Spain: Overview

Battered by financial storms, theIberian peninsula is never far from the business headlines, but EU finances aside, there’s plenty to celebrate in the new wave of talent driving the country’s creative industries as ‘small’ means survival and ‘start-up’ becomes the new way forward

The crisis. Cross the border into ‘La Furia Roja’ and it’s a topic that’s hard to escape – on television, in the papers, online, on the street. Spain is currently trapped in the icy grip of recession, and in a pattern repeated almost the world over, the advertising industry has been hit hard. With budgets slashed and most agencies shedding staff, the industry’s spirit is beleaguered. “Thirty to 35 per cent of the money has disappeared,” explains Señora Rushmore’s ECD, Miguel García Vizcaíno. “There are a lot of people unemployed and a lot of agencies are very sad – which is a shame because we need to work with happiness and passion.”

Drops in budgets - and creativity

For Señora Rushmore, the combination of creative accounts and new clients means they’ve weathered the storm well, but it’s a different story across most agencies. Production has suffered - and not just at the hands of budget cuts. With many agencies making a profit on productions, the margins have been squeezed ever tighter and several production houses have closed their doors. Budget cuts, too, have come in tandem with a creative drop, as clients play it safe and agencies strive to keep accounts. “In my opinion, creatively, the last 12 months have not been our best,” believes José María Roca de Viñals, general creative director at DDB Barcelona. “The financial crisis has caused a creative one, reducing the strength and quality of creative ideas. The fear, even panic in some cases, has taken over many clients and agencies. The result has been an abundance of weak campaigns without much potential, and a creative loss for agencies.”

Other events have ruffled the industry’s feathers too – in January this year the government banned all advertising on state television, snatching a large chunk of the audience from the grasp of advertisers and driving up prices. And as the role of advertising has evolved, some agencies and clients have struggled to keep up with a more integrated approach. But while times have indeed been tough, as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. Unable to carry on in the same way, the industry is taking a good, hard look at itself with some players seizing opportunities and exploring new ways of working.

“Agencies have felt the brunt of cuts,” says Shackleton’s general creative director Juan Nonzioli, “and this is transforming the way we think. Many clients have adjusted to the austere economic climate and are beginning to place more trust in their agency. Their reasoning is ‘I don’t have a budget for a TV campaign, I need an idea’ and that’s great news for us. At the heart of it, this is a great opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves as an industry. The 20-second TV ad of yesteryear has now become a short film, a documentary, an internet series, street marketing initiatives, and so on…”

Younger models

The recession has also spawned a wave of small, nimble creative companies (see the articles below for a look at a selection of these shops). Light in structure and progressive in attitude, these new outfits are bringing a wave of optimism to the industry and revolutionizing the way advertising works, as the more cumbersome networks fight to catch up. Because one subject that has come under heavy fire in the recession is the advertising business model.

“We live a second crisis too,” describes DDB’s Roca de Viñals, “a crisis of business models, caused by the changes that the new technologies have brought to our industry during the last decade. Many clients don’t know very well how to strategically address their projects or how to distribute their budgets, both creative and media. And many agencies are not ready to give an integrated response to the demands of their clients, with coherent strategic and creative solutions. This is a situation that we can only solve with investment, betting on the future, on the change of the business model, on integration.”

Innovation

Those changes have already happened in some places, and Spain does boast its own share of innovative projects. The Roca Barcelona Gallery, for example, won two Cannes Lions and was an immersing and interactive flagship showroom for the bathroom brand, masterminded by Tiempo BBDO and production house Boolab. Boolab has even opened a new wing, Visual Experiences, to foster projects such as this. “The change of rhythm in the market has opened many new doors to new ways of facing campaigns and communications,” says Boolab EP Lucas Elliot. “Even if it’s been more difficult to sell, it’s been a ground for opportunities and to approach things in a new way and we’ve had to leave behind the linear way of thinking.”

Over at agency SCPF, one initiative to develop business is content creation company MLP. Set up in partnership with a TV production company, one of the unit’s first jobs was an online series for IKEA. “It’s a new scenario and we have no rules,” adds Toni Segarra, creative director at SCPF, “so we are trying to experiment and learn new things. We believe in ideas and strategy, as we did in the past. The difference is you have to implement these ideas in different ways.”

Hope is in the air

With the Spanish economy not bouncing back anytime soon, the nation is expanding its international aspirations and the success of Lola (Lowe Latina) has proved that a Spain-based agency can have global clout. “The fact is there are some very talented people in agencies in Spain,” testifies Jorge López, Lola’s ECD, “they only have to have the guts to go there and grab the clients.” More production companies are playing the international field, too, such as at Wind, where as well as exporting their directing talent, they’ve also opened a service division.

So while there’s no denying the recession has brought an icy chill to Spain, hope is the air for those with new ideas and an eagerness to adapt. Because in the end, as Leo Burnett Iberia ECD Chacho Puebla states, it’s still all about ideas: “How we will be in the future no one knows, but I think the truth of it won’t change. We have to help clients make money and grow business and the best way to do that is good ideas. The ideas might be the creative work, the processes, changes to the client’s products or service, but in the end it’s ideas and we’re very good at creating those.”