[Adforum Worldwide Summit] Insight into the future

Day six of the Adforum CEO Summit in NYC was an insight into the future today. Meetings with industry-leading digital agencies Huge, R/GA and Digitas reminded us of the pace of change.

Earlier in the week we had met with numerous traditional agencies which had gone back to their origins to find their distinctive philosophy. In most cases, this was refocusing on the creative idea and today executing this with the digital platform front and centre.

The big difference with these specialist digital agencies on Friday, 8 October 2010, is they did not talk about campaign ideas, they talked about platforms for ongoing consumer engagement. It is about building long-term assets and resources that are based in consumer utility or entertainment, used in their daily lives, becoming valuable owned media for the brand and then earned media when they share this with friends, family, colleagues and the world.

The mantra in the digital world is interactive engagement. You can tell someone, which is where traditional advertising resides. You can show someone with demonstrations, which works in traditional and online advertising. But maximum emotional involvement is when you engage someone in letting individuals experience it for themselves and then assist them in sharing that experience with others.

Of course, everyone is talking about creating experiences and not just ads, but the core difference appears to be that the approach to this is fundamentally different between many of the campaign-driven agencies and the digital-platform builders.

On one hand you have a model that develops, launches, builds and then fades, requiring a new campaign and a fresh approach to again build that awareness and engagement. On the other hand, the second approach is an evergreen one with the brands building online platforms that consumers interact with and build in engagement and loyalty.

The first approach continues the consumable, disposable approach of traditional advertising; the second is about building and investing in longer term brand assets. Which one is right? Time will tell, but the digital agencies are ultimately building valuable assets for their clients, not just providing a service.

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