Suffice to say that, with the advent of digital, “traditional” agencies have had to re-invent themselves, to change, to innovate.
The real difficulty has not been to develop digital capabilities, but to integrate them in the overall offering. On the one hand, there is the fast-moving, project-based, technology-led, disruptive and full of surprise digital activity. On the other hand, there is the well-known, slow growth, retainer-based, old reflexes-driven and rather predictable traditional marcom business.
The key was, and still is, to foster innovation and change, without destroying the mainstream business.
Well, one can argue that many agencies did successfully integrate digital.
In short, today, a genuine – and somewhat ideal – multidisciplinary approach to client service could equal to: (ATL + BTL + PR + media + design + content) * (digital + non-digital).
Now, let us talk about pure player digital agencies. In the last three years I met a few of them, whether independent or part of a ad network. Interestingly, some of them seem to be totally un-interested in integrating tradional advertising. Digital is all they breathe.
In other words, traditional agencies got our of their comfort zone to understand and internalise digital… while some digital hotshops now refuse to venture into the jungle of traditional advertising.
Does it make sense? Will they loose business if they don’t adapt soon to the current paradigm, where clients want agencies to be not only media neutral, but also “idea neutral”, both in the physical and digital worlds?
This is what John Gapper, associate editor at the Financial Times, recently wrote: “The proliferation of agencies not only feels to many advertisers like a luxury in straitened times, but is also ill-fitted to the new digital world.”. He added “It did not matter while clients had plenty of money to throw at the problem, but they are no longer willing to pay lots of agencies for overlapping roles, and are squeezing fees”.
In a world where integration and multidisciplinary skills are important to clients, what will happen to digital agencies who remain allergic to the non-digital stuff?
