Valve Says Ad Agencies Are "Worthless," Going it Alone for Portal 2
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Good for them. Ad agencies, are, as far as I can tell, part of the dishonest sleazy corporate culture of people who don't listen, don't properly do their job, and try to put in as little work, time, or effort as possible while still charging ridiculous amounts of money.
EA is the reason Valve decided to make their own advertizement. Could you imagine Portal 2 getting the same advertizing treatment Dead Space 2, or Dante's Infero got? Hell as stated in a previous post the advert for the Orange box was rather obnoxious.count9 said:
I've watched their Left 4 Dead commericals, and there song choices are rather obnoxious. I enjoyed that self made commercial for Portal 2 better then all those others. It actually promoted what would be fun about the game.
Well yeah, if you're a studio that already has a huge amount of talented people, and have the resources to cherry-pick the best of the best in the indie scene to put in your stable... you've probably got the talent to make a good ad.
The rest of the industry? Maybe not so much.
The rest of the industry? Maybe not so much.
Good advertising tells an essential truth. Bad advertising lies.Ekonk said:
Also ad creatives get paid rubbish money, you have to train yourself and pay for it, there's little scope for advancement and no job security. Agencies will hire 10 account handlers and one creative team when they win business, sack two teams and 5 account handlers when they lose business. This treatment breeds creatives with thick skins and an attitude problem, no-one else could stick the treatment.
Valve value creativity across the board, not as 'an indulgence but as a business strategy', as Bill Bernbach (one of the fathers of modern advertising) would have said. Very few companies do that. Ad agencies are at the mercy of alpha-predator hierachical short-term obsessed clients, they're geared up to service that kind of customer. That's why there's so much derivitive, lowest common denominator thinking. It's what clients want.
The best advertising starts with a good client. Valve are capable of making their own advertising, I would suggest that EA and Blizzard are not.
The fact that the ad industry can't make decent adverts stems from a lack of understanding - the industry has grown so fast (and changes so often) that we're dealing with a whole culture that has not been properly studied yet. The fact that triple As get sold as films tells you how misunderstood games are. Anyway, the games industry doesn't know how to sell games either. Have you seen the state of what passes for advertising in the industry press?
This is a problem for the book industry as well. Since books sell off the back of a campaign that says 'New book by that guy out now' or 'book that's like the books by that guy', no-one can be bothered to change.
[excuse any errors - not used to a lack of spellcheck]
The majority of that ad spend will be media space (eg time on TV) so they've saved themselves very little.NLS said:
True but what you're really paying for, creatively, is the experience. Minds honed to create at the drop of a hat. That doesn't come from new technologies.Dastardly said:
The music industry always relied on musicians creating everything, they just added polish. Advertising is different. Everyone thinks they can do it, but they can't. Trust me on this, I've had a decade of people going 'I've got an ad for you'. Most bad advertising comes from the account side of the business, the marketing staff and clients, trying to write/influence the creative.
TBH, valve can say this, just like EA could probably spend a lot less on marketing, it's the little guys and the smaller titles that need advertising, does anyone think we'd not have heard about Black Ops, Wow Cataclysm, or Portal 2 without official paid for adverts?
We're gamers and we're hungry for new info about our favourite game franchises and makers, it's the marketers who are needed to sell the shovelware to unsuspecting non gamers looking for a gift in Best Buy or Walmart.
We're gamers and we're hungry for new info about our favourite game franchises and makers, it's the marketers who are needed to sell the shovelware to unsuspecting non gamers looking for a gift in Best Buy or Walmart.
Agreed, and one of the points I'm making is that access to the resources allows more people to practice. Think of it this way: if, as a kid, you don't have a baseball bat and a large field near your house, you're probably not going to get a lot of chances to practice hitting home runs. If you do, and you use it, you're going to be able to build a lot of that experience. And then, if that experience helps you get on a team, you'll start getting pointers that will refine your technique. But it all starts with having access to a bat, a ball, and a field.mattinkent said:
It used to be that these things were hard to come by or prohibitively expensive. It's just not as much the case anymore. More people can get the stuff they need to practice. And sure, the "practice product" isn't going to be stellar quality, but it gives them the chance to get familiar with the tools. And then, thanks to the internet, communicating with other people makes it easier to find tips and tricks.
You might not become "world class" this way, but not every company is looking for something world class when "really good amateur" might do nicely for the price. So here's what we'll see:
First, a lot more "really good amateur" stuff is going to see use. Why? Because these newbies will gladly undercut the high-overhead companies. Not as good a product? Sure, but we're talking value-for-dollar here.
Second, those companies are going to have to lower prices to compete. Simply increasing the quality of the product isn't going to do it alone. And as prices come down, so must their overhead. They'll either need more clients (which is harder than it sounds), or they'll need to cut back jobs/hours/something to make up the difference.
Or they'll need to offer other services, in which case they really just become a department within a company, rather than a stand-alone.
True BUT the tools for an ad creative are a felt-tip and a layout pad. They've always been available. The pointers come from the endless stream of book crits with more experienced professionals. At some point you have to work for an agency, no-one is hiring freelance amateurs. The crowd-sourcing, internet based creative 'agencies' are 'staffed' by experienced and/or trained creatives and can function, such as they do, by sheer quantity of scamps. It's a model, but it can't function without the existing 'career structure' - and I use that phrase in the loosest possible terms.
Advertising creative is a very specialist field. It's a commercial art and as such has to understand commercial norms and pressures. It isn't something that lends itself to amateurism. This quote sums it up best.
?Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic
acrobatics and verbal gymnastics in NOT being creative. The creative person had
harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every
word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he
takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product
advantage he has decided he must convey.? Bill Bernbach
The problem with agencies making less money is that traditionally (and right now) they cut creative before anything else. You can't make a marketing report in less than, say, six hours. You can have an idea in two minutes. So out go half the creative teams. What this means in the medium/long term is that your creatives burn-out, there's no time to think so the two minute idea isn't the best one, you can't do the things that made you a good creative so you stop being creative. The result is predictable stuff for panicky clients.
Advertising creative is a very specialist field. It's a commercial art and as such has to understand commercial norms and pressures. It isn't something that lends itself to amateurism. This quote sums it up best.
?Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic
acrobatics and verbal gymnastics in NOT being creative. The creative person had
harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every
word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he
takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product
advantage he has decided he must convey.? Bill Bernbach
The problem with agencies making less money is that traditionally (and right now) they cut creative before anything else. You can't make a marketing report in less than, say, six hours. You can have an idea in two minutes. So out go half the creative teams. What this means in the medium/long term is that your creatives burn-out, there's no time to think so the two minute idea isn't the best one, you can't do the things that made you a good creative so you stop being creative. The result is predictable stuff for panicky clients.
Portal has a specific tone that is crucial to the game's appeal. I can see how an ad agency might mishandle that.