AHEAD of the Curve part I

Nov 19, 2007

The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl. Schindler’s List won Best Picture. Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, and in the advertising agency industry, 1994 was the year that O. Burtch Drake was named the eighth president and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Of course, OBD, as he’s known in the business, had already been with the AAAA for five years at that point, as executive vice president under his predecessor, John O’Toole. And the AAAA had certainly seen periods of intense change since its inception in 1917. But a solid argument could be made that during Drake’s years at the helm of the association, the ad agency industry underwent more tumult and change than at any other time in its history. Witness the challenges he faced as evp and as president and CEO:

•Consolidation, which transformed the industry from a large group of independent, full-service shops with their own idiosyncratic identities into a handful of massive holding companies that gobbled up the independents as fast as they could.

•The unbundling of media services from so-called traditional agencies.

•The rise and fall—and rise again—of the Internet as a communications tool and advertising vehicle.

•The demise of the traditional 15 percent commission system in favor of fee-based compensation agreements.

Despite all the turmoil and confusion that rocked the business, Drake pressed on and took the industry where he—before everyone else—saw it going. The official “O. Burtch Drake List of AAAA Accomplishments” spans 10 pages, including 10 national conferences, 37 committees and countless position papers addressing the toughest issues of the day. What follows is a brief inventory of some of his more notable successes.

CONFERENCES

When Drake first joined the AAAA as evp in 1989, the AAAA hosted only one major national conference per year. It was called the Annual Meeting (later rechristened the Management Conference), and it was always held at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. As Drake now prepares to leave office, the association offers almost a dozen national meetings covering topics including creative, finance, new business, account management, human resources, public relations, and account planning. Of all the new conferences Drake has added to the roster, however, none stands out more than the annual AAAA Media Conference, a gathering launched in 1994 that was attended by 300 people and grew to become the AAAA’s single biggest “must-attend” event of the year, attracting more than 1,500 industry executives in 2007.

“Burtch saw the increasing importance of media long before most people did,” said AAAA evp Mike Donahue, who has served as Drake’s No. 2 for the past 13-plus years. “And that inspired him to create the Media Conference. It grew for a couple of reasons: One was because we offered appropriate content with a fair amount of media industry star power. The other was because the early development of the media service agencies confirmed Burtch’s hunch that the media business was about to undergo profound change.” The conference’s success also led to another Drake-inspired 1998 initiative in which he spearheaded a drive to change the AAAA constitution and bylaws to allow media service agencies (as well as sales promotion shops and public relations firms) to join the association.

COMMITTEES

Some of the AAAA’s most important work is done by its vast array of committees that consist of mostly high-level executives for member agencies and cover virtually every imaginable aspect of agency life. The committees serve as virtual think tanks for discussing best practices and as forums for debating the problems facing the industry. During Drake’s tenure, the AAAA has added a number of new committees designed to meet the changing needs and interests of the agency community. Many of these include Internet-oriented groups like the Digital Marketing Committee, the Interactive Agency Management Committee, and the Search Engine Marketing Committee. But other disciplines covered include new business, account planning, agency finance, integrated marketing, national TV, and entertainment marketing.

Salute to Burtch Drake Welcome Note
Q&A with Burtch Drake Part I
More Q&A with OBD part II
More Q&A with OBD part III
What's the O For?
Ahead of the Curve Part I
Ahead of the Curve Part II
OBD Camera Ready
Jerry McGee's Last Word