In those days, the agency presentation followed a familiar pattern: 80 per cent of the time focused on 'creative' issues and the remainder covered media recommendations - which were essentially a faithful post rationalisation of the creative director's ambition for the campaign.
Then, all hell broke loose. Media fragmentation occurred and the concept of holistic communications strategies hit the ground running. Deregulation of television brought about an explosion of options. Under threat, print became more specialised and moved online. Outdoor media proliferated.
Digital marketing expanded into consumer electronics. Below-the-line got sexy with state-of-the-art integrated solutions. The age of media specialisation had dawned. Ad agencies responded by splitting out their media units to form media specialist agencies.
But the errors of the industry came back to haunt us. The same media folks we had squeezed into presentations between the creative director and lunch were now expected to be the 'new heroes' but many were simply unprepared or untrained. Demand outstripped resources and the region suffered from a lack of qualified staff.
That was 1997 - the year of the Asian financial crisis. Demand for double-digit growth fuelled acquisition spending sprees which piled on the costs and put a vice-like grip on company performance. The pressures of parent companies and their demands for growth brought instability to the industry.
The situation is not dissimilar today. We face two critical challenges.
Investment: Notwithstanding the economic meltdown, we need to regain the potential for organic growth which comes through the development of better products, tools and services rather than short-term business development.
Training and development: Losing focus on product, service, strategy and communications in favour of the bottomline has resulted in a gap in the skills base. Senior managers who can manage their profit pressures while still motivating less experienced staff are increasingly rare. At the same time, the industry seems to have stopped investing in graduate trainees. Not surprisingly, we've now got a serious gap at middle management level.
The conclusion: The industry needs to start believing itself and investing in its beliefs. Certainly, this means that each and every agency needs to invest in trainees and in the training of their managers. But more than this, smart graduates and managers are not going to be attracted into an industry of losers. Yet if we aren't able to attract them, what will become of us? We spend much time and effort convincing clients we are good at what we do. It's time we started letting young graduates in on this secret too.
