The best years of our lives. Are they over already?
Oct. 9th, the closing of the 16th GD. Nov. 9th 2009, 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What about the future of the Ad industry in the Old and New Europe?
The fall of the Berlin Wall meant a lot for the entire world, more so for the adverting industry. Despite the dramatic conflicts that followed the event, the advertising industry in the CEE started its Golden Age. The beginnings were probably as described by the Russian author Pelevin in his book “Generation P” ( http://tinyurl.com/ygxqbzx ) . Advertising and media markets were just pure and joyful chaos and almost everybody was able to get rich.
Then the Big A’s came to run the business, sending some brilliant expats to control and lead the creative anarchist talent of the “locals”. Still that was OK. Lots of people were earning more money in one year than their parents were able to in a whole life. Media inflation grew and owning even a small local magazine was a chance to become filthy rich. Not to mention the so called “grey area” where advertising, media and business were melting to generate impressive profits, with apparently no control.
Twenty years later, someone somewhere far away burst the bubble. CEE advertising markets were “heroes just for one day”. It doesn’t matter if someone is telling us “We are the EU now. We are a bigger market than the U.S.”. The crisis showed that CEE countries are not the El Dorado anymore. As every industry, even the advertising industry has its rule – go where the profits are. And now it’s time for other countries to enter the battlefield. We should not complain
In 1997 Niall Fitzgerald of Unilever said “Listen to this list: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, Turkey, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. These are countries whose gross domestic product is already increasing two to three times faster than those of developed European countries.” ( http://tinyurl.com/ylenfyt ). Ten years later, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP wrote -- “Indeed, the European Union is really a supply-side led phenomenon, harmonising production and distribution, rather than demand.”
As far most of us are marketing and communications professionals, maybe we should have listened to those hints. So we probably won’t need to moan about the crisis today. But now it’s 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. 20 years is a generation. Would you like to give some suggestion for the young guys who are ready to join the advertising industry? Any hint to share in order to reinvent the advertising business in Europe? But please remember we are just one year away since the World Market’s Big Re-set… ;-)
