EDITORIAL

Under construction

Growing up, I went to a high school with nearly 2,000 students, which made for crowded paths as we walked from one class to another. Inevitably, we found better ways to get to where we wanted to go and, to the chagrin of the powers that be, we created our own tracks.

Those paths, which are created by the footfall of humans or animals, are widely known as desire lines and, while some see them as evidence of an original design flaw, others see them as evidence of our innate ability to find the path of least resistance.

After school I followed the predictable path of going to university and, upon finishing my degree, planned to return to complete postgraduate study and learn more about media. However, what I considered to be a well-laid plan took a quick diversion when I took an internship with Stoppress and NZ Marketing.

Now my name has moved up the list from staff writer to editor, and all the while I’ve been mentally reconstructing my path in an effort to foresee where it is going next.

Looking inside the agency issue of NZ Marketing, my first as editor, it appears marketers are creating their own desire lines as they attempt to find new ways of working with agencies that best suit their specific needs, rather than simply following the pathways of the past.

In an effort to prove our hunches correct, we picked up from where we left off last year and canvassed the views of our audience. In 2017, we asked marketers to share their perceptions of large creative and media agencies and then we asked agencies what they thought of marketers and brands. This time, as more clients make the move away from one agency partner and play the field, we asked both marketers and agencies to opine on a range of specialist agencies and the pros and cons of working with many, rather than just one.

So which model is better? Some economists believe that once countries open themselves up to international trade, they will specialise in products for which they have comparative advantage. In the report Diversification or Specialization: What is the path to growth and development, Dany Bahar explains that international competition drives less productive firms out of the market (and with them their products) and only those firms that are productive enough to compete in world markets will survive.

Having one big agency to take care of multiple needs is still an appealing concept and, at a time when marketers are expected to do so much, there are many clients that require that level of resource – and that level of time efficiency. But the knowledge gaps that have arisen among marketers as a result of the massive shifts in media consumption and technology have created plenty of demand for those operating in niches (overall, these changes may have actually been good for the ad industry, with US agency employment reaching its highest level since 2001 in 2016).

There is no simple answer. And there is still room for both models. But, as the demands of marketers shift from making ads to harnessing customer data, running sophisticated digital operations and, increasingly, working on a project basis rather than a retainer, it feels as though it increasingly takes a village to raise a brand.