Digital Industry Believes It’s More Grown Up Than It Really Is
Article in the NMA, first for Tradewind!
Platform: Internet | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 23.11.06
The digital industry is in a state. Not necessarily always a bad state but, like a teenager, it’s riddled with angst and confusion about how quickly it’s changing and why no one understands it properly.
For the past seven years I’ve run the digital part of a successful London integrated agency, during which time this boom-crash-boom industry has matured to be unrecognisable from what it was, and just as unrecognisable from what it will be. Despite this developing maturity, the unprecedented nature of what we’re doing continues to ensure that every digital project, to some degree, starts to go wrong almost immediately after it has been conceived.
Simply put, unlocking and mastering the internet’s vagaries are as far from most people’s grasp as they ever were. The business of creating websites is a badly charted world where a little knowledge is more dangerous than none, where youth overtakes experience and where creativity is too quickly put in a straitjacket. Freedom and range of choice are creating confusion rather than efficient competition.
Of course, things might right themselves, but that would be like waiting for pandas to mate. So I decided to leave the agency world so that I could then look back in. I handed over the reins and walked off into cyberspace to find for myself the secrets of the digital universe.
Two months on and I’m still searching, but I have come to the conclusion that there’s no single correct answer. No one has yet found Digital Nirvana and probably never will. Whether an agency sees its heritage as purely digital, integrated or from a particular discipline, what’s clear is that the unreconstructed traditional agency model is no longer valid. Indeed, unless all agencies accept that digital has irrevocably changed the playing field and evolve, five years down the line we’ll confront the same issues as we do now.
The solution? Simplistically, I would combine the conceptual ability of the classic ad agency with the cross-platform approach of an integrated agency and the technology capabilities and process-driven approach of a software house, qualifying it with the questioning mantras of the management consultancy. It’s the middle ground that recognises the best of each component while discarding their worst traits.
Until people recognise that the power of an integrated approach only works when it includes specialists who are both welcomed at the top table and listened to by their peers in other disciplines, then the penny will never drop. There’s no discipline more specialist than digital, yet somehow everyone claims that they can not only do digital, but they also understand it. To succeed with technology, significant investment must be made in the software and the people who harness its power, before the pitch is won, not in a frenzy afterwards.
Will this ever happen? Some would no doubt argue that they’re already there or thereabouts. But the evidence I have doesn’t yet support that. Putting creatives, geeks, egos and process-jockeys together in one bear-pit will take vision and incredible leadership, whether it be under one roof or through some form of joint venture. Incongruous disciplines must be moulded into seamless bedfellows. This must be underlined with clarity of purpose, which is a big thing to ask in a world where change is accepted as a necessity but few understand the subtleties of why.
The digital choice is stark: either invest and put your money where your mouth is, or outsource and be open about it. Collaboration is not a sin, failure to deliver is. Either way, the dream digital agency is within our grasp, but will anyone grab it?
Sam Brownfield is MD of independent digital consultancy Tradewind
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