20 ad agencies in Belgium go on strike, produce artful protest

Sounds like they fear the outcome of a 99designs.com type world - and legitimately so. But, why wouldn't they just refuse to pitch to clients who do this? Alternatively, as they suggest, they should spend less on pitching - but my guess is that if the prize is big enough they'd do it anyway.

A strike seems like a silly response that could also be interpreted to attempting to reduce competition in a specific region and in effect form a cartel - a cartel that would seem to be counterintuitive especially when the barrier to good ideas is no longer limited within borders.

I have to wonder if "major players came together to design rules of the game" in the US in any industry group that it wouldn't be considered to be anti-trust.

What a stupid design! Clicked 5 or so links and gave up.

Question: is there a reason for using Flash when it's just static content being displayed? I'm using ClickToFlash on my Mac (Flash sucks on the Mac) and that made this just that much more of a pain...

If you're doing the Internet and that is your idea of effective communication then your business needs killing.

I admire how all the agencies are working together to protest a cause. However, I really don't like how they chose to do so. First of all, as rajat mentioned (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128286) why use flash? Not only is it slower to load than an image such as a png, but what about those browser's/phones (ahhem the iPhone) that don't have flash capabilities?

I attempted to read the messages on each site, but many times I would get connection timeouts as I jumped from site to site, which became annoying after a while so I stopped even trying to continue reading.

With that said I don't think it's very effective. I think a better way would have been to buy a domain and have all the websites protesting forward to it and show the protest message there.

This is the full text. (Did they purposely chunk it up to avoid open discussion or what?!)

Dear visitor,

As you can see, we have replaced our regular website with this letter. It's going to stay up one week to express our discontent.

Allow us to explain. In the 1990's the UBA and the ACC developed a charter. All the major players signed up to it, and it defined the rules of the game for agency pitches for over a decade.

There's not much left of that charter now. For example, one of things it states is that no more than three agencies (plus the incumbent) should ever be invited to pitch on any piece of business. but in recent competitions, we've sometimes seem more than 10 agencies throwing their names into the ring.

Why does that matter? Well, Pitches, like boxing, work in rounds. You get through one round, and go onto the next. Last man standing wins. Unlike boxing, however, pitches rely on the participants punching themselves in the head.

A big pitch can cost an agency upwards of 80000 euro. Just getting into the second round takes huge amounts of energy. And if you're lucky enough to get that far, you then have to invest even more resources just to have a chance of getting something out of it. And if 10 agencies are taking part, that's a 90% percent chance that you're taking a bruising for nothing.

If that were the end of it, who would care? Nobody's going to lose any sleep if there are a few less advertising in the world. But the thing is it's not us who'll suffer: it's you we're worried about.

Pitches us up energy. Energy an agency would normally use to provide its existing, paying customers with the best possible work. So the logical conclusion of the system as it now stands is that at some point you will become a victim of it yourself. The day will eventually come when your agency has to divert the creative and stategic energy you're paying it for into a pitch for someone else's business.

Our idea of a sane world is where you do your best work for the clients you do have. Not the ones you don't. So we think it's in everyone's best interest to get back to where we started: the charter.

The charter that was put together by wise men not to protect themselves , but to protect their industry. The charter that makes sure a downturn doesn't turn into the demise of Belgian communications. The charter that ensures are matched. With the agency they need. And that agencies are protected from their instinctive hungers not to miss out on opportunities.

Besides, judging an agency isn't rocket science. Our work is on every street corner, and all over the internet every day. (Except, today, of course). Our reputations, our beliefs and our individual visions aren't exactly trade secrets.

And our awards ... Well if you haven't heard of them you soon will. Talk to an agency and you'll see right away if they see things the same way you do. But don't delude yourself. Asking an agency to pitch is not the same as briefing one. In a pitch, the only target audience is you. The only question an agency can ask itself is, "What do we need to do to get the client?"

But it's never too late to change. We recently confronted a major advertiser with how they were running their pitch. And they changed a speculative competition into a much more motivating an much lower-cost procedure.

Great idea. Great result. but we didn't think of it. It was just in the charter. So let's not all lose hope just yet. Thanks for listening. View the competition charter here: http://www.accbelgium.be/Content/acc/charterscodes/competiti...

I couldn't be arsed to read it all due to the fact that none of the pages wanted to load in a timely matter. Seems like some of those agencies should take some of the money they invest into their "creative and strategic processes" and divert it to a much more functional technical services team. :)

It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out how to get clients. If they were good, couldn't they just advertise for themselves and make clients approach them, without the pitching madness.

Also, the needless use of flash completely disqualifies them.

As far as I got, they had some good points (i.e this race to the bottom is going to impact the consumers themselves at some point), but I think it's part of a bigger overall issue and is probably better (and less frustratingly) covered by e.g. "The Walmart Effect".

When will people finally get that this is inevitable? Supply in the creative arts increased massively, so prices WILL come down. Photographers had iStockphoto happen to them, coders had their eLance moment, design had 99designs. Photography, coding & design survived. So why should I care about advertising? I you can't make your business lean enough to compete with the crowdsourcing world, you probably deserve a little beating-up. Oh, and coming from you, Mr. AdMan, it just sounds like whining: get over it, big media buys are over, it's all about metric-based advertising. Good luck anyway with your venture from a fellow Belgian

Too bad. I tried to read the whole thing but things stop when you get to publicis.be.

I'll try to write something insightful and witty when the whole tattle-tale is complete.

Why are they so intent on throwing their hat into every battle? Shouldn't they understand their industry well enough to pick their battles sensibly?

TL;DR. And it made my browser crash.