01.26
Yesterday I attended a presentation given by one of our competitors. The subject: the challenges of integrating a technology department into a traditional advertising agency. The presenter did a great job of covering all of the issues, many centered on process and organization, but most focused squarely on culture — by far the biggest hurdle.
It reminded me of similar conversations we’ve had within Razorfish, and that I’ve had with others in digital agencies. We’re all moving in the other direction, expanding beyond our roots in technology and user experience design to develop traditional capabilities in strategic branding and storytelling.
I was surprised to see how much progress our traditional competitor had made, and I bet most would be surprised to see how much progress the digital agencies are making.
We’ve all known a day would come when there was just one kind of agency — a new organization that delivers on the promise of fully integrated strategy and execution across all touchpoints, both analog and digital. It struck me yesterday there are a handful of agencies that are getting very close.
A couple of years ago I would have guessed we all have ten years to make the transition. Now it feels more like ten months.
Great post. We clearly have entered the era where the black box area of technology has effectively transitioned to assembly of pieces with very little “code from from scratch” necessary. As a result, tech has become a center of extreme creativity, and rapid idea to execution, but only when connected to the rest of the organization.
This change, combined with the on-the-ground 20 something workforce that is pre-conditioned to collaborate and “gang tackle” challenges provides ideal circumstances for business leaders that actively remove traditional organizational barriers that faciliate “silo’ing” and linear creation.
I suspect that the sooner organizations that are forutnate enough to have all the pieces under one roof (strategy, tech, research, media, info management/analytics, creative) recognize they can co-mingle the creativity and problem solving that lives in each departments, the faster they will make a full (and welcome) transition into a media solutions leader for their clients. And agreed, the time is now — maybe we have more than 10 months, but certainly no longer than a few years.
Again, great post, and best of luck.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by razorfish: @Razorfish Chairman, Clark Kokich, looks at the new agency model + how to get there: Time to Get Going: http://bit.ly/cdvi7x ~@heathergately…
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by razorfish: @Razorfish Chairman, Clark Kokich, looks at the new agency model + how to get there: Time to Get Going: http://bit.ly/cdvi7x ~@heathergately…
Great post. We clearly have entered the era where the black box area of technology has effectively transitioned to assembly of pieces with very little “code from from scratch” necessary. As a result, tech has become a center of extreme creativity, and rapid idea to execution, but only when connected to the rest of the organization.
This change, combined with the on-the-ground 20 something workforce that is pre-conditioned to collaborate and “gang tackle” challenges provides ideal circumstances for business leaders that actively remove traditional organizational barriers that faciliate “silo’ing” and linear creation.
I suspect that the sooner organizations that are forutnate enough to have all the pieces under one roof (strategy, tech, research, media, info management/analytics, creative) recognize they can co-mingle the creativity and problem solving that lives in each departments, the faster they will make a full (and welcome) transition into a media solutions leader for their clients. And agreed, the time is now — maybe we have more than 10 months, but certainly no longer than a few years.
Again, great post, and best of luck.