Five Ways Your Ad Agency Will Work In 2011

On the morning of November 17 I got a brief that asked me to write a post titled "Five Ways Your Ad Agency Will Work In 2011" for the Karsh\Hagan blog. And that afternoon, I saw this in Fast Company:

Over the past few years, because of a combination of Internet disintermediation, recession, and corporate blindness, the [advertising] assembly line has been obliterated -- economically, organizationally, and culturally. In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962.

Ouch.

I wasn't surprised by Fast Company's doom and gloom. The article was just a retread of all the Big Scary Death of Advertising stories we've been reading for a few years now. But being boring doesn't make you wrong. The world of 2011 looks nothing like the one in which many of us learned our craft.

In a 2008 interview I did with Scott Goodson on FutureLab, I said the greatest challenge for the marcomm industry was this:

Defining for new clients how we will approach their business problems.

I still think that's true. But while the pitch process remains a bit of a jumble, the agency business model has changed. In 2011, your ad agency will be faster and more innovative than ever before. Here are five reasons why.

1. Collaboration: Today, culture is made with mash-ups. It's about Kid Cudi mixing Christian Bale with LCD Soundsystem. About ideas that build on each other. That's how agencies will be working in 2011. Small teams of people coming together to add fresh thinking to existing work.

2. Content: Social media is great. But brands shouldn't jump into other folks' conversations uninvited. They should start by creating content worthy of conversation. And then listen, engage and refine.
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3. Play: Ty Montague. Kevin Roddy. Alex Bogusky. Those are three of the biggest names in advertising and in 2010 they all quit their fabulous network jobs to explore the great unknown. Experimentation, play and the freedom to fail. Those are the seeds of creativity and the path to the biggest ideas.

4. Flexibility: To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And to an agency with a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill, every problem looks like it requires the attention of a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill. To combat this agencies will hire people who have flexible skill sets and similar visions.

5. Platforms: There are fun individual executions. There are powerful integrated campaigns. And then there are flexible, infinite platforms. For instance, Karsh\Hagan's 100 Honest Answers campaign for American Crew has run its course. But the Ask American Crew platform we built underneath it will always be there if they want to use it again. Your agency should be thinking about the long, long run.

If the brief I'd gotten had asked for a sixth opportunity, I would add happiness to this list, and define it as "a blissful childlike state resulting from the act of creation." Because I think ad agencies are much less tied to the 30-second spot than the media would have you believe. There is so much cool stuff yet to be made. And as long as we're making it, we'll be so, so happy. Suck on that, Fast Company.

[Ed. - This post was written by Karsh\Hagan's Matt Ingwalson and cross-posted on his blog and Karsh Connect. It's also posted on The Denver Egotist.]

Students inspire, amaze and scare the hell out of me

For more than a month, I have had Autumn Wallace's resume on my desk. She handed it to me at the NDAC's student job fair in March and I got the chance to talk with her briefly. Our conversation began like this:

Her: I want to use human-centered design to address the flaws in complex systems that have been overlooked by the modern world.

Me: Huh?

She took me through her book. It was unlike any book I've ever seen. And I've seen a kazillion. Autumn redesigned an ambulance ride from the patient's point of view. She redesigned shopping technology from a blind person's point of view. She redesigned a fruit brand from a community's point of view. By the end of our talk, two facts were blindingly obviously to me:

1. Autumn was doing what agencies in America ought to be doing. She was finding places where brands and consumers intersect and making them beautiful and efficient.

2. It would be a gamble to hire Autumn based on her book, because after looking at it I wasn't sure she was passionate about doing the tasks that junior designers are expected to do - logos, packaging, websites, and, frequently, shelf talkers and counter cards.

My usual gripe about junior designers and art directors is that their books lack ideas and inspiration. But Autumn's book had the opposite situation. (I can't bring myself to call it a problem.) It was nothing but vision. So at some point in the conversation, I said something like this:

Me: I don't want to kill the dream here. You are doing something wonderful at a high level. But at most agencies, your first assignment will probably be something like, "Design a website." If you're lucky. It might be, "Design a mirror cling." Are you sure you're ready for that, both skill-wise and emotionally?

She assured me she was raring to get going in the real world. And if I had an open job, I would like to think I'd have the courage to hire her. But I keep looking at her resume and feeling confused. And then inspired. And then sad. And then just sort of confused again.

Agency Models, three years later

A presentation on emerging agency models that I did three years ago has been favorited by folks from AKQA, BBDO and Razorfish, and continues to attract attention on Slideshare. Is it still relevant today? Or has the industry passed it by? Check it out and let me know what you think.

Clients and the changing marketing landscape

In my interview with Scott Goodson, I expressed my opinion that agencies aren't the only ones who need to adapt to the changing communication landscape:

I'm always reading in AdWeek about clients who demand new ways to connect with consumers. But I haven't seen much of that here. Far more often, I see creatives intuitively going after business opportunities and being shut down by clients who want to know where their damn ad is. Maybe that's just a function of working in a mid-market city. I know we have problems preparing our clients for the idea that we might not come back with an ad.

So take my sentiment and make it way more eloquent and you have this must-read post on The Toad Stool:

I mean we can reinvent agencies all we want. Do away with traditional art director/copywriter creative departments as per Joe Jaffe’s recent suggestion. We just need to find someone who’s going to hire the resulting entity.

Because most clients aren’t set up that way. Bigger ones, anyway. They’re all about “hiring ‘best in class’ partners in every discipline.” Which may have worked 25 years ago, but now basically results in a bunch of overlapping vendors all stepping on each other’s toes and doing what they can to defend their own little piece of turf. So we can suggest changes in store design to our clients. But if they already have a store design agency, they’re not going to care what we think. Or want to pay us for it. (And if the idea does start to get traction, the store design agency sure isn’t going to be too happy about it and will do what it can to sabotage it.)

Go read the whole thing. Very worth it.

Agency segmentation: A slideshow

A couple of years ago, I realized my favorite agencies don't market themselves as brand agencies or online agencies or promotional agencies. BBH, Anomaly, Strawberryfrog and others are just out there doing, you know, stuff.

But I'd never advise a client to position itself as an all-purpose stuff doer. So I started mulling over new ways to position agencies. And an online discussion primarily driven by Adam Crowe, Zeus Jones and AgencySpy resonated with me.

As a way of sharing the discussion with coworkers, I created this PowerPoint presentation. (I know, I know. Scary stuff, writers messing with presentation software. It's literally my first time using PowerPoint.)

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