What's a digital agency?

It used to be easy to divide up the agency world. There were general agencies, media agencies, direct agencies, then Web agencies. You were media or creative, above the line or below the line. Nowadays, we see lines blurring everywhere. Publishers are acting like agencies. Advertisers are acting like publishers. Agencies are even trying out media. Everyone is in everyone else's backyard.

One of the new gray areas is the digital agency. It used to be simple. Traditional agencies came up with The Big Idea, then others like Web agencies constructed some matching luggage to go with the TV spot and print ads. That's clearly breaking down. What is happening is a big free-for-all. Traditional agencies are driving to have the tech chops of digital shops, while the digital specialists want to get the branding acumen of the traditional shops they slag off all the time.

This was clear in a couple of interactions I had yesterday. First, I saw a Tweet from Poke New York's Tom Ajello about how impressed he was with a new Burger King Facebook program.

I went to check out "Whopper Sacrifice," and I got what Tom was talking about. Brands have totally failed at building Facebook applications. They tend to be intrusive and not give users any reason to actually use them. In short, they're typical advertising -- or really, really bad utility. What Burger King's agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky did was create something different, both tertaining and useful. More than that, though, it showed an understanding of the social media context. Whopper Sacrifice is simple. It asks users to "sacrifice" 10 of their Facebook friends for a free Whopper. Jeff Benjamin, the interactive executive creative director at CPB, explained to me how the program came about because he and the CDs at CPB have all had the experience of building these big Facebook networks and wondering who the people are. That's smart. They get the experience of social media. What's more, CPB now has hired dzens of developers and interaction designers. (This was partially out of necessity after it burned too many bridges with digital production shops -- ahem, Barbarian Group.)

Then I went on a trip uptown to the Garment District -- don't tell me 39th and 8th is Hell's Kitchen -- to see R/GA, the digital agency that created Nike+. This is an agency with an army (some say sweatshop) of developers and tech people. My first question to the CEO, Bob Greenberg, was which agency he sees as R/GA's biggest competitor in the future. CPB. See, R/GA is trying hard to go from its tech base to add the type of smart brand work done by CPB. It'll be a different flavor to be sure: more production-oriented, rooted in technology, short on storytelling. But that doesn't mean it's not doing all sorts of work formerly in the preserve of traditional shops. It has a campaign launching for a client that includes Web, TV and print. R/GA doesn't want to become TBWA, but it will do a version of what's done there.

CPB and R/GA are more alike than they seem. To me, they're both digital agencies.

Comments

[Kettle + Black]

Also both traditional agencies.

[Matt Mantey]

What if a PR shop really did digital stuff too?

[Michael Hubbard]

Almost 12 years ago when I started in interactive media - nobody knew what the hell we did at Media Two. So we changed our name to Media Two Interactive and explained to people that we are an advertising agency, we just choose to work exclusively on an interactive platform. Well - you're dead on with the above... If I were on the client side these days, I would be completely stressed out about who to even begin talking to. Every agency makes the claim of "full service" or "digital" or whatever they want to - but the reality is, most agencies are the same as they were 10+ years ago, they've just adopted some of their styles to fit the medium clients want their ads on. If I were a client though - the first question I would ask is how many people do you have doing for the role x,y,z that I'm shopping for - because too many times I find Media Two Interactive competing against a big name shop that has an intern handling their interactive media, and yet we're the ones that perceived as small...

[Chris Allison]

I think Michael Hubbard is right on. Everyone is trying to get into the other's backyard, but most of them are not really established there and shouldn't really be trusted to cover all client needs.

[Ryan Moede]

At this point in the game, doesn't every shop need to at least understand digital?

[Brian Morrissey]

@ryan: Exactly. At this point, though, doesn't every agency have to at least understand branding? It can be argued that R/GA is building a brand a different way through technology applications, but there's another school of thought that says it's much more than that.

@michael, @chris: It's unsurprising there have long been unsubstantiated claims of "digital" expertise at agencies. They for the most part farm it out to those firms that really understand it. Still, an agency like CPB seems to me to get digital. It built 80 percent of the Whopper Sacrifice app in-house. It's doing the site work for VW.com, Dominos.com and now BK.com. Will it start to compete with Razorfish? I doubt it, maybe sometimes on the edges. Still, even a company like Razorfish has tried mightily to increase its creative capabilities to build brands. I have to give props to Ana for her post about the "identity crisis" at digital shops. (http://tinyurl.com/8ah3wa) My guess is it will only get more pronounced.

[R.J. Lewis]

Bravo Brian...

As Michael Hubbard points out, often the adjective "digital" or "interactive" in front of an agency moniker was meant to project differentiation and clarity of focus.

As the web evolved, traditional agency shops lacked interest and had significant "commitments" (vested interest) to other media and that way of doing business. So new shops were able to fill the void (which was vacant for quite some time by the way) and more effectively compete on different terms in a different medium. Now that many traditional media budgets are shrinking and online has proved it's here to stay (and here to win) there is a mega-scramble taking place. That's the agency world.

As importantly, your article touches on the even more confusing land grab between publisher and ad agency (would love to hear more from you on this). With the purchase of aQuantive, what is Microsoft anymore? With the purchase of 247RealMedia, what is WPP anymore? This is an area that I think is beyond "healthy competition" and presents some serious conflicts of interests, and challenges for both publishers and agencies.

[Spike Jones]

RE: CP+B. It's another example of them what they do best - buzz-stirring stunts. But it's not sustainable. Gotta find the next stunt. Gotta push messages out. Don't get me wrong - big fan of CP+B's creative here. Big fan. They are great at manipulating tools for a classic "look at me! Look at me!" approach.

Nice post.

[Todd Havens]

Amen. It does get confusing.

Point in favor of the digital shop hybrid, though...we launched our widget seeding/distribution service which included media buys across multiple widget ad networks because the technology is only understood by those on the frontline of the technology. Figuring out if we can be wrapped in someone else's API or looking to find a lost tracking pixel is enough to make steam come out of OUR ears sometimes.

Non-digital agencies, to use a sweeping term, can be slow to integrate these mercurial emerging technologies and so it only makes sense for the creative shop to take on a wider range of responsibilities.

[James Cooper]

Two good posts in one week Brian. Must be that you're back running not playing ping pong ;-)

My two penneth would be that any agency can be anything it wants to be these days. I wouldn't think it beyond the realms of possibility that a 'digital' shop, in the traditional sense, ie BS, Barb, AKQA, Dare (my agency), will produce either a TV Show or a full feature film this year (totally bypassing the 30 second spot).

I personally believe that the people in charge of digital shops are just a little more happy to try new things, more nimble and hungrier than most trad shops - apart from CPB of course, who continue to Fucking Rock.

[Alan Wolk]

A lot of the divide still centers around compensation Brian.

Big traditional agencies can pay their TV-centric creatives a whole lot more money than digital agencies can pay their web-centric creatives. That may not be true in 12 months, but right now salaries are still seriously higher in the upper echelons of the traditional agency creative departments.

It makes it harder for traditional agencies to really get behind "that whole interactive thing" and for digital shops to recruit people with serious branding experience.

There's a lot of validity to the way both CPB and RGA are going about trying to find the right mix. I think it really depends on where you start and being open to the notion that digital and traditional are two sides of the same coin and not the warring factions many in the business seem to believe.

[Filthy Fowl]

It’s funny because Alan is exactly right about the compensation and, ultimately, hiring the right people to reach across the line.

To that point, a problem I’ve seen with digital agencies attempting traditional (or small traditional shops attempting digital for that matter) is overcompensating on hiring personnel. As a result, they end up rehauling a good chunk of the staff and changing the company focus towards traditional while neglecting their own digital growth. For whatever reason, the light still shines brighter around traditional with too many folks. Now, if the traditional doesn’t pan out (and it usually doesn’t since they don’t have the chops or resources of a big traditional agency), they’ve got a bunch of digitally-able traditional people but not purists of either.

I do think it can be done. But for every CP+B or Goodby, I hear a five stories of Ogilvy, BBDO, BBH and TBWA, failing miserably with digital.

[Ana Andjelic]

to me it seems that it's a bit more complicated that what you are saying, brian. for one, it's not quite true that traditional agencies came up w the big idea - think Razorfish from 10 years ago, or Organic, or some obscure survivor like Digital Oven. Those guys were doing, what James now says, "what they wanted". They had unique set of skills, interests, expertise, working hours, and process that has never seen before and that way very very different from traditional agencies, which at that time, did not even regard those digital shops as their competitors. So it was much much more than "execution of the big idea" as you say.

All of this is important b/c the time has come when those guys need to start making money. They knew technology, traditional agencies knew "storytelling" (whatever). More importantly, they had (and still have) relationships w clients and access to their money. For me, that's the main thing that differentiates the two - who do you compete with to get a project.

Second, it's the media question. Traditional media are down, and honestly both traditional and digital shops are figuring out people's digital behavior. It's more at stake than digital/traditional agencies divide (which honestly i am not so interested in anymore). The question is the one of marketing, and what the f that means today.

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Excellent information because I like to know everything about agencies and those works, actually this information has helped me because I wanna get my own business ans I've gotten excellent information from here.m10m, it's incredible that CPB now has hired dzens of developers and interaction designers.