The art of agency self-promotion

 As we know, the recession that we have experienced over the last few years has had a profound impact on our industry; trimming any remaining vestiges of fat and hastening the shift away from traditional approaches to marketing towards something more interactive and participative (“Digital and new media are the strongest forces of growth…we’re certainly not an advertising agency anymore” Sir Martin Sorrell). And whilst this situation presents many exciting opportunities for marketers and their agencies, it has also brought about confusion: what Sean Corcoran of Forrester terms “an agency purgatory.”

In what Corcorran calls the “great race for relevance”, agencies of all disciplines recognize the opportunities and attempt to state their case as the gate-keeper to the new world of marketing. Once harmonious ‘all-agency-groups’, previously clear and secure in their roles now vie for the clients’ attention, presenting their credentials in every conceivable discipline and looking to undermine one another at every juncture – we’d love to set up a meeting to talk you through our new social media / events / creative technology unit. In addition to the hiring of more diverse talents, this land-grab has seen a spate of agency repositionings with ad agencies such as Crispin Porter and Goodby building formidable interactive capabilities, digital natives R/GA taking on the role of lead agency for Ameriprise, Starcom Mediavest repositioning themselves as a “human experience” agency (no me neither), and PR agencies like Edelman extending their ‘influence’ remit deep into social media.

But if agencies are confused, spare a thought for the poor clients trying to work out how to deploy them. Despite agency posturing, Forrester research suggests that clients find themselves in a state of confusion “most marketers don’t trust their traditional agencies with digital work and yet most don’t believe their interactive agencies are ready to lead yet either.” 

The result is that many of us find ourselves in a catch 22 position. The best way to prove our capabilities is by creating great work for clients. But how do you convince the client (who has you pigeon-holed in some or other discipline box) to give you the opportunity to do great work? Faced with this conundrum, a handful of farsighted agencies are getting on and building stuff, creating self-initiated projects demonstrating their capability to the world.

Mother are the masters of these sorts of projects – seeing creative opportunities at every turn. Whether it be producing a movie, creating their own comic book, making light of the Wikileaks controversy with their Christmas Lappileaks Twitter effort even seeing their recent New York office move as an opportunity to present their unique take on the world.

But we’re also seeing a group of less well established agencies putting themselves on the map thanks to self-initiated projects. To call advertising powerhouse Dentsu ‘less well established’ seems strange but in the UK where they have recently set up shop, this is exactly what they are. Initially without client work to show, they have set about creating a series of high-profile, attention-grabbing projects which demonstrate their creativity and thoroughly modern approach to marketing. They brought innovation to print teaming up with Wallpaper Magazine and artist Robert Wilson to create a moving magazine. Capitalizing on the excitement around the UK launch of the iPad, they collaborated with super-smart creative technologists BERG to “invent a technique using long camera exposures to record the iPad moving through space in order to make a stop motion film of 3-d light forms” (something beautiful to behold if difficult to explain). And then followed their New Paper where they teamed up with London free sheet Metro to create stylish, sustainable wrapping paper for Christmas.

Another new agency creating noteworthy self-initiated projects is Happiness Brussels. A timely and eloquent comment on the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, they teamed up with British artist Anthony Burrill to create Oil and Water do not mix, a limited edition print, made using oil collected from affected beaches. Then for Christmas they created Gift a Stranger, a project built on Google Maps allowing users to send a gift to a complete stranger somewhere in the world (more info on how it all works here).

With projects more focused on strategy and trends than creative output, JWT have caught the eye recently with their future gazing. First their comprehensive 100 things to watch in 2011 trends presentation was everywhere on Twitter at the end of last year, and now, they’ve followed this up (for people too lazy to read it all) with this nifty short animation. And finally, BBH consistently impress with their Labs blog which enables them to punch above their weight and provide genuine thought-leadership to the industry - a must-read / follow. 

The moral of the story: stop talking, start doing. If I was a CMO with a newly restored marketing budget burning a hole in my pocket I’d be rewarding the agencies with tangible examples of their new and innovative approaches to marketing over the ones which write powerpoint about it.