Last week was Advertising Week and I was able to attend a few sessions. I must say that all the events I went to were running late compared to previous years. Logistical hiccups aside, I really enjoyed the Digital Creative panel with Ben Palmer from The Barbarian Group; Tor Myrhen, CCO at Grey; Conor Brady, CCO at Organic; Marc Lucas, CD at Razorfish and Sophie Kelly from Strawberry Frog. The conversation really got started discussing what to do with the sea of available data/metrics and digital's unique flexibility in terms of adjusting work based on the response the data shows. Directly linked to the above is the need to set up objectives upfront and decide what needs to be measured.
While it might seem like an obvious step, clients are all too often doing something in reaction to their competition rather than questioning why they need to "be" on Twitter and how they're measuring the success of that initiative. The other central point of discussion was the "growing up" of digital agencies as the Internet has become a "permanent medium":
- Clients are now putting digital at the center of their marketing strategies. OK, duh... but this means that the growth opportunities for interactive agencies might not be necessarily be in interactive. In other words, the Big Idea is not dead as clients are looking for the best way to activate ideas in the market. No matter which partner they came from...
- The corollary for digital agencies: they need to be more comfortable "sitting at the table" and developing relationships with clients so they can move away from a project-based approach. Just like traditional agencies...
- Conor from Organic also suggested a move toward what he described (with a great Irish accent) as an open source agency model with the ability to bring in partners where they don't have the in-house expertise to deliver on projects outside of their regular field.
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