The constantly changing landscape shaping the way people consume earned, owned and paid media across print and digital channels calls for a radical redesign of the advertising industry model. This has been reinvented a couple of times in my generation, as new technologies and trends impact the way content gets created, distributed, consumed and shared.

Even as early as in the pre-digital age, integration was a buzzword which trailblazed a protracted period that saw a raft of consolidations between specialist agencies. The coming together of PR, media and creative teams did work for a while, especially in regard to the bottom-line and cost control and less so in terms of the quality and effectiveness of client campaigns.

And when the advent of digital, social media and programmatic came to once again disrupt the industry with new skills, capabilities and untapped potential, the advertising industry had to act quickly and rethink the way it provided integrated services to clients.

But the relevance of this integrated model is under question by agencies and clients alike, who have not received the benefits and returns that the digital revolution and its seamless integration with traditional advertising had promised.

The problem is ownership at both ends of the spectrum.

When the fully integrated agency team is working to address a client brief that requires a 360-degree approach, the meeting room will be abuzz with excitement from different specialist leaders, each an expert on a specific domain.

Ideas will start flowing fluently, but as is usually the case, not the brightest or the one that is closest to addressing the client’s need will prevail. Why?

Because each idea will fall victim to integration itself. For example, a brilliant PR-led idea won’t fly simply because the art director can’t visualise the creative output, or a social media-led idea will be killed because it doesn’t have enough PR legs.

Add to that the challenge each of these disciplines or practices within an integrated environment have a P&L (profit and loss) to keep, targets to meet and a budget to maintain to realise. So much so, the final proposed campaign may be somehow distant from what the client was hoping to receive.

Going back to the ownership question issue, agencies must replace the antiquated, almost obsolete, model of client servicing with a contemporary approach that gives clients direct access to specialist talent, usually never seen during the strategy development meetings with the client.

This can work until at least a new breed of a super ad man evolves, a person who will have acquired a more holistic understanding of the strengths and limitations of each disparate discipline and the know-how to single-mindedly create fully integrated campaigns.

In my biased — yet humble — opinion, the chances are that this person will evolve from a PR career background as content creators and storytellers become ever more relevant in a message-cluttered world where originality drives brand differentiation.

At the other end of the equation, the ownership of an integrated communications brief itself can be a contentious issue at the client side, despite the best of intentions of everyone involved in its creation. Assuming that specialist players are part of the team putting the brief together, from internal corporate communication specialists to digital, PR, research and social media experts, the final outcome of a 360-degree communications brief is likely to be an amalgamation of compromised priorities that do not reflect the company’s actual needs.

Here, the younger generation of chief marketing officers exposed to big data and analytics will be better placed to take ownership of complex, integrated communications briefs that take into account the holistic requirements of a company’s business and communications objectives.

The writer is head of PR and Social Media at Al-Futtaim and author of ‘Back to the Future of Marketing — PRovolve or Perish’. Follow him on Twitter @georgekotsolios