Just started the summer internship last week efter a well deserved vacation in Sweden. I’ve gone totally 2.0 lately and my third feed has been growing strong. Take a look at my tumblr to find some inspirational material and another example of how great the web is.
Talk to you soon,
X
The main concern with digital agencies is that they’re called digital. They’re anxious about their place in advertising and constantly compare themselves to traditional above-the-line agencies. Many of the agencies see their potential and role in communications differently but they seem to have one thing in common; they have the key to the Internet but not enough clients wish to open the door to it.
Some have experience with working together with traditional agencies such as Fallon and have great experience when they’re let in early in the process. But like weary teenagers they constantly need to define what they do, what digital is and what service they can offer. The only solution to the problem so far is agreeing that a new term for digital is necessary. The emperor’s new clothes…
A problem is that their clients, marketers and marketing directors aren’t thinking online; they’re old school and more interested in their careers than “websites creating interaction and user produced content engaging with the brand.” This has created that what the digital agencies do becomes very familiar to what traditional agencies create. What the clients understand of digital is what the traditional agencies understand, which is why Facebook groups and Youtube- virals is still the talk of the future.
If digital start seeing themselves for what they are; communications agencies, with the purpose to sell a product for clients, they become a vital threat since media spending online is for the first time exceeding offline. When they are sure of what they’re doing, has created their niche they might be a part of the future.
Other quick notes:
• Create content for the client, transform business, building platforms and create new revenue streams
• Digital agencies create “things of value” while traditional agencies creates “a message.”
• There’s still too much “mad evangelising”
• “Facebook- democracy” – protest groups on Facebook
• Video is still king
• “Digital is too important to be left to the digital agencies.”
We got shortlisted for the Future Lions award which was great and I don’t think that we deserved to win with our idea, it had a flaw that couldn’t be missed. But, a few quick thoughts going through the winners. And I’m not bitter.
I think the winning entries in this competition really says more about the future of advertising than the one off print solutions that wins everything else. What I like about these entries is that that they’re so easily enlarged into big campaigns. One off prints and TV ads seldomly inspires with their big ideas but just shows that the creator has some sort of wits.
Great competition from AKQA, best thing in Cannes this year.
Update: The Swedes won another award for their Maglite idea, a D&AD Student Award
After discussing ethical dilemmas and idealism with advertising for a week in Paris, a fantastic week with pastis and pinball, I come home to find that a Y&R owned firm has done this poster for Mugabe.
I studied Rhetoric for a year at the University of Lund and this is the kind of stuff that makes me smile for 3 days.
