• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 10, 2015

In the broadest sense, an advertising agency creates stuff (ideas, strategies, actual creative) that helps a brand sell products. Lately, there's been a lot of hemming and hawing over defining the purpose and scope of an advertising agency. Most prevalent is the notion that ad agencies do not want to be called ad agencies any longer. This is, once again, born out in an AdWeek piece entitled  “Why Today's Ad Agencies Are Reluctant to Call Themselves 'Ad Agencies.’” 

Feel free to wallow in the industry's angst over the notion the company they work for should or should not be called an ad agency and the crazy machinations they've gone through to invent new definitions for the ad agency. Go ahead. I'll wait.

OK, done?

Here's the thing. There's nothing wrong with calling a company that makes stuff that helps a brand sell product an ad agency. Why? Because every human on the planet calls anything that tries to sell them something an ad. 

Consumers know what native advertising and sponsored content is and they call them ads. They know what images of hot chicks on Instagram posing with pictures of some weight loss product are and they call them ads. They know that what we all call "content" -- be it a blog post, a celebrity-created Vine video, a sponsored tweet, whatever -- are just ads and they refer to them as such. Consumers are not dumb. They know when they are being sold to regardless of the format in which that selling occurs.

Regular human beings aren't filled with angst, nor do they attend conferences every month to debate the finer points of that thing we do that helps brands sell products. No, they see an ad and they call it an ad whether it presents itself as a billboard while driving to work or takes on the form of some stupid "You Won't Believe..." clickbait idiocy in their Facebook feed.

Why is it that our industry always has to overcomplicate things? Yes, we need an agreed upon framework we can all work with and thrive on within our piece of the business world but seriously, people, its simple. 

We just need to broaden our definition of the word "ad" to include all the fun, new and sometimes stupid things we do to sell stuff for our clients. Isn't that a whole lot easier than trying to reinvent and redefine what the hell an ad agency is and does? Heck, if regular people are totally fine with fluidly identifying various entities that sell them things, why is it so hard for us to come to the realization that ad agencies make ads and the ads we make are constantly changing in form and function and because of that there's really nothing wrong with calling and ad agency and ad agency.

Thoughts?