Contraction. Is it good for the industry?

by asi

I must quote the super clever Andy here, as this half baked thought “is going to have that awkward ‘haven’t blogged in a while’ feel about it. A bit like a one-night stand after 3 months celibacy”. (Genius steals etc)

Don’t know if you feel or experience the same and I’d be surprised if people haven’t wrote about it something already but it seems like the industry is in a massive state of contraction (as the the opposite of expansion) at the moment. There is a sense that there are no specialists any more and everyone is trying to get a piece of the same cake.

Up until few years ago ‘digital’ was still a new territory done by digital specialists, DM was the blacksheep of the industry, POS was the territory of BTL peeps, media agencies simply planned and bought, well, media and the idea of a PR stunt was something that mainly PR people talked about.

Etc.

But recently, more often than not I see a response to a client brief coming from different agencies and they all seem to play in the same playground. I’m sitting in an all agency initial respond meeting and apart from few ‘crafts’ that remain within their natural territories it seems like the idea of a specialist (ATL, BTL, Digital) is a thing of the past. Media agencies develop and execute ideas, PR agencies doing ‘digital’, the best ad agency in the world is doing social media powered customer service and everyone’s doing the social media thing (little drops of puke in my mouth as I type, excuse me).

And unsurprisingly, the hottest shop in town is a cross channel, media neutral ideas factory kind of agency – just a bunch of very clever peeps solving business problems.

Some clever peeps talk about the death of siloed channels:

We wondered what would happen if we banned people from talking about “digital”, “social”, “viral”, “mobile”, “ATL”, “BTL” and “TTL”. As an exercise, it’s revealing. What do you sell to clients? What do they buy? What do you “make”? What do planners talk about all day? We believe it’s the end of the road for talking about “digital” and all talk of channel-based silos. Thinking and making in silos prevents us from joining the dots between a business’ activities and the audiences it seeks. Both client side and agency side, silos are the enemy. But what’s the alternative?

So what’s gonna be? Everyone’s going to turn into an idea shop and the best ideas will win the business? Is that a good thing? And more importantly, can clients handle that?

I don’t know, you tell me.