I was asked to answer the question ‘Are digital agencies the new dinosaurs?’ in this week’s Campaign ME – check out my answer below and those of my industry colleagues in the attached.
Digital is no longer a microsite or a banner ad, digital is everywhere and in everything – look at interactive TV, digital billboards and magazine subscriptions on the iPad. Agencies are evolving too and the term digital agency has lost its meaning – many of the original pure play web agencies are finding that their strength is in production as ‘traditional’ agencies are evolving their own positioning to truly deliver on brand experiences independent of channel and medium – media neutral is back.
The agency ecosystem is changing and success will come to those who can both think of big ideas but also understand the consumer and how they might interact with them – the power is shifting back to those that have the strategic insight and consumer knowledge to be able to deliver on this, and to a great extent this is not the ‘old’ digital agencies but those whose focus is on strategy and experience.
The winners tomorrow will likely not be those that are focused on production and execution – but they will need to understand it – it will be T-shaped agencies (like their T-shaped employees) who have the breadth of knowledge to understand the implementation and how we interact with our phones, our tablets and our friends and also the depth of skill to connect the product to the consumer.
There will be dinosaurs, but we can learn from Darwin and survive.
Download the pdf of the article here and read the opinions of my industry colleagues:
- Ajaz Ahmed, Founder and Chairman, AKQA (@akqa)
- Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive, DDB London (@StephenWoodford)
- Mark Cridge, Global Managing Director, Isobar (@markcridge)
- Tom Roychoudhury, Chief Innocations Officer, MCN (@tomroydigital)
- Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, CEO, Flip Media (@youseftuqan)
