A Series of Thoughts on the Agency

 

I spent way too long writing this long-winded piece of bullshit about ad agencies and whatnot, but I was already bored by the end. So here are a few points, maybe I'll talk more about them later.

Being good at making ads doesn’t make you good enough, and communications strategy has become far too tactical. Creating value through more remarkable action is where we should be headed.

We need to be better at finding proxies for customer relationships, considering these relationships need to feel much more human and most companies don’t have the human capital to deliver to scale.

We need to invest much more heavily in understanding what is actually important and wean ourselves off the useless metrics that we keep based on our often faulty notion that bad research is better than no research.

If agencies continue to be shit at collecting and interpreting data, they should be disintermediated from media purchasing entirely until they can be both objective and knowledgeable. Conversely, we shouldn’t buy from media outlets unless they’re making investments to upgrade their understanding of customer behavior. Google shouldn’t be the only one realizing how much information is locked away in those set top boxes.

Communication dollars should be valued in terms of investment, not only short-term spikes.

Agencies will only get the flexibility and respect they need when they become willing to bet on their own success. This means both acting more like a venture capitalist and becoming more comfortable with new product development.

The big idea is still important. Just as important as all those little ideas. No need to proclaim the death of either.

Each communication should be forced to deliver a singular message, just not the same singular message as every other communications device. We should be busy piecing together puzzles not hammering pegs.

There isn’t any such thing as a digital life. Just life, digitally enhanced. And digital agencies, just like traditional ad shops before them, should start understanding and capitalizing on that much more quickly.

photo via pareerica