New roles in advertising

For a long time there have been the same old jobs in advertising. But all of a sudden there are new kinds of jobs out there in advertising which require new kinds of skills. New roles have started to appear in advertising that have not been here before. Like green shoots exploring upwards out of the grey brittle bottom of an age-old pine forest, these new roles have evolved because of what’s happening out there. More modern agencies already have them embedded in their teams, but if you’re thinking of a career in advertising, these new roles will become increasingly important for the industry as a whole.

Digital presence strategist
This person is a hybrid web strategist with curiosity about new technologies and a familiarity with mobility applications. This is not a media strategist or a technologist. This is a new role in the US. These guys have tended to be mostly Nordic because 3G happened there like 10 years ago or Japanese, and more recently British and or other Northern Europeans. This is the role on the rise in advertising. I use the term “advertising” because it’s the only short-hand word that carries the weight of strategic and creative excellence in all media, including digital and brand PR. This is a role on the rise because it is becoming important to have a strategic thinker sitting in the team who understands all the complexities of the social media scene, the mobility scene and all the innovation opportunities out there.

Idearator
This is an idea generator who has a legacy in the digital space but is broad enough to come up with ideas that live in all media. This person must play across many disciplines. This role will become increasingly important because the emphasis, the value, and the fundamental business model for agencies has shifted away from a focus predominantly on execution to a focus on ideas.

Partnership director
Partnering with ‘best-in-class’ individuals and firms is what enables agencies like StrawberryFrog to leapfrog the traditional legacy corporate agencies. This person’s role is to continuously manage the agency’s partnerships and be able to draw on the world’s best talent, tailored to a client’s specific needs. While all agencies work with outsourced talent in some shape of form (some more openly and overtly than others who hide this fact), this is now becoming a mainstream way of working in the evolving media revolution. And this role will become a mainstay of the best in class firms able to deliver for their clients globally and across many different disciplines.

Social media-whatever
I'm not going to write much on this. But anyone with any expertise in social media has been important for some time now, and this area of expertise will only keep growing.

Comments

[Greg Wood]

Scott - great post. We are in the middle of defining brand new roles in the social media space. My company has landed a few social media agency of record and many more in the pipeline. If the fundamentals of social media are to activate and prove your brand through conversations and short, frequent bits of content that live all over the web and on mobile devices then it requires a complete dismantling of the traditional agency model. The heritage and history of agencies was built upon the fact that it is expensive and hard for companies to communicate to their target market. One-way communications for the most part. Disciplines and approaches were created. Planners (what is that one insight that will resonate), CD's - in order to break through we have to craft brilliant, stand out creative products (that cost a fortune), media planning and implementation, production experts, and on and on. No judgment here, big agencies did very well with this model but the world is changing very quickly and big expensive mass communications will continue to decline while quick, frequent micro communications / conversations will continue to rise. We live in interesting times.

[JK]

Nice post.
As a Web Agency in Brazil, we have been noticing a shift on the way the Advertising Agencies are dealing with digital media.
Used to be that they would call a free-lancer or webdesign firm and just say - "Here. We have this campaign, and we created this layout, now you code the website. Thanks. Goddbye."...

Lately, we started to get calls from the agencies requesting our presence in the briefing meetings (!!!!), and actualy making us part of the creative process. It seems that some agencies are realizing that if you dont know the notes, you won´t make music, simple as that.

Let´s see what the future will bring us.

www.softbrazil.com.br
www.softbrazil.com.br/blog

[Mikej]

do you think people can come from current roles in the industry and adapt to these roles. If so which ones to which. Or what personality or working traits do you think are needed for each that could be taken from the current set

[Dino]

nice post!

[Nick Darken : Albion London]

Great post Scott. Totally agree with the main thrust of your post on evolution and creation of roles. It's a very exciting time. I would however disagree that the "Idearator" is a role that agencies must create. I think placing these responsibilities in one role runs counter to what the industry at large needs. 95% of creatives think in one dimension, 95% of planners only want to write a great brief, 95% of web developers and tech guys are waiting for an idea to develop. The future is ideas that are born from anywhere within an agency, nurtured without ego by people focused on flushing out innovation from across their company. Suggesting that one person should have this role is just rebadging "creative" or worse still, letting creatives off the hook so they can continue the pursuit of writing linear one off bits of film or print.

[Malin]

Who knows, maybe "advertising" will be replaced with "communicating" :D