It was WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell who said brands are not spending enough on digital because the people who run the agencies are too old. Addressing the Ad:Tech conference in New York, Sorrell said agency bosses tend to be of an older vintage, to put it politely. They are resistant to change and would prefer to spend the last three or four years of their careers trekking around the world rather than tackling strategic issues on a daily basis.

The claim may well have validity on a global basis, but Sorrell's set-up in Ireland is not shy when it comes to digital and they aim to prove it. Ogilvy first launched a digital brand in Ireland in 1984 by providing interactive services. But things have come on a lot since then and in recent years the changes have been seismic. New technologies have emerged, skill sets have changed and client attitudes have moved on interminably.

Dave Smyth, managing director, OgilvyOne, took on a mission in recent months. It began by finding and hiring talent for Neo. He studied the market to see who's doing digital well, how it might be done better and spot any gaps. As Tony O'Reilly once famously remarked: “There may be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?”

Smyth had absolutely no doubts. Neo Ireland will differ from the normal Ogilvy model in that it will go beyond providing digital media services by combining buying and planning with strategy and campaign content. “We're unapologetically getting into the media business,” Smyth said, “and that's news for any creative agency these days, isn't it?”

Offline, or traditional media, is out of bounds. But what sets Neo apart from the rest of the digital players in Ireland? Smyth said that media agencies now have a huge amount of data about consumer behaviour at their immediate disposal. The information is enriched when in the digital space as its use is readily accessible and far more versatile.

Broadly speaking, he believes that what is missing from the media agency service in Ireland is that the data is not being interrogated to the extent it should be and clients are being short-changed. As well as media data, the wider Ogilvy set-up will allow Neo to share a mine of information which other local digital agencies cannot offer clients.

“Ogilvy has been doing digital for a long time, Neo is about taking it to the next level,” Smyth said. “The product clients will get from buying all of their digital solutions from us will be much better than buying just search or just display from the media agency and just social from the PR agency and their creative…”

‘Ogilvy has been doing digital for a long time – Neo is about taking it to the next level' – Dave Smyth

Claire Carroll steers the strategy at Neo. She worked in publishing and on the client side and her experience includes below the line agency creative. She agrees with Smyth in that the various digital services tend to be fragmented when clients really want an integrated approach. All too often, digital is considered too late in the process.

She hopes the term digital will disappear. “It's more about a communication solution,” Carroll added. “The distribution and consumption of the digital channel is becoming more prevalent by way of mobiles. We don't see mobile as a separate way of marketing. TV online is another example of an apparatus, but it's about the consumer experience.”

Suzanne Delaney believes the role of digital media is taken far more seriously by marketers than it was some years ago. The growth of Facebook to 1.4 million Irish members and over 90 per cent of internet users here are accessing Google several times a day. These trends have resulted in more respect and credibility being afforded to digital.

Smyth said that clients were right to be cautious about digital and it is up to agencies to earn trust. “Digital was seen as the shiny new thing,” he said. “It's no longer that and it's now the way the world is going. Agencies must prove the worth of digital to clients and there's enough information to convince them of its merits in terms of measurability etc.”

There have been many discussions in Ogilvy about the extent to which there is a blurring between traditional and digital agencies. A client brief on social media may end up in a PR agency because of the level of the confusion in the market. Digital was seen as a sideline activity for purists and then others wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

Smyth said: “The deeper issue about the blurring between traditional and new media agencies is that, particularly in terms of the specialist digital agency, are brand owners willing to task digital agencies with strategic brand development? It happens in the UK but here clients still default to the ad agency as the strategic guardian of their brand.”

Smyth thinks too many marketers still regard digital in isolation and this is evident when budgets are being allocated. So much is apportioned to above the line (advertising), X amount to below the line (PR, promotions and direct marketing) and the rest to digital. Ogilvy has three brands, O&M for advertising, OgilvyOne for below the line and WHPR.

Neo sits at the centre of the three brands. It is not a separate company as such but more a manner of thinking. It is a way to advertise, to promote to people, implement a CRM programme, or do PR. It is a centralised function in the Ogilvy group and hopefully clients will see it as that when the brief arrives in to whichever business unit it is sent.

Ogilvy clients which use them for digital services include GlaxoSmithKline (Lucozade Energy and Lucozade Sport), Littlewoods, Peter Mark, Diageo (including Guinness work done by WHPR), HSE, Cadbury (including The Apprentice campaign), Britvic (including Ballygowan), Kelloggs, M&S, Kildare Village, Jacobs Fruitfield and IBM.

Still a relative newcomer, digital needs to take a much more unified approach in developing future strategies. Up to now, it has been impossible to say with any certainty how much digital spend is worth in Ireland but the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is due to release a report on expenditure compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers soon.

Another development is the formation of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP Ireland) to represent Irish digital publishing companies which create content. The AOP body was set up by IrishTimes.com, Independent.ie, RTE.ie and Entertainment.ie to increase awareness of the benefits and opportunities to online users and advertisers.

Many digital debates – and there has been no shortage of them in Ireland in recent days – have centred on the media used rather than the campaign production. Smyth said for him the emphasis should be on the idea. Take a creative ad agency which comes up with a great idea. If you plug into that a team of people that knows what is technologically possible in the digital space, the potential for that concept is multiplied exponentially.

HARNESSING DIGITAL Dave Smyth, OgilvyOne, was helped by strategist Claire Carroll and Suzanne Delaney in developing the Neo@Ogilvy model. In a few years from now, many TV advertisers may well have moved to the digital space. If Ogilvy cannot provide that solution and exploit the opportunities through Neo, Smyth knows the business will go elsewhere.

“That's what a lot of the current solutions provided by agencies miss out on,” Smyth said. “There are companies in the US whose job it is is to hire people called technologists. These people keep an eye on what's happening and keep the creatives informed on what's going on. That's what we want to do here, plug in to the technological expertise.”

During his Ad:Tech talk, Sorrell criticised brands for investing an average of 13 per cent of their marketing budget online, rather than what he considered to be a more logical 20 per cent. Smyth said that almost 80 per cent of Americans aged 65 and over are on the internet, which undermines the claim that online is all about geeks and teenagers.

While Ireland has had the problem of broadband to contend with, McCarthy said that there is a 113 per cent penetration of mobile in this market and it is set to have a huge impact. It may overtake the PC for internet consumption but the debate is more about the lifestyle impact on consumers and less about the device which they choose to use.

Carroll predicts huge jumps in social commerce in the years ahead. That will see honing CRM programmes into social CRM campaign. The days when brand owners controlled their brands no longer applies. One per cent of people will create material, nine per cent of people will interact with it and 90 per cent will actually consume it.

Digital allows consumers shout back and that is explained by the one per cent who create and the nine per cent who respond and comment. Consumers are now transmitters as well as receivers, much more empowered by technology. Some years back, FMCG brands focused on online's perceived weaknesses in delivering brand strengths and reach.

As Ogilvy's client list shows, this is no longer the case and digital provides food and drinks brands with interactivity, hyper-targeting and real-time optimisation. Urging users to share brand advertising with their friends is a response. Digital permeates every area of consumers' lives these days and clients want their brands to keep pace with that.