Madison Avenue is No Silicon Valley

Madison Avenue is No Silicon Valley: It’s almost cliche these days to call on ad agencies to act more like software companies. There are problems galore with the analogy. The Atlantic carries entrepreneur Naeem Zafar’s 5 Secrets of Silicon Valley. The majority of the “secrets” — they’re actually quite commonplace — don’t apply to the bulk of the ad world. For instance, Zafar lauds Silicon Valley’s celebration of failure. One stop on ad blogs will tell you that the ad world doesn’t celebrate misses. He also points to Silicon Valley’s “aligned incentives.” This again can’t be said of Madison Avenue, where shops are actually incentivized to bill the most rather than based on outcomes. Finally, Zafar mentions the Valley’s “culture of collaboration.” Oh boy, if there’s anything ad agencies don’t do well, it’s collaborate. A client with multiple shops can be guaranteed those agencies will focus squarely on killing the other from Day 1. So until Madison Avenue fixes those structural problems, all the talk of acting like Silicon Valley will remain just that: talk.