Has traditional advertising become obsolete? Our industry is on the brink of major change, and we as advertisers are in for one hell of a ride. Today's ad agencies are faced with a new set of challenges that needs solving. We live in a digital age where technology and consumers are running the show in how advertising is communicated and consumed. Today's consumer is harder to reach than 40 years ago. The analog age was a time when pioneers such as Leo Burnett, Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy paved the way for the industry to talk to consumers through Print, Radio and Television, and that age is quickly coming to an end, sort of.
The agency models created for that age no longer work as effectively as it once has. The Consumer market is extremely fragmented compared to back then, and we are going to have to find ways to reach them, while at the same time make brands relevant. These consumers are constantly bombarded with numerous ad campaigns to the point that they are becoming immune. So the industry now is faced with this dilemma, making great creative that is compelling, relevant and garners an emotional response which resonates to the consumer market. In an ever changing broad bandwidth landscape, that's moving at lightning speed, factor into that the consumers control. Ad agencies are no longer in the position to cater to clients in the same manner, now the primary objective is to integrate these brands into consumers lives.
That's were platforms come into play. Up until now the advertising industry had relied heavily on mass media campaigns. The problem with a campaign is that when introduced to the open public, consumer interest rises until it's run it's course. Once the campaign is pulled interest dissipates. So we are constantly riding this sort of roller-coaster wave. With a platform, behavior of the consumer market changes because brands now have an owned media. In which the consumer then uses and integrates it into there lives, keeping them engaged with a brand for a much longer duration of time. Campaigns will serve as use to create initial consumer interest for these platforms. This also means that clients and agencies can gage consumer trends, and determine if the acquired services pays out in terms of ROI.
Some traditional agencies are incorporating more digital advertising into their models. Such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Grey (G2). If other traditional agencies don't wake up soon and make such changes to their models, they will soon die out like Dinosaurs. Some major players in the industry have said that the agency landscape is going to change dramatically, these big agencies are most likely going to shrink down and will have to rebuild their silos.
Then we have agencies that are fully digital like Razorfish, R/GA, Organic and Night Agency just to name a few. These digital agencies are in a much better position than their larger counterparts. What's core to these digital agencies is technology and analytics, the very thing that is driving the advertising market. Digital agencies have in place silos that more effective for this new digital age. This equates that brands will be in a better place financially when seeking services from these agencies, because these agencies hold production houses within their housing. Not like traditional ad agencies that out source these services to third party production houses, all in all keeping the cost for brands on the lower end. Especially when we look at paid media.
My opinion is that digital agencies is truly the right way to go in this age of technology. The same way other things evolve like music, at one point music was distributed from vinyl to a track, cassette tape, Cd's now we have itunes. It's just the name of the game of evolution. Some agencies will die out while others will thrive. So strap in tight because when it's all said and done, we are going to look back in awe at how drastic things will change.
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