What Happened To Creative Advertising?

"The mantra became 'Figure out what the client wants, do it, and get paid,' " explains Lee Clow, the legendary creative director at Chiat/Day. And because agencies are generally paid on the basis of fixed retainers, hourly billing rates and media commissions, there is no financial difference between delivering a blockbuster ad and delivering a mediocre one.

Not all the blame for bland, formulaic advertising, however, lies with the advertising industry. Many clients are also to blame. Chief marketing officers, with an average tenure of less than three years, have become loath to take risks. And in their drive to meet growth targets and cost-accountability, they rely heavily on research techniques such as testing ads in front of focus groups -- leading, inevitably, to least-common-denominator ads.

To break out of this rut, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, the nation's biggest advertiser, recently decided to shift some of its business away from Saatchi & Saatchi to Weiden + Kennedy, Nike's longtime agency, known for its creativity. But Buz Sawyer, who runs Weiden's office here, said it took P&G six months to identify a brand manager within the company who was willing to work with an edgy agency that relied on gut instinct rather than focus groups to create ads for Old Spice.

There are some industry leaders, such as Ogilvy's Shelly Lazarus, who claim that while clients have become more risk-averse, she's never known one whom she hasn't been able to sell on a great idea. And Ogilvy's success over the years with American Express and IBM -- and, more recently, Dove soap, with its "real beauty" billboards featuring size-12 women in their skivvies -- certainly speak to that. But far more executives I spoke with agree with Sawyer, who, looking across the industry, asks simply, "Where have all the good clients gone?"

Happily, this may be about to change.

Because so much time and money is shifting to the Internet, none of the old rules applies. Now, it is the clients who are pushing the agencies for change, and the agencies are finally examining how they are organized, how they are paid and how they conceive of their jobs. As a result, after a decade of fighting changes, the industry is coming around to embrace them. Changes once seen as frightening are now being viewed, at least at the top of the ad business, as opportunities.

"This is the best time to be in this business," said Kevin Roberts, the charismatic Aussie who heads Saatchi & Saatchi, part of Publicis Group. "None of the old rules are rules any more."

More on that in Friday's column.

Steven Pearlstein can be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.