Good News; Bad News

By Ian, on December 14th, 2009

AdWeek covers a story that most people working in the digital sector will already have had some intuition of:

Forrester Research conducted a “state of interactive agencies” survey of about 100 global interactive marketers. It found just 23 percent believed their “traditional brand agency” is capable of planning and managing interactive marketing activities. About 46 percent did not believe them capable, with the rest neutral on the question.
While that held good news for digital agencies, particularly as digital becomes a much larger part of marketing, Forrester found few clients are willing to give them responsibility for the brand’s direction. Just 22 percent agreed that their interactive agency is “ready to lead my brand.” Another 33 percent said their digital shops aren’t ready, with the rest neutral.
via ‘Great Race’ Between Traditional, Digital Shops.

In brief: clients think traditional agencies can’t be trusted to do online; digital agencies can’t be trusted to lead.

The article postulates a ‘Great Race’ as traditional agencies struggle to acquire digital skills and people, while digital shops expand their offerings to include more mainstream marketing activities to prove their wider competence.

The trouble here is that it slows down and distracts both sides.

Initially, at least, they are likely to do a poor job of imitating their competitors on the other side, despite sinking what probably seems like an inordinate amount of resource into them. The two sides come with very different mind-sets in the majority of cases, and adjusting to the world of mainstream brand marketing or interactive media will be a painful and slow process that will inevitably involve several failures.

I am sure that there are some marvellous full-service agencies, but when I look at the ones I come across, it emerges that they’re actually formed of five or six different business centres created through acquisitions and spin-offs.

While they’re busy getting nowhere fast, new disciplines like interactive signage or phone apps appear, and specialised agencies pop up to fill the gap. Neither the digital nor traditional agencies have a handle on these disciplines because they have been spending all their time watching their competitors.

So now there are three, four, five and more agencies looking for a slice.

I’m not convinced that getting involved in the Great Race is likely to lead to a winning position. Better surely, to display leadership, integrity and genius in the bit that you’re actually good at?