Are agencies staying relevant?

In the fast moving digital marketing world, agencies are having to evolve.

Traditionally creative strategy has been driven by the advertising agency, a role apparently being challenged by PR agencies as content assumes greater importance. Into this space come digital agencies who understand the technology, but more often than not have yet to understand the client's business because of the short-term nature of the relationship.

Why do agencies prefer a  long-term relationship? Simple. There is a big investment in understanding the client's business, typically a role driven by the account executive. The agency analyses,  researches and identifies the product proposition. This clarification of pinning it all down to a few crucial words is a skill in itself. Clients are frequently too close to the subject to be objective and further more unable to express the proposition in words that a customer will relate to. Identifying the essence of the product proposition, then enshrining that in a creative wrapper that gains attention amongst the target audience. The vehicle for the advertising communication has been mainly visual - print and video and the media used to gain attention.

But here's the thing, in the current digital era it is largely a text only universe driven by position in things like search results. Prominence is down to position rather than crafting an advertisement that attracts attention. And new technology driven stuff keeps coming along. Some clients are very keen to embrace new media whereas traditionally agencies in b-2-b haven't jumped into advertising in new titles until circulation is verified, editorial content evaluated and in short it has become established. Digital is faster and where increasingly people are spending time. More a case of jumping on a bandwagon then.

What people though? Are they customers and prospects? We have clients with strongly held and quite different views. Take Facebook. Opinions range from, "it's for children - not engineers' to "it's out of date" by way of those who embrace the channel and are busy posting messages. So what are agencies to do? Be skilled in everything, because it's not just Facebook, but Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and hundreds of less well known competing vehicles?

Successful agencies will be those that provide the most effective campaigns for clients embracing whatever technology is most relevant. Agencies that seek to sell the output of their studio production capability will struggle.