If you surf today or the coming days to the website of many Flemish advertising agencies, you might get surprised. They all shot down their website for one week, because they are on a virtual strike! It’s an initiative of the ACC (Association of Communication Advertising Companies) and participants among the striking advertising agencies are Saatchi & Saatchi, VVL-BBDO, Famous, LDV, Boondoggle and Ogilvy. The agencies replaced their website with a letter, which leads you from one participating agency’s website to the other. In the letter the agencies state their dissatisfaction about the way the industry works today.

The agencies refer to the charter developed between the UBA (Unie van Belgische Adverteerders) en the ACC in the ‘90s, which defines the rules for agencies' pitches. The agencies say that the advertisers aren’t living up to the rules stated in the charter. One of the rules stated that no more than three agencies (plus the incumbent) should be invited and participating in a pitch, but agencies argue that advertisers sometimes let even more than 10 agencies compete for one assignment.

The agencies compare the battle for an assignment with stepping into a boxing ring. Round after round competitors fall of and the last man standing wins. But according to the agencies the participants punch themselves in the head. Each agency competing invests a lot of money, energy and resources without even knowing if their effort will be rewarded.  

The agencies emphasize that in the long run the advertisers are victimizing themselves.  The day might come when advertisers will be paying their agency for creative and strategic energy, while the agency is forced by the system to put all of that energy into someone else’s pitch. It’s a world up-side-down in which the agencies are pleading for a world in which they put their energy in clients they do have and not in the ones they don’t have. The agencies suggest going back to the rules of the charter, in the interest of the whole advertising industry. Time will tell if their joined effort will pay off.