(Image from geekologie)
This is my response when asked the question ‘Are digital agencies the new dinosaurs?’ in Campaign Magazine. As you might imagine I didn't exactly agree;
"Any agency of any shape, size or sensibility that fails to adapt to the requirements of the modern marketing age will by definition become a dinosaur. This applies as equally to digital agencies as it does to the Tyranosaurs and Brontosaurs of a more traditional bent.
The fact is that as all media has become digital, and increasingly social, the main requirement of any agency has been to expand their knowledge and insight across the full extent what is possible.
It’s less about knowing the specifics of one platform over another, rather better to understand which platform, channel or technique is relevant at that point in time and crucially knowing how best to utilise it to extend a relevant and engaging experience between brands and their consumers across all media.
This is something in my limited experience I’ve found digital agencies are particularly open-minded to. That said this is more a defining characteristic of what it means to be a modern agency, rather than digital having any particular exclusivity to this skill. This is certainly borne out by the rapidity with which the dinosaurs of the traditional world continue to hoover up digital talent!
The effect this has on digital agencies is two-fold. Firstly, agencies such as ours own become increasingly broad-minded and create work across the full gamut of media. Secondly, other digital agencies become increasingly specialised around a particular aspect of one technology or channel. Neither approach is particularly old-fashioned, and in both cases you’ll find agencies very much at the cutting edge of what is possible – hardly criteria which qualify them as potential dinosaurs.
So in summary, digital agencies are not the new dinosaurs. Instead agencies of all sorts are modernizing at the same time as some digital specialists become more adept in a series of niche endeavours."
