Who is Ireland's largest advertising agency?

Have a guess. Is it McConnells? McCann Erickson? IIBBDO? QMP? DDFH&B? Pretty big hitters all, representing some heavyweight (what my old boss Frank Young in Wilson Hartnell used to lovingly call) Blue Chip clients. I guess the colour refers to Vegas more than the Embassy Grill.

Anyway, I'm not sure how the billings stack up. I could probably do a graph or something, look up the IAPI website. But I can't be arsed and it's after one in the morning. Ultimately you know it's going home to one of the many heads of Medusa, innit. Interpublic, Havas, WPP, Omnicom and Publicis have, between them, Irish advertising by the curlies.

Speaking of the IAPI website, I see that there are fifty eight member companies on the list. Impressive. Ireland's biggest media specialist is bound to be in there somewhere, right?

Anyway on an entirely unrelated topic, I read an interview in siliconerepublic.com with John Herlihy, Google's European Director of online sales and operations, and he has this to say in ironically a not-very-coded way to advertisers.

I believe many Irish companies are missing a trick, and there is a big opportunity for businesses to go out and capitalise on the shift of consumers to the online arena. Research shows people are becoming increasingly value-conscious as a result of the credit crunch, and are choosing to go online to both inform their purchasing decisions and to look for the best value available. If you don’t have an online presence, then you’re losing business.

I don't think that ad agencies should feel concerned by this. Akin to Spinal Tap's smaller stadia final tour, the audience is simply becoming more selective.

It's also probably entirely irrelevant, but that same Google just posted some juicy figures for the final three months of 2008. Read these while bearing in mind that in its biggest market, the US, Google has a healthy but not exactly knicker-bursting 35% of the search market. Here in vanishingcubland it's got about roughly in or around oh I dunno say 100% of that same market. So do the sums accordingly. Stats from the Beeb.

• Net profits of $204.1m (€147m) in the three months to 31 December.
• This compares to the $27.3m profits the company made a year earlier.
• Total fourth quarter turnover jumped to $1.03bn from $512.2m.

I'm just saying. It's not really relevant anyway, cos Google's not an ad agency. They just find stuff for you and do a kinda fun themed logo every so often on their search page, right? If they were an ad agency they'd probably be more into Powerpoint and they'd definitely be members of IAPI. I just wonder how they make that pot of cash in this climate just from being friendly and not evil and über-helpful when we're searching for shit. But they're absolutely, definitively, categorically not an agency.

Meanwhile, I read today in the Business Post that we're facing tough times, but media executives are upbeat. So that's all pretty jolly. Ed McDonald, Chief executive of the Association of Advertisers in Ireland, says that

In tighter economic conditions, it is vital that businesses look on their marketing and advertising spend as an investment rather than as a cost. Sure, it’s a cost, but it is more importantly an investment as essential as any R&D investment or capital equipment purchase or property lease.

I'd agree with all that, Ed, but I'd sure hope for agencies' sakes that clients don't start looking at remarkably accountable alternatives to the tried and trusted agency setup.

Dermot Hanrahan meanwhile, a long-time mover in broadcast and online circles, is staking it less on trad media and more on what's been working well for him up to now.

‘‘Online is still the fastest growing medium and it will continue to grow strongly. It... has gone from being an optional extra to being the medium which will eventually matter most. Marketeers who don’t use it are becoming rare, and are usually confined to decision makers above a certain age. Growth forecast for 2009 range from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, despite recession.

‘‘The medium is the most accountable, measurable and increasingly innovative as we see the decline of old banner ads and the growth of newer, more engaging, video-led ad formats. Again, the lower cost of entry in online advertising positions it better than most for the year ahead.”

Interesting bit about the decline of banner ads. I wonder if he's punting virals as newer and more engaging?

Happy Monday, Adland Ireland.

Blogging - why don't agencies get it?

Why are Dublin advertising agencies not blogging? Isn't anyone telling them, I mean really telling them, that there's a vital need now to be in on the two-way conversation? Actually there is, but they're not listening. A post for another day.

I spent ten minutes just now checking out the websites of some stellar names in Dublin adland.
In no particular order, yikes.

Irish International (more properly known as IIBBDO)
The Creative Work Comes First, I am assured on their very-difficult-to-navigate site. But that doesn't include having a blog.

Universal McCann. Wallpaper. That unfurls infuriatingly slowly. They also have a philosophy. 'Strong creative thinking is not an indulgence. It is essential to a campaign's effectiveness.' Right-oh. So where's the blog?

AFA O'Meara have links. 20 of them. To sites like radio stations. And marketing magazines. And poster companies. They have got a schmaltzy hotel bar piano theme tune, but no blog.

McConnells. Now I had hopes here. A self-proclaimed new website existing 'somewhere between Tron and the end of the universe (but in no way connected to Jar-Jar Binks).' Because that would be uncool. So where's the blog? That's right. Nowhere.

Rothco. Friendly new site. And they do have a news section. Oo-kay, so why is the last entry the 21st October? (It's about the launch of a contraception campaign. Insert witticism here.) They have Google Maps though, to navigate the future.

Cawley Nea TBWA. There's a blog! Yay!! Averaging a post a month! You can comment on them too! But nobody is doing.

I'm not picking on the six above. I could've picked a different six. They're the first ones I looked at just now. I'll do a more balanced overview of some of the more savvy, smaller digital agencies later. But the conclusions in the main won't be startlingly different. The people who have most to gain just aren't using blogging here.

Lookid, there are already people out there arguing that the website itself has hit its peak. It is the supermarket now, or even less sexy, the builder's providers. The blog is its natural successor because it genuinely thrives on two-way communication. It's the coolest CB radio ever. But agencies aren't grasping that. And they really should.



Change is uncomfortable. The alternative is certain death. Once upon a recent past the consumer had to swallow whatever the advertiser fed them, but now they can chew it, decide if they like or hate it, pull it apart, make a mockery of it and post it back up on YouTube within minutes. Except it mightn't always be a version that the advertiser wants. And they'll disseminate it to their friends and peers in a multiplicity of ways that the agency isn't keeping track of.

I know the arguments. God knows I've heard them enough. 'TV in the 50s just blew the valves out of the wireless, but it all came good. This internet website thing will find its level. Just another meejum. Y'know, you bloggers are funny. The uptight little heads on you. Relax, we're getting there. Did you see the thing that Sean did in Powerpoint? He's great. We'll going to do a rate card and we'll have islands and banners and sky scrapers and this cute little interactive rollover th-' NO NO NO NO NO!

This is NOT the same thing!

The all-important yoof market has only ever known a two-way street. They are not you! And they're not even the 'elusive' they anymore. They leave their identities around everywhere they go, and they go lots of places where the agency doesn't dream of getting up from its barstool to venture. The last frigging place old adland even imagined that kind of tracking could exist was in a William Gibson novel.

They - the new consumers, the ones who know how to blog and twitter and use all the social media out there - are way ahead of your curve. And even in little old Ireland, some people know that this isn't good enough. Not even to pay for your headstone epitaph:

They didn't blog.