What's Next: How Traditional Agencies Can Catch Up With The Digital Wave
Nice report published the other day by Peter Kim over at Forrester about what traditional agencies need to do to "survive" the digital wave.
http://blogs.forrester.com/agencies/2008/04/what-is-the-fut.html
I know Peter and for the most part agree with a lot of what he writes about. Sometimes he's a bit harsh on the traditional shops, but this time I think he has it write.
If you are a subscriber I highly suggest you read this. If you are not, you should buy it.
It highlights many of the things I have outlined about What's Next for agencies in regard to "catching up" with the digital wave.
A few things I took away (and that the report confirmed for me):
1. Agencies need to build a Communication Planning discipline into the agency (unbundling media continues to bite agencies in the ass), and these people must have a thorough understanding of the consumers digital media habits.
2. Agencies need to leverage existing or build their own online measurement tools. We have a great one through our sister shop VML that helps track the "chatter" on blogs.
3. Talent. Talent. Talent. While I was interim CEO of DaVinci, the new entity WPP is building for Dell, one of my partners was Trevor Kaufman, the brilliant CEO of Schematic, one of WPP's digital shops. EVERYDAY Trevor would remind me of how difficult it was to recruit good digital talent, and that all of the agencies, both traditional and digital, were fighting for the same, small number of people.
4. Training: Does your agency have an on going digital training program. My friend Marc Schiller over at Electric Artists runs what he calls "Cool School", in which he helps organizations understand What's next in digital marketing. How about your shop?
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