Stan Rapp, the DM poster boy, has partnered with a private equity firm to build an agency; the stupidly named Engauge — spelled that way to underline its intent to provide marketers with tangible results from campaigns.He is saying something I have long championed: “everyone is a direct marketer, or at least everyone is marketing directly”.
Once the whipping boys of the agency world, the skills and approach of direct marketers have are the ones that will win out. Everyone in the industry no matter what the discipline or task is increasingly taking a direct approach.
I have worked in many different styles of agencies and have always found the direct folk the more open to new ideas; often feeding off the scraps of traditional media they, out of necessity embraced retail, digital & mobile quicker and with more passion that many ivory tower traditional media folk.
Hats off to Stan for always looking to find a better way, I am half his age and appear to have half his energy. That said and as far as I can tell this seems more spin than substance. He has not done anything particularly revolutionary, merely said that direct principles will become increasingly important, data is therefore key and channels are consolidating with digital emerging as the lead. Oh and content is king.
This is something my 2 year old could have told him. And something many others have been banging on about for years. He has then bought a couple of traditional single discipline agencies and slammend them together.
Emperor's new clothes anyone?
The sad thing is that this is causing such a storm on a Madison Avenue watching revenue and people drain out of its traditional channels.
Oh and he probably should have bought "Engauge" on Google or put a site description....talk about falling at the first hurdle.
PS Yes I am grumpy. my house got broken into at the weekend and the fuckers nicked my audi. Sods law; the first night the kids slept all the way through and I spent it talking to the police.
Tags: stan rapp giles rhys jones enguage new ad model future+of+advertising
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