Back in the 80s clients only work with their official appointed agencies and these global agencies continued expanding their service to other below the line and other downstream promotional activities. There were a few attempts to move upstream but largely failed. Then in late 90s during the early days of the Internet clients flocked to new Interactive shops to look for new ideas in digital marketing. AAfter 1-1-2 years many of the first generation of interactive agencies are now part of the OMC/WPP/IPG?Publicis families.
Today, it is funny to see clients are running to small creative hot shops for big ideas again. Not only that, they are also looking for help from digital innovation set-up like us to fill the digital gap. Take Nokia for example. They hired W+K, a mid-size agency with a strong creative reputation, and JWT, the 196-office 100+ year old agency to handle their business globally. W+K set the creative agenda. JWT only need to adapt Wieden's work locally. There must be a lot of egos and territorial issues under this arrangement. Not to say W+K does not have weaknesses, they are a great idea-driven creative hot shop that lacks serious digital capabilities. There is a bigger gap exists for digital strateist to paint a broad picture of how that drives or fits into everything.
This is an example where the big shops are not meeting the needs of their clients despite their size. Increasingly, smaller agencies have increasingly been winning big clients and offering a much more exciting place to work for many. There are more examples such as Addidas hiring Amsterdam based 108 and at the same time uses TBWA as their global agency. LG hiring BH in London and using Y&R globally.
The bigger question the big boys should be asking “Why aren't we doing this stuff?” Does the future belong to small creative hot shops +digital strategy consultants +global media agency?
