Call for tenders and digital communication: embark on very high roller coasters.

Good ideas do you want some here.

Great ideas, buzz, innovations and deliverables by the kilo, rolled out on a red carpet: in the field of digital communication, this can look like a party brilliant with a thousand shards, which one wishes to avoid going out with a hangover.

Despite almost twenty years of existence, this market is still as unpredictable as it is innovative. The problems of companies as well as the offers of the sector are extremely multifaceted.

On the advertiser side, the agency loyalty process is increasingly rare and the pressure of renewal, performance, more than distrust, pushes to use and abuse competitions in a growing majority of cases. When a market so tense is ready to offer free analytical work, creative, as successful, it is normal to tend to take advantage with greed.

On the agency side, it is both a source of youth and exhaustion. Because it is not only a question of displaying your know-how and a budget breakdown. It is necessary to know in record time, to embrace a subject, a sector, a profession, a new problem. You have to have a taste for intense and accelerated training where the slightest error in analysis can make you skid and ruin the work of an entire team. When an advertiser questions new agencies, often in the rush and urgency of projects, we sometimes forget that this is a first contact. In a few days, you would have to know how to deeply immerse yourself in a corporate culture, where months are necessary.

Exponential complexity.

In order to fully understand what weighs down the process, we must consider the before and after the digital rupture. From the “golden age” of communication, we retain a relatively simple structure of deliverables: a catchphrase, an ad insert, a TV film and a few variations. The supports offered few variants and even fewer mechanics. The analysis, experience, vision and talent of the pubards made the difference. Today, there are a million possibilities and variants to make consumers react, and therefore the Internet user. Which itself is often part of the plan between UGC and micro-influencers. A million possibilities is also a million chances to leave the customer perplexed. The blank page has never looked so dizzying. Deciphering the brief, its subtleties, and what is left unsaid, becomes an exercise that is both perilous and strategic.

When the deliverables explode, the deliverers flourish. The diversity of competitors ready to fight on different subjects does not simplify the equation. Start-ups will offer a logical, data-driven campaign, influence networks will promise you a captive, tailor-made audience, consulting firms will theorize the approach to the campaign, agencies with DNA production will promise a campaign focused on deliverables by delivering their content via a mini social media strategy, and traditional agencies will never stop going digital to mix it all up. Let’s be clear: no one is wrong and each approach can boast of a well-deserved success story. This results in upside-down competitions, where the advertiser, and we understand, seeks above all to hang on to a few benchmarks. To sum up, we are going from a noble boxing match to a street fight where all shots are allowed. A little knockout, following the sequence of rounds, the decision maker sometimes does not know what to do. Sometimes even, it is the initial brief that is called into question within an internal malaise. The result of the competition then sinks into total illegibility for the different opponents.

The agencies, then, are desperate to find new approaches. They play their dice skills while smoothing out their roughness, in order to give themselves the maximum chance of success. Or rather minimize the risk of being deported. We are therefore approaching a homogeneous will, towards which the giants Google and Facebook are tending. Only to master the constants. Good for anyone.

Find the right balance?

It’s hard to talk about balance when you’re in the middle of a competition. However, the deployed forces represent a volume and an energy which can be as much beneficial as destroying value. The subject is so heavy and decisive that it is a central theme of the reflections of the AACC (association of communication agencies in France).

The preparation of the brief, clear and maximum definitive, is essential. On the brand side, it sometimes takes the courage to do violence internally so that decision-makers have validated the clear need. One of the worst ideas, sometimes tempting, is to wait for agencies to come back to better define what is expected, or to rule out what is not. The price will be paid, sooner or later, in one way or another. The advertiser must remember that it is the most legitimate and expected to lay the foundations for his project, no more no less. An excellent principal will know how to direct and use this energy wisely and will derive all the value from it. Take the time to identify the agencies, their strengths, their particularities. If the brief and the needs are clear, three finely selected agencies, whose skills will be consistent with the project, are sufficient to obtain a relevant response.

The agencies, then, are desperate to find new approaches. They play their dice skills while smoothing out their roughness, in order to give themselves the maximum chance of success. Or rather minimize the risk of being deported. We are therefore approaching a homogeneous will, towards which the giants Google and Facebook are tending. Only to master the constants. Good for anyone.

Find the right balance?

It’s hard to talk about balance when you’re in the middle of a competition. However, the deployed forces represent a volume and an energy which can be as much beneficial as destroying value. The subject is so heavy and decisive that it is a central theme of the reflections of the AACC (association of communication agencies in France).

The preparation of the brief, clear and maximum definitive, is essential. On the brand side, it sometimes takes the courage to do violence internally so that decision-makers have validated the clear need. One of the worst ideas, sometimes tempting, is to wait for agencies to come back to better define what is expected, or to rule out what is not. The price will be paid, sooner or later, in one way or another. The advertiser must remember that it is the most legitimate and expected to lay the foundations for his project, no more no less. An excellent principal will know how to direct and use this energy wisely and will derive all the value from it. Take the time to identify the agencies, their strengths, their particularities. If the brief and the needs are clear, three finely selected agencies, whose skills will be consistent with the project, are sufficient to obtain a relevant response.