…where's the money incentive for agencies (ie what skills base is on their payroll, and so certain to be deployed… and how do they earn more fee etc?) This is both clear and clearly biased for most agencies of all types both big and small.

…and how do you pay according to results, when even the best econometrics can struggle with the complexity of interactions that lead even to the most borring of things like a click thru?

“However well traditional advertising agencies read the signals and recognize the need for radical change in their capabilities,” he said, “few agencies can address all the communications needs of a brand. … This is making the management of agencies increasingly complex, and raises challenging questions on how best to measure the value added by the respective partners and consequently how to manage remuneration.”

Looks like something that's on a number of people's minds.

Anyway, many thanks for the link

I think some of your doubts might be cleared and probably raise new ones

Is it really possible to be media passionate without being involved and bonded to this busines model?

I tought being media agnostic was against the 36O° view, ie. “replicate the same idea everywhere”

I'm not sure i'm following you, would u be more specific?

I hope agencies wake up. I read somewhere a piece by Lee Clow wherein he urges agencies to drop terms like 'Media Neutral' and 'Media Agnostic' and instead become 'Media Passionate'. He specifically mentions the need to work hard on each media and not replicate the same idea everywhere. It is a great piece by a great man. Wish there were more like him…..

However, we take pride in being an industry of ideas not an industry of action. To me this is more evidence that we are placing our value upon the bits of the process that aren't really the most valuable.

My first project when I ventured solo this April was with an IT Major here in Bangalore. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant presentation and shared it with a friend who was a successful serial entrepreneur from the Valley. He looked at it and said “Nice story,Subbu. But where is the cookbook?” What he meant was that my presentation was a whole lot of BS and that I had avoided the part that would have made me commit. Cookbook I realized is IT and Entrepreneur speak for Commitment. My presentation which was story-telling was a hangover of my advertising experience.

Thanks to him I did the 'cookbook'. I had to think a zillion times on each slide. The impact of the presentation – story telling + cookbook- was such that the client was forced to act on points raised. The action involved integration.

I think what I did is possible by anyone and will be the norm in the coming days. Agencies will be forced to commit if they want to retain their business and clients will be forced to be the integrators much like what Andy had rightly said. I also agree with you when you say that Marketers are probably not ready. But when agencies and experts do their part, marketers will be forced to….

Though its become synonymous with comms, marketing that operates across all 7Ps (or Cs… and whatever the current number is) requires more of a creative generalist orientation. To few marketers think this way these days… another symptom of the drift toward specialisation you're highlighting.

I'm seeing a lot more inhousing over the past couple of years, particularly of production, and to a certain extent “creative”. Perhaps the models are utlimately going to polarise to the point where you operate marketing via either a predominantly inhouse or outsource model.

There are clear parallels with the IT sector… lessons can probably be drawn from their experience over the past decade.