from another perspective, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A new industry landscape may just emerge from the change. As the line from Mad Men goes, “Stability means regression,” and the way advertising was done 30 years ago is itself stagnant, if not regressive, if it is still being done today.
It’s just that the manna for them is arsenic for us.
Change brings pain to some, and inevitably brings joy to others.
Advertisers are sung about year after year against the backdrop of the number of advertising practitioners and the scale of advertising output climbed higher year after year Last year, the country’s advertising revenue of 131,200,700,000,000 yuan, an increase of 17 5 over the previous year. The practitioners now include many content creators.
When traditional advertisers are still bemoaning The product of all commercial societies in which everything costs money to get, only advertising is paid to skip , Netflix Wang Qiye’s one advertisement, the number of likes easily exceeded 10 million, the single offer has reached 700,000 yuan, and her annual income last year was close to 25 million yuan. Similar examples are common in short video platforms.
Advertising as a medium of communication still shows its value in the present time. It is perhaps not the advertising industry as a whole that plays the sad song, but those who have not yet had the chance to turn to it. They have unfortunately become the cannon fodder of the industry’s evolution, and to some extent, this is also the result of an active choice.
Header image credit AI Mapping
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