by: Idris Mootee
Back in the 80s clients only work with their
official appointed agencies and these global agencies continued
expanding their service to other below the line and other downstream
promotional activities. There were a few
attempts to move upstream but largely failed. Then in late 90s during
the early days of the Internet clients flocked to new Interactive shops
to look for new ideas in digital marketing. After 1-1-2 years many of the first generation of interactive agencies are now part of the OMC/WPP/IPG? Publicis families.
Today,
it is funny to see clients are running to small creative hot shops for
big ideas again. Not only that, they are also looking for help from
digital innovation set-up like us to fill the digital gap. Take Nokia
for example. They hired W+K, a mid-size agency
with a strong creative reputation, and JWT, the 196-office 100+ year
old agency to handle their business globally. W+K set the creative
agenda. JWT only need to adapt Wieden’s work locally. There must be a
lot of egos and territorial issues under this arrangement. Not to say
W+K does not have weaknesses, they are a great idea-driven creative hot
shop that lacks serious digital capabilities. There is a bigger gap
exists for digital strateist to paint a broad picture of how that
drives or fits into everything.
This
is an example where the big shops are not meeting the needs of their
clients despite their size. Increasingly, smaller agencies have
increasingly been winning big clients and offering a much more exciting
place to work for many. There are more examples such as Addidas hiring
Amsterdam based 108 and at the same time uses TBWA as their global
agency. LG hiring BH in London and using Y&R globally.
The
bigger question the big boys should be asking “Why aren’t we doing this
stuff?” Does the future belong to small creative hot shops +digital
strategy consultants +global media agency?
Original Post: http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation_playground/2008/01/the-future-belo.html
