Or says the CEO of Razorfish in this week’s Advertising Age. Yes, Advertising Age, not MediaPost or MarketingVOX.
For those who follow my rants and raves, this type of proclamation is commonplace. Yet, to hear it in arguably the most important advertising trade publication is a whole other story.
In this week’s AdAge, Rupal Parekh and Abbey Klaassen cover what some see as a growing trend - interactive agencies, such as Tribal DDB and AKQA, being selected as Agency of Record for serious brands like McAfee and the National Tourist Office of Britain.
While the article is careful to note that this trend is happening on the fringes driven by brands with significant e-commerce channels, whose identify and proposition live on the Web, or are very youth-focused, they make the case that digital agencies have significant advantages over their traditional counterparts. These advantages, including proximity to the consumer and the ability to understand and leverage the rich data of Web marketing, bodes well for the speeding up of this trend.
There are two other trends that I see only speeding up the trend toward lead digital agencies:
1. The digitization of traditional media (e.g. TV going digital, digital outdoor, and digital radio)
2. Shifting consumer media consumption patterns towards digital.
if the brand’s identity and proposition live in the digital space, if a product involves a complex sale where online research is a big component, or if it’s a very youth-focused marketer going after a demographic that lives largely in the digital space