The “Type" of Agency Used To Matter

The latest creation by Digital Agency Razorfish dubbed “Fluent” sparked an excellent discussion amongst myself and a few folks I know.

This debate goes in many directions, but the specific argument I want to explore in this post is, Does the “Label” of your agency matter anymore? And when I say label I mean, PR Agency, Interactive Agency, Media Agency, or Creative Agency, etc. There are instances where these things all happen under one roof and in other cases they happen separately. Regardless of which, these silos do exist and the core practice they have been focusing on for the past decade(s) have resulted in the “type” of agency they are now labeled to be.

I made a statement on Twitter that peaked the interest of some people, many of whom voiced their strong opinion around the subject of social media ownership.

"The Type of Agency is no longer relevant, it's the type of people that matter."

The debate over who "owns" social media in the agency world is far from being decided and I believe that moving forward, the debate will become a moot point altogether. With the help of a former coworker, I was helped to understand that the move that Razorfish was making with the Fluent report was one that positioned themselves to appear more qualified to lead social influence marketing and at the same time attract the talent that would best be equipped to do it. Ultimately for that to be true, there needs to be people in the agency who had the chops to produce that kind of report. My point is, those people could easily be working at any kind of agency whether it be traditional, interactive, or PR and those people might not be working at the same type of agency next year as they are now.

5 Years ago. Traditional Media and Digital Media were still very much in a silo and the economy was relatively fantastic. A half decade later, we are in a very different place. You’ve got a weakened economy (IE lower budgets that agencies have to work with/profit from) and a revolution in digital communication (which we can refer to as “social media.) You’ve also got all types of agencies receiving RFPs and many of those agencies are promising that they can deliver on what the client is asking for in the realm of social influence. Clients want to see all the responses they can get (regardless of agency type) so they can get the best plans for the most efficient cost. Agencies (again, regardless of type) are accepting the challenge of these RFPs because their overall budgets are tighter and they want to maximize their output and revenue.

What this means to me is, when it comes to social influence, we are now entering a point where type of agency isn't going to mean much, rather the ranks that fill it will.

I know what you're thinking. "But wait, didn't it ALWAYS come down to the people who worked at an agency?"

Yes. But I believe we are approaching a shift in terms of how prospective employees and clients look for agencies to work with. Instead of clients or job-seeking professionals looking to work with AGENCY X OR AGENCY Y because of its reputation, they are going to want to work with the agency where PERSON X, or PERSON Y built their footprint regardless of the type of agency it is. In other words, they will be looking at the people first, not the organization and especially not the type of organization.

10 signs of the coming Apocalypse

A light-hearted look at some of the things that popped in the news this week that are clear signs that we're all done for...

1. Real House Wives of New Jersey.

2. Pirates are no longer confined to Disney rides.

3. Misinformation/Information are growing at the same rate.

4. Computers continue to become more human.

5. Oprah joins Twitter.

6. Gas is staying cheap?

7. It's easier than ever to commit digital terrorism (accidentally).

8. The web has exaggerated our immaturity.

9. Apple ads start to actually strike back at Windows.

10. Hipsters continue to grow in number.

Image care of http://www.mcaree.org

Bridge to Telepathy (And it's current iteration via social media and mobile technology)

Last night having attended the latest Chicago “Tweet-Up” with Colonel Tribune I observed a behavior which reminded me of a recurring thought I’ve been having regarding the human thought process and social media.

It is not that inconceivable to think microprocessors will some day be able to be manipulated by brain impulses. On the same note, it's also not that unlikely that said microprocessors would be small enough to implant into the human brain & interact with it.

Now let's take it a step further. Wouldn't it be quite imaginable that wifi, bluetooth, etc would have the possibility of being integrated into those chips? Well my friends what you have at that point are all the ingredients for digital telepathy.

If users of such chips set up their wifi to act like a twitter account (where you could only send/receive direct messages to/from those you approve) your brain would be relatively free from the barrage of messages from other would be intruders. (Advertisers, Random Thought Projectors, Creepy People)

I would think the process would be similar to texting someone or sending an email of your thoughts, and they would choose whether to respond. (And hopefully this method wouldn't have you racking up 10 cent charges per “brainwave” on your phone bill.)

In my mind, we're not that far off from already doing this now. When we are sitting in the same room "compunicating" we are in essence doing what I described above. The only difference is that we have a middleman to go through between two+ brains which are eyes, fingers, and devices (blackberry, iphone, etc) but one could still argue that this process could be considered a form of telepathy.

Imagine how many business models would be born or die from such a reality?