Since the advent of all this digital stuff, marketing agencies, like all other businesses, have had to ask themselves ‘how does digital change what we do?’ If you haven’t done that yet for your company, department, team or yourself, what are you doing! Go off on an away day immediately and have a big think!
I know awaydays are slightly out of fashion due to cost but I firmly believe that being somewhere different makes you think differently. Even if you take the team for a picnic on the common, go somewhere new today.
Anyway, back to agencies. In the old days there were just agencies. Some were particularly creative, some good at complexity, some great at production. All seemed understandable. Then Tim Berners-Lee (look it up) did something in his lab and digital was born. Now, you have a whole new set of agencies to choose from. Some position themselves as digital agencies, some as both traditional and digital agencies. Hardly any agency of course positions themselves as just a traditional, off-line agency. But there may be one somewhere.
The key question for the marketer is ‘how do I tell which type is best for me?’ When you ask them, agencies display lots of gorgeous stuff offline, online, through the line, below the line, down the line. But how good will they be for you?
So, what’s the best approach to assess ‘em? I’m assuming you’ve already talked to them, looked at creds, gasped at their online sites and talked to other clients of theirs.
Now ask: what were they doing five years ago? Did they start as digi-geeks or were they an offline agency designing posters? If they were an offline outfit, you should really probe the creds of their digital team. The big mistake here is offliners can’t just add online to their skill set. Online is different. But if they’ve gone and hired great onliners in their creative and planning/buying teams then keep talking to them.
We’ve said before, even though the basic rules of marketing still apply online – i.e. stick it where the people you want are already – HOW you get cut-through in a digital environment is very new, very different to offline.
More on that in the future…widget, anyone?
I understand the point you are making but I don’t think it is as simple as that at all. I joined my first digital agency (we were called Web Designers then) back in 95 but I had experience offline prior to that with mail order and home shopping. This gave us an incredible advantage in the field of eCommerce when it started to happen, and enabled us to grow our digital agency from 5 guys in a basement to an International company with a presence on 3 continents over the next 5 years. We did it because we had a lot of very talented people who all were able to bounce off each other, and the agency’s ideas were bigger than the sum of its constituent parts.
I remember some of our competitors back then who purely had a bunch of (albeit talented) individuals but who were not focused on anything other than the next web site build. We wiped the floor with them every time because we had a rounded set of knowledge that was all in a melting pot together.
The failing of a lot of integrated agencies is that they still try to run in a silo driven environment with creative directors who think the only good creative ideas come out of their departments (which is complete rubbish as anyone without an out of control ego will tell you). In that kind of scenario it doesn’t matter how great the digital guys are because the agency isn’t running as a melting pot it is running as a series of skill sets along a conveyer belt. Exactly the same can happen within a pure play digital agency as well. if for instance the coding department or creative departments are seen as somehow separate from the rest of the agency. I maintain that what truly makes an agency special online (and I suspect it is also true offline) is how everything there mixes together. Back in 95 we even had a mantra which was “An agency that drinks together, thinks together”. I think its still a valid way to run things.
It was this approach that led me to create my current Digital Marketing Agency . I could see that digital was getting stuck in its boutique disciplines when it needed to grow up and be led by strategy. Clients are absolutely gagging to let digital agencies take a ‘lead agency’ position but most are still fixed in a tactical approach. It is only when you offer a complete joined up digital marketing strategy that a client can take you seriously enough for that seat on top table. Or at least that is the plan. Year one ended on Monday and I think the message is getting through.
Aaron Savage
Interactive Mix Limited
PS : I don’t need to look up Sir Tim to find out his contribution and I can’t believe I am not the only one.:-)
Aaron, agree it’s not simple. You get it, but so many don’t – yet. Integration is key, and yes, creatives who are only good at one area will gradually become less in demand.
Aaron, I used to have one of the first ‘multimedia’ (remember that?) production companies in Northern Ireland and we supplied all the digital to the traditional ad and PR agencies for years.
Then the offline graphic designers became web designers and Flash gurus and we nearly went out of business coz they could do it all, apparently…
So I went back to school and took my ACIM diploma so that I could help advise the client on what to get and, more importantly, why they should. One thing led to another and I have found myself at one of Belfast’s top full-service agencies, supposedly heading up their digital offering.
What I have found though is that all that happens is that clients tender for an agency to provide tactical executions and the agencies duely oblige – nobody seems to be giving the slightest attention to strategic planning before launching off into the studio.
My own personal dream is the link between strategic marketing planning and the development of a central MkIS/CRM at the centre of a company, from which the various channels – online and offline – can be used to incept and manage the relationship conversations, but I might as well be talking swahili to my employers and to the clients generally..
I think I’m on the right lines though and have started a new site, http:www.see-rm.com , as a kind of ark or lifeboat for the future. But I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on how we push the strategic planning agenda in the market so that clients really do choose to go through the process before stampeding towards the crayons….
Russ
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