Food for thought: The spy who sold out
Forgiving a pretty face
Facebook to agencies: how will people share your story?
Is “The Pitch” an accurate reflection of our industry?
Who will lead? This is the crux of an industry-wide debate that’s getting a lot of opinion, speculation and debate right now. The burning and potentially lucrative question being: “Who sits at the head of the table when the client calls for input on the brand plan or at a brainstorm on where to spend in the fourth quarter?”
Two recent articles in AdAge shed light on each side of the debate:
Why digital agencies aren’t ready to lead.
Why digital agencies are indeed ready to lead.
The former takes the position that digitally led shops are not ready to lead, because they “lack the balance of Exploration and Exploitation.” In other words, they perform well at the cutting edge, but fall short on consistent and predictable ROI.
The latter responds that digital is indeed ready to take pole position because its practitioners understand technology, analytics and the demand for speed as it relates to iteration of ideas as the brand/consumer dialogue unfolds in real time.
Both make great arguments. Both incited a healthy burst of reaction, as evidenced by the wealth of comments each of them received.
My two cents on the subject?
I think it’s fair to say that digital (the channel, not the shops) has found its way to the centre of the connection map – it is the new and improved CRM. And shops that respect and understand this will earn their place “at the table” – be they traditional, digital, or even design- or promotions-led.
Core competency will no longer determine where we sit at that table, the demands of a category’s specific customer/client interaction will. Beverage companies will likely want more influence from agencies closer to campuses and nightclubs (the feet on the street as Grip’s Managing Partner, Business, Bob Shanks likes to call them), while sneaker companies, for example, will inevitably turn to partners more intimate with emerging and future trends in fashion.
What clients are really going to be evaluating with respect to who is on their agency partner roster is whether you are FAST or DEEP. The former will be built to create and react to many marketing threats, in real time, 24/7. The latter (and likely smaller) of the two, will serve as brand steward, mining perspective and insight from the plethora of data and insight uncovered by the former, with the goal of helping figure out where a brand can and should invest itself long term, via sponsorships, packaging and line extensions, even R&D.
Frankly, neither will lead. That burden and/or honour will reside (as it historically has) with the CMO of a newly evolved marketing department that will in time reveal itself to be more nimble, less dogmatic, and presumably better funded.
As Anne Busquet, former EVP of American Express stated so eloquently in Sergio Zyman’s book The End of Advertising as We Know It, ” It’s not the age of the internet, it’s the age of customer control.”
Shane
December 9, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
I agree that there are going to be 2 types of agencies that clients will use to respond to the FAST and DEEP side of things, but I do think that there are many digital agencies out there that are capable of covering both these areas and I think that they will become a large part of the spectum in the future.
Ben
December 11, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
I think Anne’s quote is perfect.
Having an ‘online presence’ is totally useless for a brand, (or a presence anywhere for that matter), without a sound strategy behind it.
It’s not just about ‘where’, but ‘why’.