The traditional agency model is slowly fading away. Two big questions face marketers today — number one, is marketing only digital, and number two, should consumers be called in to be the creators of content for marketers.

To quote a most fundamental issue, the chief marketing officer of a leading global corporation stated that there is no such concept as “digital marketing” ... all marketing has to be digital. Leading marketing through traditional channels like print and TV can mislead future marketing agendas.

Digital advocates strongly believe that the realm of communication has changed completely and the old rules have lost relevance. They believe the traditionalists are just fooling themselves, grasping at any straw in order to avoid changing their old, tired ways.

The focus from a consumer understanding perspective has to be on digital shopper journeys, which aren’t defined and can change based on demand needs and supply.

The focus for the marketers has to be to retarget those same consumers with new offers based on their digital behaviour. The emphasis has to be on “behavioural retargeting” (also known as behavioural remarketing, or simply, retargeting), a form of online targeted advertising based on the consumers’ previous internet actions.

Hence, the importance of digital content. Now to think through question number two: How does a marketer engage with the agency and the creative talent, knowing that content can either be created by the consumer and is free!

While the creative talent is significant in the process, what changes is the extent to which the consumer can now be involved to facilitate the creative process.

The structure in the traditional agencies hasn’t evolved. In addition, the process of creating content hasn’t evolved as well. Do we blame the marketers or the agencies?

The marketers will evolve if the agency leads the change and dissolves the traditional process of a brief to develop creative content. Here are some of the leading success stories of brands focusing on user generated content:

* Burberry is a British clothing company that was founded in 1856. Angela Ahrendts took over as CEO in 2006 and decided to launch user-generated content strategy as part of her goal of changing the company’s ageing brand. The company launched “The Art of the Trench” website in 2009, where users could upload and comment on pictures of people wearing Burberry products. Burberry’s eCommerce sales surged 50 per cent year-over-year following the launch of the site.

* Pepsi MAX is another leveraged user-generated content to craft a new brand image. It created a campaign urging customers to share reasons they prefer Pepsi MAX to Coke, asking customers to share pictures on Instagram and other social networks, as well as a mini-site that was specific to the promotion. The best entries were eligible for numerous prizes, including a year’s supply of free Pepsi MAX.

Unsurprisingly, the campaign turned out to be very popular. Over 7,000 entries were submitted and the site received over 50,000 unique visits. The level of participation was even more impressive, as the average visitor spent about six minutes on the site, showing that customers were highly engaged with the brand.

Global marketers are actively engaging with consumers to create content; the opportunity for the Middle East is to first engage consumers and then encourage them to create branded content. The age-old myths about lack of creativity among consumers are passé and it is an opportunity for brands to lead this social change rather than continue depending on age-old traditional mechanisms.

In the end I would like to revisit David Ogilvy’s golden words: “Consumer is king.” Yes, the consumer is indeed the king ...

— The writer is CEO of Home of Human