For several years, we have discussed the era of converged media, in which paid, owned and earned media have moved out of individual silos and into the same marketing house. This movement has begun playing out within brands' marketing teams, and the same has happened within agencies. But the end result of this shift has yet to occur.
To find out how agencies are collaborating on different media types, and to discuss whether agencies will become one-stop shops or whether niche agencies will prevail, we recently spoke to Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media, to find out his thoughts on the current landscape of ad agencies in a dynamic media landscape.
How difficult is the collaboration between different media teams?
Collaborating with different media teams can be challenging if the order isn't aligned properly. But today, many clients have an ad agency, a PR firm, or a media-buying firm. We have to collaborate.
The trick is the independent thinking, or realization that the time frames are very different. For instance, social media can have messaging up within minutes; much faster than advertising, PR, or media-buying. But at the same time, if you're going to build a social program that needs to be developed, that could take months.
Where is the role of the agency headed in an era of converged media?
Target CMO Jeff Jones says advertising agencies are the last people in the world who don't collaborate. They want to come in, hear a brief from a client, and then do their magic behind a curtain, but that's not the world anymore.
Collaboration, brain-storming, and working together requires being in a meeting, throwing out an idea, and working to make something better. This leads people to say, "Wouldn't it be better if we just had one agency that handled everything for us?" You could do that, but the skill set to do advertising, to build a website, to do social media marketing are so very different, and the agency construct is different as well. Can one agency be good at all of those things?
For more ideas on how agencies can make money selling social media services to clients, download our ebook below.
