James Dunne on what changes may be looming
“What keeps you awake at night?” It was a question I was asked recently by a graduate doing her thesis on the future of agencies, ideas and strategy. My answer was this: babies mostly, our dog barking at next door’s cats and this nagging realisation that Irish ‘adland’ despite an explosion of channels, technologies and potential may run out of tarmac.
The question of whether the existing agency model is broken is as redundant as debating the reality of climate change. But as the digital debate is – finally – resolved, agencies, communications groups, right the way up to the gigantic global holding companies, are going to have to start dealing with the next challenge facing our industries. Firstly, strategic ownership.
Specifically who around the table is delivering the biggest value for the client and who owns the future? In the value chain of our client’s world, brand communications is less catalytic for their business in creating value than ever before. If you have been a party to those multi-agency, IMC sessions you may have noticed the process.
It has a weird, strategic symmetry: set piece, big brand communications usually dominated the client’s thinking, and so advertising would lead the process to be followed ultimately by various forms of activation, all disciplines leveraging and extending the ATL agency’s big brand idea. This is what has passed for ‘integration’ right up until recent days.
History lesson: Bring heavyweight data into creative. A design agency might hire a brand planner; a PR firm a creative director. Media shops should hire social curators and editors, publishing content, not just placing it. The business has changed completely from the days when Don Draper and his agency colleagues were Mad Men, pictured above.
But as our market emerges from a prolonged bout of ‘recessionary hibernation’ there is a growing consensus that as consumers have changed, those bazooka-style ‘big ideas’ – powerful though they may be – are ill suited to our omni-channel universe. With new behaviours, new consumption patterns meeting old motivations emerging in consumers, brands are entering – arguably – the era of ‘universal ideas’. They are ideas which thrive through experience, in telling and re-telling, that are hardwired to provide value.
The impact of the new reality is now only filtering into how we dream and deploy for brands locally, but the era of IMC sessions may be coming to an end. But before we get ahead of ourselves with this prediction, what does it leave us with? What’s left in the creative planning toolbox? IMC sessions did offer clarity, solidified agency roles and understanding of output. Integration could be seen as the ultimate comfort blanket in the face of raging complexity.
The challenges of creating brand strategies and creativity to connect with consumers cannot be reliant on a business model inherited from the mid-20th century. Should not the challenge of creating these ‘universal ideas’ be about disruptive thinking, creating and crafting brand work that actively rejects the campaign model, disciplines and the idea of ‘lead agency’?
At the heart of all this is the what we might call the ‘brand singularity’ where the line between disciplines have all but collapsed and agencies are moving beyond their own comfort zones of being purely ‘advertising’, ‘public relations’, ‘design’ or ‘digital’.
If the name of the game for all agency types is to generate cultural influence, activate users and create ideas to stand-up and stand out in the feed and the flow of people lives, agency definition will take second place to something much more powerful: the agencies of the future – as a Google envoy recently claimed – will be defined by people and values.
The next revolution is one of talent. Not just ideas. Not simply process. Not even tech. People. The new diverse, differentiated talent mix that is demanded to create the kind of ideas that cut through, is becoming increasingly challenging. It is not just about wheeling in a bunch of techies to the party. Try dropping a product design team into a traditional agency.
Bring heavyweight data into the creative department. Design firm? Bring a brand planner onboard. Or, as a PR firm, why not hire a creative director? Why do the media shops not hire some social curators and editors, start publishing content, not just placing it? This is what we did in Huskies. The challenge diverse talent creates is offset by the opportunities it opens.
As key stakeholders in adland, the role of agencies is to create the space and structures for talent to collaborate and create the kind of ideas that people want in their lives. To meet the current demands we need to move on from the silos and top-down department structures of the past to embrace and empower an infinitely more diverse, creative talent pool.
If you want to call it an agency, fine. But we should not get lazy. Nor is it advertising.
James Dunne heads up strategic planning at In the Company of Huskies
