While I agree with the suggestion that the traditional approach to creativity and production used by creative agencies is becoming more and more outdated, I don’t see the death knell for creative agencies being around the corner.
The majority of forward-thinking agencies we deal with realise the need to adapt to meet the changing needs of their brand clients, who in turn are responding to the evolving media landscape and media consumption of their consumers.
More and more video is being placed front and centre but the creative and production models of the past, made to produce a few big ads each year, just aren’t aligned with the need to quickly and affordably produce much larger volumes of shorter video content.
Brands will always need agency partners to design, plan and execute consistent and effective brand and advertising campaigns and it’s crucial to success that any content initiatives are part of an integrated and strategic approach.
Like Mr. Jones we advocate the need for new models for creative idea generation and video content production – but we partner with agencies to provide them with a full technology solution so they can offer brand clients a more agile approach to content generation, rather than disintermediating agencies from the process.
While we both offer services to help brands generate a lot more quality video content for lower budgets, we do 90% of our work for brands via agencies instead of direct with brands.
Although we provide a video content solution to some brands direct, what we often see from content initiatives outside the broader strategy is video content that may look beautiful, but that ultimately dies a slow death online with dozens or hundreds of views.
Integration with the broader advertising strategy that often the agency is leading is critical to success.
The agencies that work with us are looking to help transform their businesses and instantly extend their creative and production resources so that they can offer a more agile way of providing content to their clients.
We are seeing a growing recognition at the most senior levels of the biggest agency networks that the traditional agency and production company model, used predominately for the creation of TV spots in the past, is too slow and expensive for the content needs of today.
There is also a corresponding desire to adapt quickly before their clients go elsewhere or, for those who have already noted that trend, particularly with respect to social and online video content, to win them back with a new service offering.
There is a huge amount of transformation happening just around the corner and while those most willing to adapt will ultimately be the most successful, it would be very unlikely that they will go the way of the dinosaur.
Mick Entwisle is the CEO and founder of Genero
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