We've been thinking about our last post on how nearly half of CMOs are about to fire their current ad agency. Why? Could be the economy; could be the fact that most chief marketing execs last only 2 years, so mathematically about half are new anyway and probably looking to build their own team.
And then we saw Adweek had an interesting nugget: the first agency on the chopping block is typically the web design group. Egad. Why would 45% of CMOs consider whacking the interactive brains first?
We think that there's one simple reason ... many interactive shops, despite their talk and analysis about the trends in the market, are focused more on the web product and less on the web strategy. Interactive agencies grew up designing cool sites, and they still love to do so. And in 2008, single sites matter less and less.
The great irony of web shops is they focus, well, on web design -- and single sites are becoming obsolete. Back in 1996, a good web site sought to be sticky and create careful pathways to keep customers within your web site pen. But today, the customer cows have broken through the fence and are out in the neighbor farm fields, on mobile and Facebooks and Twitter and texting and Second Life and blogging and YouTube and Seesmic. There's a lot of new hay out there, and the cows ain't coming back.
The solution is for marketing executives to get better results, and for interactive agencies to offer more comprehensive service. It's good to have pretty HTML, boys. But if you can't cast a broad web strategy that drives in new customers at higher profits, using keyword search and ad networks and microsites and a constellation of pull behind the HTML, there's probably a new interactive agency getting an RFP tomorrow who can.
0 comments:
Post a Comment