Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Digital Agency Death Knell

So farewell AGENCY.COM, to be broken and absorbed in TBWA and others. As digital ceases to be seen as a channel and becomes a specialism within other disciplines, traditional digital agencies will continue to creak at the sides and break under the weight of trying to do everything digital. They will rapidly have to focus on what it is they actually do. The digital agency roster will die, at least in its current form, and client will pick discipline specific digital agencies. The chart below is 3 years old. Social Media and Mobile agencies take note...



I spent 3 happy years at AGENCY.COM building out their digital advertising unit in the UK and developing some groundbreaking work on BA, oneworld and Heineken. They also had the foresight to allow us to create AgencyRepublic a JV between them and ClaydonHeeleyJonesMason of which I was one of the founding 4.

Interestingly AgencyRepublic is another digital agency fallen on tough times. 5 times winner of best digital agency in the UK it has just lost it's flagship O2 account to.....you guessed it a traditional agency with an integrated digital offering, VCCP.

Likewise the more traditional offline agencies will have to rapidly adapt to accomodate this influx of highly creative and very non traditional people and approach. Digital will have to be part of everyone's role and they will quickly have to staff up (and down) to get the right mix of people and fundamentally change how they approach pretty much every part of their business.


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6 comments:

Nora Aradi said...

Hi Giles,

I am a Master student (and an ex-Ogilvy creative, but currently with Headstream) writing my dissertation just about this topic.

The aim of my research is to find out how an agency 2.0 is re-engineering its capability in order to ensure its ideas are relevant in this new social world. I’m interested in the skill-set mix and team structures. I’m also keen to understand if a common formula is emerging in much the same way it did with planning and art director /copywriter teams.

I have no doubt that you are very busy as a Global Digital Strategy Director. But please just let me know if you ever have half an hour after checking in at the airport. I‘d be pleased to come and meet you there for a short interview on the topic.

Thanks Giles,
Nora Aradi

Giles Rhys Jones said...

shoot me an email

gilesdotrhysjonesatogilvydotcom

Web Design Southampton said...

Great post!! Thanks for sharing such an wonderful information ...

Marketing Result said...

I'm a college student and working on my homework about marketing stuffs and etc. Then I saw your blog which has the same graphs as what I'm doing with my homework. If possible, can you please explain to me what the graph means? Thanks!

Giles Rhys Jones said...

essentially as traditional agencies do more digital they will take all digital agency business...more here http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com/2007/06/is-agency-roster-dead.html

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