Convergence! It’s here. No not that kind. The other kind
For the longest time, digital agencies have done everything they can to convince the world that no, no, no …they only do digital. Why? Two words: Wall Street.
Remember when Digitas went public? They (brilliantly) positioned themselves to the dot com rabblery as "Digital Gone Wild" when, in fact, at the time, more than 60% of their revenue came from offline sources like, say, junk mail. Did you ever hear Tom Bedecarre of AKQA bragging on his print campaigns for Visa? Not likely. For just about ever, Wall Street has given digital agencies a much higher multiple on income than it has given the IPG's and Omnicom's of the world. So even if the business was there, Digital CEOs underplayed their offline revenue because nothing good could come from it.
But now the advent of online video as a content and ad form may be the catalyst changing all that. Here in Adweek the formerly high minded digerati of Razorfish (incidentally owned by MSFT of all companies) is taking credit for a campaign in …gasp… broadcast video.
We've thought this would happen forever. The digital agencies are in the best position to win these clients over the long haul. Why? EZ. They understand and appreciate data — something the traditonal agency world has yet to fully wrap its
head around. So, in some respects the high multiples are justified as the Razorfish's of the world may start to gobble up broadcast budgets and position themelves as the center of the marketing infrastructure. Their future growth curve looks way brighter.
If Jeff Dachis was still running Razorfish, do you think they’d be bragging about broadcast video? I wonder.
Your point about data and measurement is spot-on, btw. Generally speaking, digital agencies should be able to address John Wanamaker’s famous quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
~G~
April 12th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I would agree that the digital companies are slowly taking over clients, however, there is something to be said for traditional methods. The baby boomers (who have a majority of money) are still slow to adopt digital methods. I think both avenues should still be explored and combined to reach a greater majority of potential clients.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 pm