A Series of Thoughts on the Agency

 

I spent way too long writing this long-winded piece of bullshit about ad agencies and whatnot, but I was already bored by the end. So here are a few points, maybe I'll talk more about them later.

Being good at making ads doesn’t make you good enough, and communications strategy has become far too tactical. Creating value through more remarkable action is where we should be headed.

We need to be better at finding proxies for customer relationships, considering these relationships need to feel much more human and most companies don’t have the human capital to deliver to scale.

We need to invest much more heavily in understanding what is actually important and wean ourselves off the useless metrics that we keep based on our often faulty notion that bad research is better than no research.

If agencies continue to be shit at collecting and interpreting data, they should be disintermediated from media purchasing entirely until they can be both objective and knowledgeable. Conversely, we shouldn’t buy from media outlets unless they’re making investments to upgrade their understanding of customer behavior. Google shouldn’t be the only one realizing how much information is locked away in those set top boxes.

Communication dollars should be valued in terms of investment, not only short-term spikes.

Agencies will only get the flexibility and respect they need when they become willing to bet on their own success. This means both acting more like a venture capitalist and becoming more comfortable with new product development.

The big idea is still important. Just as important as all those little ideas. No need to proclaim the death of either.

Each communication should be forced to deliver a singular message, just not the same singular message as every other communications device. We should be busy piecing together puzzles not hammering pegs.

There isn’t any such thing as a digital life. Just life, digitally enhanced. And digital agencies, just like traditional ad shops before them, should start understanding and capitalizing on that much more quickly.

photo via pareerica

Comments

[Bud Caddell]

Very well said. Amen.

[Mikej]

nice post

I did a post on how I think the web and a few examples of web campaigns in the UK are starting to address that more human side... but we need to change our measurement

http://tinyurl.com/nylcxz

[Daniel Redman]

"There isn't any such thing as a digital life." This will be an increasingly blurred dimension, but I'm not sure the lack of separation is as you are perceiving it. People may dissociated with their digital persona and treat a digital life as a fetish. It's a behavior that has not yet been bridged. 1 in 8 couples are formed via dating sites, yet very few will openly admit to using them.

[Paul McEnany]

Daniel-

I agree that those lines haven't entirely blurred just yet, but for marketing purposes, I'm not sure it's that useful to think of it separately. Obviously, there is a big underbelly of the web we don't talk about all that often, but it takes a certain type of brand to have a place there.

Either way, still probably a bit overstated, but I doubt for long.

Bud & Mike, thanks for the comments! (and Mike, checking out the post now)

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=565370029]

Hi Daniel, I love the clarity of this post, and am kind of drawn to thinking like "This means both acting more like a venture capitalist and becoming more comfortable with new product development." Not quite sure how to attain all of it right now, but it's where we should aim.

[nina]

great thought. share all of this - especially the fact that agencies need to think beyond ads and create value otherwise. And that digital life does not exist - but just life itself. seems to be a topic a lot of ad people and esp planners are thinking on. did so myself with a post just this month - too bad it is in german...

[neilperkin]

Hey Paul. Great post. Just wanted to let you know that it’s in the running for the Post Of The Month thing I run over on Dead Fish:

http://bit.ly/26OcAD

Cheers.
Neil