Burger: Agencies and advertisers too safe and fixated on research Tim Addington
Australian advertisers and their agencies are too fixated on research and play too safe when it comes to marketing, according to the boss of The Campaign Palace.
Jacques Burger, the South African managing director of The Campaign Palace in Sydney and national CEO also argues that local advertising also fits into a “middle band of average”.
Speaking to B&T, Burger, who has been in the job for just over ten months after arriving from Ogilvy Cape Town where he was managing director said: “If you had to take the average work out of South Africa and the average work out of Australia it would be on par, I would say that Australia’s average may even be a little bit better than South Africa.
“However what I find from a South African perspective is highs and lows. Many more highs and lows than what you get in this market. You have a couple of average ads, you would have some real shockers but you would have some really amazing ads. In Australia everything seems to be thinned out to this middle band of average. Not real shockers, but not really amazing work either. I think there is still very much of a cowboy attitude in South Africa where research is limited.
“People go with their gut because they like it. Australia is too safe, its way too safe. Clients are too safe. I think it has become fixated on research in a bad way.”
On research Burger, who is tipped as a rising star in the WPP group, said it had its place but it is not as advanced as that being undertaken in other markets.
“I think research is fantastic when it helps you to understand where the consumers’ head space is at, how they think and behave, but when it’s being used to work out what ideas should be and whether consumers will like something or not, then I think it becomes exceptionally problematic and I think if you look at research and the way its being used in the UK at the moment its heavily evolved.
“I sometimes get the sense that in Australia we are stuck somewhere in the middle, where we are not as maverick as South Africa, and we are not as evolved in terms of understanding how and when research can play a role. In that middle space we are using that research but not in the most effective way. I think clients aren’t brave enough.”
Read a profile of Jacques Burger in B&T magazine out July 10.
