In a world where digital pervades everything and specialists dominate the marketing field, what’s the glue that holds all the moving pieces together? And where should it come from? Let’s take a moment to pause and reflect.
- Marketing Week columnist Helen Edwards recently took a few swings at “digital-first” agencies.
- Her argument: these agencies are inherently “downstream” specialists who wouldn’t know a big idea from a bot. So—for heaven’s sake—don’t put them in the driver’s seat of your next big campaign.
- Before reading a word, we got a little hung up on the title.
- First there’s the “d-word”. Five years ago, Tom Goodwin argued quite convincingly that the word “digital” had outgrown its usefulness: “We’ve become obsessed with the pipe, when for people it’s irrelevant.” And yet … here we are.
- Then there’s the framing of digital as a “discipline”. We’d argue (and we think many would agree) that a lot of distinct disciplines could live under that broad umbrella: Direct Response Advertising, UX, SEO, SEM, Content, Social, Automation, Data, Email, Measurement etc.
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