I've been thinking about the business of advertising for quite some time and as a company we've been in transition for a few of years. And judging by the amount of blogging, postings, articles it seems that more and more people in and out of our business think the agency model is in serious trouble, and some think very broke ... perhaps beyond repair.
The pressure to change is coming from many sides ... consumers, clients, competition from companies that used to be our partners/vendors and, most importantly, the new landscape of marketing. It seems advertising agencies and marketing firms of all iterations are being boxed in from many sides. The result has been a mad scramble to react and, in my humble opinion, what we are getting is the the new "faux" agency. It's an agency that looks real and talks real, but peel back the layers of real and you find "faux."
It's the advertising agencies who have been doing branding, advertising, media and more since before the days of Mad Men suddenly becoming digital marketing experts, yet executing digital, like always, push content and forget about engagement. And then you have the digital marketing agencies suddenly becoming advertising and branding experts, yet they approach building a brand just like it's another technology void of passion.
In all reality, the ad folks know how to build a brand, but really don't understand how to execute an effective digital strategy for that brand. Then, the digital folks know how to execute technology, but really don't understand how to build a brand. The result ... confusion. And the real quandary is the clients. Whom do I choose?
Think about it, we have seasoned ad people, who have successfully built brands from the ground up who spew, even as an afterthought, the tenets of their craft. Yet talk widget, wiki, mobile, social, ppc, blog and the thinking becomes cursory. Then the whiz kids of digital can execute beautifully your online presence with the widget, wiki, mobile, social, ppc and blog. But when you ask them how to build a brand online, it doesn't go much beyond programming 101.
Now, we all know, we have this problem, but what do we do about it? Again, in my opinion, we all become real and sell ourselves as we really are ... no faux agencies.
I must be truthful, because at one time, I believe we were faux. We stumbled digitally. But we kept picking ourselves up and learned through the fire how to merge our branding expertise with digital expertise. How did we do it?
- We did a deep dive into the world of digital education and we came to the understanding we can know much, experience much but true expertise comes through time and execution. This realization said, things are changing exponentially and clients need help now, not later.
- We actively solicited and developed relationships with digital experts. We developed a resource base that gives everyone value. And we're committed to each others success. No longer are we competitors, we are now collaborators.
- We peel back the layers of reality for our clients. We don't try to mask our relationships, we expose them. We tell our clients and future clients, we are a team that brings the best of both worlds (branding and digital) together.
In our approach, we are learning much from our digital team on how to take the confusion out of digital execution to build a company's brand online. In turn, our digital team is learning much from us when it comes to building a brand. It ain't "faux" no "mo" (sorry couldn't help myself). Everyone wins ... especially the client. That's my thought, what's yours.
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