Goliath vs. David: what an advertising agency can learn from the story to survive recession.

Recession is an eye opener for many advertising agencies in Dubai in  numerous ways. The vanishing ad revenues from real estate giants itself can be very fatal to a large number of agencies. These realty bigwigs need their creatives to be “cooked” in  record time, so many agencies are compelled to have a large creative group supporting them 24×7. Often an entire team is dedicated to a particular client and it makes perfect financial sense as money is not a problem-you charge double of what you normally charge to non realty clients and still get paid effortlessly.

A normal day is like this:

11.29am: The client servicing guy gets a phone call from the property marketing/brand manager for an urgent brochure. His job brief will be so small and skimpy that it can be rightly called a job bikini.

2.45pm: The jpegs are emailed to the marketing manger

3.00pm: image corrections from client

3.11pm: more image corrections from client

3.14pm: Arabic copy corrections from client

3.16pm: revert back to the original Arabic copy

3.31pm: new logo by mail. But it is very small and is a jpeg file

3.45pm: corrections in employee pictures as some of them are not working in the company but for the competitors.

4.01pm: change the brochure size. Mr. Deep Pocket does not like the current size

4.11pm: make the logo very big. Minimum font size should be 16pts.

4.20pm: make the logo a bit MORE bigger

4.30pm: brochure is approved but interchange TYPICAL LAYOUT PLAN 6 with TYPICAL LAYOUT PLAN 17

4.45pm: agency driver takes the artwork CD to the press.

Now is the time to put pressure on the press to print it on the same day and deliver it by the next day.

That is the way the story goes. Until recently…

“Goliath” agencies have one obvious disadvantage-their super size. It is like a nation with a huge army-very good to attack large countries, but a burden to maintain when there are no wars to fight. As revenues come down exponentially, even the multinational agencies cannot find a way to sustain their people.

Small “David” agencies have less number of people and small overheads. Their creative people are paid less (many times very less- pun intended) and overheads are low. One good client is enough to make the agency survive and keep going.

Know that even a 25% drop in revenue is fatal to a company if situations don’t improve in 4 months. And if the “Cash Cow” realty sector takes 2-3 years to revive, imagine how  crucial it will  be for the Dubai based advertising agencies.

Somewhere, somebody will be fired for sure.