Living in a digital world

Must agencies and creative teams change?

Bob Greenberg and Anne Benevuto of R/GA have initiated a serious conversation about the need for agencies to adapt to a changing world. Their analysis is very simple, but the solutions they require are extremely challenging.

PDF links to their thoughts: Bob on whether agencies can keep up with brands like Nike. Anne on the challenges of complexity.

They point out that brands once simply said things to consumers. Eg, ‘agencies created campaigns to tell consumers that… Pepsi tasted better than Coke.’ Then brands started wanting to have relationships with consumers – hello DM and early attempts at integrated agencies. Now though, we’ve entered an age of massive complexity where brands want consumers to have experiences. But hey, what kind of agency structure can deliver experiences and interactions?

Basically R/GA’s contention is that “by definition, the interface is the locus of a brand’s relationship with a consumer, the place where the two come together, shake hands (hopefully), and actually do something to each other: negotiate the price of airline tickets; download Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible; perhaps even find a dance partner.”

This interface is the place where people do things, say things, listen to things and create things. R/GA argue that the creative skills required to deliver that complex experiential interface is a new, large, amorphous creation they call the ‘Creative Hydra’ – a many-headed creature that is spawned by bolting on additional elements (tech lead and interaction designer/IA) to the traditional creative team of a copywriter and art director.

The tech lead isn’t just a geek that defines what’s possible or puts limits around the creative solution. In the new environment they’re an inventor and the inventions they imagine for particular marketing briefs may well lead to the ‘creative idea.’ Often their invention is the idea.

The interaction designer understands how consumers function in this new environment and and how we can best engage them.

But how do you write a brief for this larger team. Where and when do each of the members best engage with each other? Who is responsible for maintaining or guiding the consistency of experiences across the wide array of brand interfaces?

Here are some additional thoughts on the R/GA argument from Ogilvy and Tribal.

July 10, 2007 - Posted by riksta | Uncategorized