Time for agencies to do more than the talking

Globally, there are a growing number of agencies with tenuous links to various facets of the advertising industry making their presence known. Now, the industry is struggling to define itself between integrated agencies and ‘specialists’ partly because of media fragmentation, and partly because we have agencies that act as a ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’.

Even well-known agencies are struggling with technology and feel uneasy listing ‘digital’ as a service on their website. It’s not always with dire consequences, and agencies who expand into digital off the back of an acquisition or major recruitment drive can offer the correct skill set needed, especially if clients are seeking an integrated agency.

But my bugbear is with companies who add this as a service without investment and often without the resources or understanding to deliver. For one reason or another, offering a greater depth of service based on the skills that they already have does not add value to the digital offering, but rather creates a spin on their current capabilities.

Naturally, in the midst of a cautious economic recovery, agencies are frantically trying to up-sell to clients and offer additional services, be it experiential marketing, digital, SEO (search engine optimisation) or branding. But even they struggle to find the difference between offering an experience and a plain event or a website and an online engagement programme.

Clearly it is to the detriment of clients whose expectations from a specialised service are to deliver results based on their qualitative and quantitative objectives. Clients will be short-changed if the supposed specialist is not that specialised. And clients are no fools — they will spot them almost straight away. Agencies as well as their relationship manager’s credibility with clients will be at great risk.

In a period of recession, the old adage is invest. I say in a period of cautious recovery, invest more, and invest better not just for the short term. And in the days of 360-degree strategies, break down the agency services silos, re-merge the bottomlines, and look for innovators with ideas that will move brands, products and consumers.

Take public relations as an example. This is a sector traditionally based on persuasion whereas experiential marketing has always been built around interaction and creating memorable and engaging experiences.

The focus of a PR strategy is not centred on creating a brand experience but more about creating, maintaining or repairing a reputation. Yes, there are commonalities that cross over and generating word-of-mouth is the most pertinent.

But as it stands, PR companies do not have the operational expertise or staff (with industry pedigree), such as event producers, technical production managers, 3D designers or project managers to deploy a live experience, especially a digital one. Yet because ‘event management’ is a service, this can be bent to mean experiential marketing.

Essentially, those that choose to expand into other disciplines cannot take shortcuts and must spend wisely. Take Virgin and Richard Branson for example. As an owner of a record store in London, he was under no illusions that he could fly a plane or manage an airline. So he hired those that could.

But expanding your offering, whatever your business, based on your current skill set will lead to a misrepresentation of service and ultimately delivering a poor result at best.

In terms of my own industry, I only hope that clients are not being put off the benefits that truly integrated agencies with qualified experience in each discipline offer.

— The writer is the chief operating officer at Cheil Worldwide.