These days, we all seem to be in the prediction business. We’re overloaded with fearless futurologists, forecasting a new order for the industry. All those savvy soothsayers, opinion leaders and marketing mavens, offering prophecies and prognoses about the seismic changes and global schisms that are going to disrupt our world. Since bandwagons are for jumping on, we’ll now take a flying leap at the tailgate and offer our own view. But that’s where our adherence to industry convention ends.
"Our adherence to industry convention ends"
Here’s the deal: In the future as in the past, clients are going to demand strategic creativity across all platforms and channels.
No quantum leap there.
So far so familiar.
But here’s what does need to change: the way agencies collaborate with clients to fashion those solutions.
That’s not a prediction plucked from the air, but an insight founded on over two years of ongoing consultations with marketing heads, CMOs, Digital Directors and regular day-to-day clients. The process has given us a very particular understanding of their needs, frustrations and hopes for the future of the client/agency relationship. And it’s not what you might expect.
"Agencies that are too account management-led, driven by rigid processes"
They’ve had it with agencies that are too account management-led, driven by rigid processes; unable to meet the changing needs of the businesses they serve.
We were fortunate to talk to senior C-suite figures, grabbing just enough of their precious their time for them to tell us how overwhelmed they are with stuff to do. From the digitization of the customer journey to the effectiveness of their inbound strategy; trying to figure out the optimum channel mix for their next campaign; analyzing which digital channel, message and creative format will work and why. Seems like they’ve been suffering from another kind of ‘prediction overload’.
And what do you need when you’re overloaded? Some trusted support: which is where your agency (should) come in.
"We believe that problems like this are best solved collaboratively"
We believe that problems like this are best solved collaboratively, working closely, asking the right questions. We see it as an essential part of our role to define briefs and develop solutions that drive business growth – we don’t expect our clients to define the problem for us, and serve us up with a tight little brief so we can just have fun with the fluffy creative and concentrate on polishing our awards submissions.
That’s why, if you had a meeting with Delineo in the last few months, we probably discussed reinventing the way we work together. From leading the development of a business model for a startup to embedding our people within a marketing or tech team to crack big projects within tight deadlines.
The central stanchions of our offer to clients will be partnership and transparency. Adapting and finding ways to draw upon the great strengths within your operations so that we can collaborate on projects and integrate within your businesses.
Ultimately, bringing the relationships closer will yield greater trust in the work we’re doing. There’ll be far less debate around the hours we expended and the thought process that led us to the final output, because you’ll have been closer to the development of the work throughout.
It’s all under the banner: “Define // Deliver”.
Reinventing the way we help clients define their business problem and how we define the solution to that problem. And finding the fastest, most effective, cost effective way to deliver that solution to market, be it a new product, web platform or campaign.
"Embedding into our clients' businesses"
Going forward, our teams will be embedding into our clients’ businesses. And our clients will be joining us in our Arch or through other partnerships. We’ll be creating a shared space, where clients and agency teams come together to create great work that drives businesses growth.
Actually, we already started at the back end of last year – so maybe that’s another way in which tomorrow is going to look a lot like today.
"A challenge to the status quo"
So, forget the airy-fairy predictions about future shocks and paradigm shifts. If you want to talk about a challenge to the status quo that’s happening right now, pop in for a brew.