What do I see as the new agency model of the emerging new market? The model that delivers strategic and creative excellence, innovation and a lot of agility - and is able to scale a brand quickly?
The better agency model must do three things:
It must have a new ideas culture, a new value culture…and a new talent culture. The agency model of the future is built around the value of ideas. You might say there’s nothing new about this point. Our industry talks a lot about ideas.
But at the same time, we have allowed the emphasis, the value, and the fundamental business model of our industry today, to shift away from ideas and to focus predominantly on execution.
A lot of lip service is paid to the value of ideas, but agencies are often primarily regarded as executioners and, in that regard, purely as suppliers. In the future, suppliers will be valued less and less and squeezed more and more. It is idea generators who will be most valued – because “ideaspeople” create the greatest value, across every industry sector, not just our own.
So the new agency model has to move the value of our industry away from execution and back to ideas. Firstly, by demonstrating and standing up for the value of ideas. And secondly, by outsourcing execution.
Now, by outsourcing execution, I don’t mean for a moment giving up responsibility for execution. It is very important that we steward the process – and we do this flawlessly for some of the biggest advertisers in the world - but less important that we feel we must execute everything, and be able to provide a full range of execution services “in-house”.
The pressure on agencies, often self-inflicted to be able to claim ‘We do absolutely everything’, is entirely counter-productive to fostering a culture that focuses on and celebrates the value of ideas.
Interestingly, outsourcing execution not only re-emphasizes the value of ideas; it also re-emphasizes the value of specialist executioners. Idea creators and idea implementers are both key.
At the implementation end, the opportunity to be the Fedex of the execution marketplace is an exceptionally valuable one in its own right – when it absolutely, positively has to be produced overnight, or in some other very tight timeframe
And there are some interesting developments in this area.
At StrawberryFrog, protecting a true “IdeasCulture” has always been our aim. We haven’t embraced this change for change’s sake, but in order to ensure “new creativity” and “originality” as well as innovation and a hell of a lot of agility. We have always been about the value of great ideas, and outsourcing execution to media buying companies or major digital production organizations was a key part of our founding philosophy ten years ago. We have developed strong partnerships with PR firms and specialists in various areas of expertise and technology and in different geographies.
At StrawberryFrog we have extraordinary talent in-house, but we also outsource into a unique network of talent literally all over the world, while we steward huge brands nationwide and across all continents. Pulling these partners into the StrawberryFrog team gives us tremendous reach and power, innovation and dynamism, as well as some very unconventional disciplines that you wouldn't find in your traditional agency such as mobility crm capabilities and social media listening.
Not every client is ready for this – yet. It takes a creative CMO to understand what the true value of this model really means vs the traditional legacy agency model.
Our model was not inspired by the old agency model, but by architectural partnerships and feature movie productions, i.e. the best available talent from wherever it’s assembled for the duration of a project. This is the StrawberryFrog model as it was developed ten years ago, and perfected over the years - and, through the experience of stewarding complex campaigns for major clients in the US and in other regions.