Picture this: you are ordering your favourite Chinese meal at a food court – chop suey and the works. Yet, you also feel like having that mouth-watering chocolate ice-cream, but it’s at the other end of the mall. Imagine if you could have both in one go, from the same place, wouldn’t life be easier? I mean Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy was astounding (and lovable), fighting intergalactic battles while back on Earth, Stark in The Avengers was busy saving it from Ultron and throwing smart a** one-liners. Now, both Groot and Stark are awesome in their respective entourage but when they joined forces in Infinity Wars they were invincible.

Now that we are done with the Millennial references, let’s get to the point. Digital specialist agency or full-service agency? Having experienced both sides of the coin, I pick the full-service agency (offering digital and conventional services under one roof), for one simple reason: synergy, synergy and more synergy!

Let me elaborate. It is a typical Monday morning; you have barely reached the office, signed in with a few seconds to spare before the late attendance bomb kicks off. You grab a cup of karak chai, ask your colleagues which films they watched over the weekend and open your laptop and see an email from your client services team. The email? A request for a meeting on an (insert exciting) upcoming campaign by an overenthusiastic brand manager who wants to conquer the world with his brand. The agency and the brand meet and the brief (or lack thereof) is discussed. TG: 16-45, SEC A-Z obviously.

Scenario 1: Two different agencies meet for the brief: a digital agency and a full-service one.

Scenario 2: One agency meets the brand which takes care of both.

In the first scenario, both the digital and the full-service agency take the brief and go their separate ways. The full service agency comes up with the big idea and the strategy and hand them to the digital agency. Somewhere along the line, Chinese whispers come into play and no matter the synchronisation and quality of the relationship between the two, there will ALWAYS be differences. Cue to chaos: things overlap, egos inflate, timelines are pushed forward and in between the Instagram stories and the POS, the big idea – which started in Beijing – ends in Beirut. This affects the output of the digital agency, which despite putting in multiple hours are on a different creative tangent from that of the creative agency. They differ on the visuals, tone and even the hashtags sometimes don’t make sense. This is also the reason why, at times, digital may be ‘all over the place’; the singular creative and the context which anchors the brand, drifts away.

This is usually not the case if we look at the second scenario.

The full-service gets the brief, takes a vape break (not that the others don’t) and dissect it with their respective departments. Differentiator one: the creative strategy is developed with the digital team members in the same room. Trends and insights are shared. No egos are harmed in the process. (Honestly, one thing that hurts a brand more than videos made with the TikTok app, is the lack of a cohesive strategy because the strategy department is sidelined much like Jon Snow in the first season of Game of Thrones.) Anyway, after landing the big idea, instead of sharing it with another digital agency, the same agency works on the creative for all media.

They have dedicated wings to create and manage everything from media, apps, websites and even a single Facebook post. The biggest hurdle is, as I mentioned earlier, the cohesiveness in the creative strategy which requires more effort – and our brands already suffer from an identity crisis so they need the pilot and the co-pilot to be on the same team so that they can steer them in one direction.

Since 2010 we usually put media in two buckets; conventional and digital. However, since then, ideas have become more agile and media independent. Campaigns don’t flex to fit into mediums anymore. Digital has grown into a mammoth medium and the best part is the fluidity it brings. It blends in with other media effortlessly; have an activation? Cover it on digital; releasing a TVC? Create hype on digital; publishing a print ad? Ask readers to visit digital for more details. Clearly, since everything is interconnected, it is best to have all the communication sprout from the same seed, so that it becomes a single thought reflecting the brand’s personality as opposed to translating different thoughts into different mediums separately; be it the key words, the design or the mood. Otherwise, when a campaign rolls out, there is a completely different look and feel between the assets on digital compared to other media, leaving your audiences confused about what the brand is communicating. When the brief is executed by the same agency, the campaign rolls out effectively because of the team’s coordination with all other media.

In the early days of Pakistani advertising, everything was done by one agency. Later, the functions were split, each one providing complementary and supplementary tasks to the point that today, we need a specialised agency to hold an umbrella over the celebrity during a TVC shoot. Yes, some specialised agencies are necessary, such as media houses or PR. Not saying that they should not be under one roof, but whether they are or not does not matter as much as not having digital integrated in a full-service agency.

In 2011, we witnessed a mushroom growth of specialised digital agencies and most brands realised that by having digital in one agency not only made their lives easier, it made sense strategically and creatively – and so they entrusted their creative agencies with the task of coming up with digital ideas. That was when all the full-service agencies started dabbling in digital, resulting in the creation of dedicated wings. Of course, there were teething issues but now they are in a better shape. I can say this because I am currently working with one such agency.

Let’s not forget the exposure the digital team gains by working in a full-service agency. They see the strategy being built and how it flows into creative; they get to experience the whole 360 of advertising. They interact with different departments and rather than crash into the digital aspect of the campaign, they are part of the process from the start. The people working on digital in full-service agencies have become specialists in their own right. They have dedicated wings to create and manage everything from media, apps, websites and even a single Facebook post. The biggest hurdle is, as I mentioned earlier, the cohesiveness in the creative strategy which requires more effort – and our brands already suffer from an identity crisis so they need the pilot and the co-pilot to be on the same team so that they can steer them in one direction.

This is why I picked heads. The idea trumps everything and cohesiveness is extremely important. It won’t be long before digital becomes the new conventional. Okay, all this talk has made me super hungry. Let me order my ice cream and chop suey in peace – from the same place!

Anil Anjum is Associate Creative Director, MullenLowe Rauf.