The future of the agency is out there

All agencies, no matter what size, are struggling with changing business models and redefining what an agency is, fighting to find ways to gain a competitive edge. What's the best agency model we ought to ask in this month's cover story? While so many of us scream about the need for the rethinking of the agency model of the future, this isn’t a call to arms in the name of always thinking big and living outside the box. This is a call to arms in the name of moving the agency towards what is of high importance for its current and prospective clients, plus the agency itself as an entity: the future. If you choose to believe nothing is new within agencies, you have to wonder if they’ve been able to grow? Multi-billion dollar holding companies, the longevity of agencies referenced in Mad Men, and lavish parties in the French Riviera each year would lead many to an affirmative answer. Yet there is something old that we need to ponder. Agencies need to expand their kitchen and fall in love with (and sell through) new ingredients. Because current recipes appear to be eating away at things. At coffee bars and on couches with our laptops perched in our laps, in boardrooms and elevators, over lunches and dinners, sitting or participating in conferences we hear things discussed: the transformational power of blockchain technology in an agile minded landscape where transparency is king, the need for AI infused optimization strategies built within multi-tiered marketing technology platforms that put the audience first, or reaching cost efficient scale through exclusive predictive algorithms that pinpoint purchase funnelspecific activities and the sites that align with them. Do you understand what I just wrote? I don’t. And I doubt you do. That’s a major issue we need to overcome. Agencies must embrace and respect history. Print, radio, Tv—none of these mediums killed off the other and they are still standing today, evolving as our world does. Valuable lessons exist within our historical evolution. We must be willing and open to learning them. We must strive more than ever to generate value. But providing the type of value that wins and wins often requires a dedication to rigour directed towards many things: understanding and empathizing with what clients need to overcome in the office and the boardroom and in life, the creation of agency processes that heighten accountability and challenge what we deem to be a “big idea,” and embracing the fact a problem needs to be solved from a variety of angles. From this we can head into the future. In that future, agencies will be aiming for more pies to take more shares from. They will do this by not falling in love with terms, lingo, and jargon. Instead, they will fall in love with knowledge, understanding, thinking… By doing all of the above agencies will show they matter more than ever. And as change happens and business problems surface they will increase their client’s value more so than they did before. The future of the agency is out there. Let’s go get it.