The great digital debate

Ten years ago the electronic media was at its tipping point. As television rapidly expanded from two to over 50 channels and ‘eyeballs’ shifted accordingly, marketing communications was turned on its head. Great emphasis was placed on the need for specialist media planning and buying firms, which threatened the core revenue stream of full service agencies. Traditional agencies themselves insisted on the virtues of integration based on the argument that planning media in isolation from the creative process would lead to a silo effect. Eventually, both media buying houses and full service agencies were forced to transform their businesses and create a hybrid between specialisation and integration to fulfil the needs of their clients in a changed media environment.

Now, a decade later, yet another debate between specialisation and integration is taking place, this time it has been instigated by a consumer shift towards digital media, which studies show, is where we spend more and more of our time. Where marketers once had to fight for our attention on a single screen with multiple channels, they are now trying to get their message across to a consumer who is on multiple screens and multiple channels. This is the same person who wants to view traditional media content on the web, doesn’t trust advertising, doesn’t want to be talked at and wants to actively create and share his or her own content rather than passively listening to someone else.

Welcome to the digital reality of 2012 and beyond. Let’s stop for a moment and acknowledge that if the electronic media explosion of a decade ago turned the advertising industry on its head, the digital revolution has gone several strides further and will eventually upend all that we hold to be true in advertising and media.

It’s obvious from our Talking Heads (see page 8) responses this year that advertising agencies in particular have been slow to adapt to these developments. Only 20 ad agency CEOs responded to our questions (we received 34 responses last year; but it was a different topic), of which only 12 offer specialist digital services. Although most agencies are familiar with digital advertising, having done project based work for clients in the past, most are only starting to dedicate resources to the medium. For the most part, the responses tend to reveal that agencies are in unfamiliar and even uncomfortable territory when it comes to digital especially when it means going beyond website development and Facebook.

Sabene Saigol, CEO, Red Communication Arts, stands out from the crowd when she says that “digital requires a very specialised skill set, one that most agencies do not inherently have.”

She goes on to say that digital services must be offered from a “specialised platform, not as one of the services of a mainstream agency.”

Digital vs. full service agency

It’s safe to say that most full service agencies (even those which don’t have a digital wing) don’t share Saigol’s viewpoint or at least they are disinclined to admit it. Within the larger scheme of our annual issue, the debate of whether digital services should be offered by specialist set-ups versus traditional agencies rages on. However while experts may disagree on semantics, they concur that ad agencies need to change their structure and the way they think if they are to have any success with digital media. This doesn’t, however, mean that they see eye to eye on the matter.

For example, Ali A. Rizvi, COO, Interflow Communications (see page 39) is in favour of integrating digital services within the full service agency and calls for “engagement not impressions”, and expresses a realisation of the fact that the power has shifted from brands and agencies to consumers. However, he believes that because agencies have adapted to past changes and successfully incorporated specialist services such as PR, media and design, they will be able to do the same for digital.

Yet, the fact of the matter is that digital media is now changing how PR, media, design, creative and pretty much any other agency service that you can possibly think of should be handled.

This fact has made it necessary for traditional agency people to “upgrade their skills and rewire their mindset,” says Ejaz Asi, Director Planning and Strategy, The Brand Crew (see page 37). In his rather blunt piece, Asi calls traditional creatives who have only worked on TV and print ads, “gardeners compared to airline pilots.”

He also points out the traditional account managers and creatives who don’t keep abreast of new technologies “simply cannot up-skill and refuse to even try.”

Another similar, but perhaps more diplomatically phrased, viewpoint comes from Amin Rammal, Director, The Brand Crew (see page 34) who explains that the digital mindset is very different from a traditional, transactional one.

It is “open, chaotic, and evolving, versus closed, selective and episodic.” All this to say that digital isn’t just another ‘medium’, and it “cannot be based on episodic campaigns which are weaved together under a brand strategy devised and locked for a year.”

Aamir Rauf, Manager, Lowe Digital, disputes these views (see page 36) and asserts that while not all ad agencies have technical expertise, they can acquire it if they are willing to make an investment. He also points out that most new digital agencies “have small tech teams and focus more on social media [creating] the argument that by only focusing on social media, half the digital possibilities for a brand are left off the table.”

So, do brands stand to gain more from digital solutions offered by specialist digital agencies, or are they better off sticking with their current ad agency’s digital offering? The answer will differ depending on whom you ask.

The client view

Eight out of the 10 corporate CEOs in our Talking Heads section say that their company works with a specialised digital agency. This may be an indication of things to come because most of these responses are from top corporations which have always been first-movers in new marketing initiatives. Of particular interest in this regard is Unilever Pakistan’s move to appoint not one, but four digital agencies this year for various different brands. It’s also interesting to note that while three of these agencies are ‘organically’ digital (they started life as digital specialists), one of them (Lowe Digital) is part of a traditional ad agency and has handled various Unilever brands for several years.

More to the point, it’s important to ascertain what clients look for in a digital agency. Five top companies answer the question (see page 57) and their answers show that mere technical expertise isn’t enough to get the job done. While an understanding of digital media is an obvious criterion, corporations are also looking for agencies which are creative and have a grasp on their particular industry.

However, there appears to be a gap between the enormous possibilities offered by the digital medium, and what clients are looking for in a digital agency. None of the responses say anything about expertise in brand building and a deep seated knowledge of consumer behaviour, both of which are crucial to a successful digital brand experience, and are incidentally the mainstay of traditional advertising agencies.

One of the reasons for this may be that for most brands, ‘digital’ still means a presence on Facebook and other social media. As the digital agency heads tell us in our Talking Heads section (see page 16), brands use Facebook because “of the presence of the young,” “it sparks engagement,” and “it has interactive functionality”.

Another, far more likely reason is that like traditional ad agencies, traditional marketers are also trying to come to grips with this new medium and what it can do for their brands, and as is the case with something new and different, not everyone is keen or willing to change.

Future possibilities

Talking to Aurora, Rammal gives a sense of what digital media is capable of when harnessed to its full potential.

“Currently we see digital as a medium for advertising, but in its truest sense it can change marketing, especially in terms of how distribution, supply chain and pricing is handled, because you have the ability to contact people differently and directly.”

Traditional corporations in Pakistan are obviously not there yet, which is expected because as a country we are only starting to understand the concept of being connected and online. However, it is important to understand that going forward, technical expertise and know-how of the digital medium have to be combined with skill and experience in how to build successful and engaging brands. This entails that the entire digital/brand nexus, including corporate marketing teams, digital agencies, traditional agencies and even media buying houses, up-skill to effectively adapt to this changed media environment.

As Rammal points out, when it comes to choosing an agency for digital work, the ideal scenario is to have one which is “organically advertising and tech driven.” What this means is that if advertising agencies are willing to reshape their attitude towards digital marketing and advertising and adopt an ‘open’ mindset, they are probably best placed to be successful in this market.

Regardless of which type of agency corporations eventually opt for, the fact of the matter is that ignoring digital is no longer an option. As the media spend section in our Fact File (see page 113) illustrates, between Rs 500 million (Gallup) to over one billion rupees (Aurora) was spent on digital advertising in FY 2011-12. Although this medium currently only accounts for between one and three percent of total ad spend, as per the predictions of the digital agency heads, growth is expected to be between 20-25% in the current fiscal year. This can mean only one of two things: get digital or pack up and go home.

New skills for a new age

Salman Abedin sets out eight practical steps to make your advertising agency digital ready.

1 Make media planning the central focus of your agency. Before media became the domain of specialist media buying agencies, media used to be the way that advertising agencies made their money and digital media buying allows agencies to come back into the game. Train your media buyers and planners in digital planning and buying.

2 Change the focus from copywriting to content writing. This has two implications; telling stories about a brand is not just about sexy headlines and neat copy, it’s about blogging, writing for websites and creating interesting social media content. Then there is the issue of time. The digital world cannot wait for a copywriter to have an epiphany. Hire people who can think fast. In short, hire journalists.

3 Completely new skills are needed in your studio. Your studio needs to know how to optimise images for internet usage, how to design websites, use CSS and flash and the sizes of mobile applications and how to make simple animations for banners. They need to know which fonts work on the internet and which don’t. An in-house training programme conducted by a professional web designer should be enough to get started.

If the older generation of art directors are not willing to change, the new generation that you hire must be internet enabled.

4 Focus on IT. Your IT department has been sitting around running the network, updating and maintaining your PCs. It is time to upgrade and reposition them. They need to be the focal point of your technology efforts. When you pitch for an application development or a website portal project, you must have the in-house resources to carry these out. Upgrade your IT department to implement CSS, CMS and HTML 5 websites. One solid resource is a good start

5 Think BTL. Think about ways to connect brands to events, memes and current affairs. This requires the thinking skills of an event planner. For example, what are our Eid plans? What is our brand saying to the Pakistan team upon losing to India in the T20 World Cup? This thinking needs to be done by the planning and strategy teams. Train your strategy team in non-strategic ideation or hire BTL planners.

6 As the CEO of a digital enabled agency, you cannot not have a Facebook or a Twitter account. Insist that everyone in the company be online. Get bandwidth allocated so people can access social media and the internet.

7 Does your agency have a website? When was the last time it was updated? Put this on the Critical Things To Do List.

8 Now to the real payoff. Will your company be able to deliver interactive content based on world class ideas of user experience, design and game dynamics? There are agencies which are able to do that (AKQA is my favourite). My suggestion is make this a goal and build towards it.

Salman Abedin is Programme Manager, Masters Programme, Media Sciences, SZABIST. sal.abedin@gmail.com