Friday, February 24, 2006

The Ad Agency of the Future

Piers Fawkes of PSFK fame blogs on If! about a lecture delivered by Virginia Commonwealth University students at If!’s Future Marketing Conference yesterday. The students’ topic? The Ad Agency of the Future:

Agencies no longer work for the client, nor the consumer but the brand. We’re not ad people anymore. We’re brand agents. Not even art directors and copywriters anymore - we’re brand agents, the students told the conference. We need to change our focus, we actually sell ideas and we need to remember that. If you use this as the focus, then you can come up with ideas for pr, packaging, products, advertising, stunts and even advertising.

In order to do this, media people need to be brought back into the agency to help us connect to the consumers. But we need clients to trust us.

Finances also need to be restructured. The client and the agency should have significant overlap - sharing the risk, investing in the idea. Current compensation is a result from the tradition of being an agent. Agencies will empathize with a client’s business if they are involved - dreams.

Therefore, there is a shift in purpose, investing in the client’s business.