Strategy or Execution, or both?
posted by Bruce Winterton 
on May 10, 2008 at 01:53 PM
filed under: Agency Collaboration, Strategy, and Process
Bruce Winterton
Partner, President : Boston
topics: Entrepreneurship, The Internet, Alcoholic Beverages, Client Services and Relations, and Rock and Roll
filed under: Agency Collaboration, Strategy, and Process
Such an interesting time in the advertising business. Who should clients rely on for brand strategy? Media strategy? Digital? In the old days, when television advertising was a given it was simple: the ad agency. Today? Well, I guess it depends. It must be tough for clients to decide and to separate strategy from execution. It’s fun to watch.
Subaru recently shifted strategic duties back to an ad agency, Carmichael Lynch, from a digital agency, R/GA. In AdAge CL CEO John Colasanti speaks of weaving digital strategy with execution and the brand campaign. A good argument coming from an ad agency and Carmichael Lynch is an excellent ad agency but wow, what a roller coaster for the client. R/GA are good friends of ours and touts themselves as “The Agency for the Digital Age” ... interesting experiment we are all part of.
Goodby Silverstein and Partners, also very good friends of ours, has done very well positioning themselves as a single point of contact for clients. What makes them so effective is that they don’t try to EXECUTE everything but they do try to ADVISE on everything. They, for example, hire a variety of digital shops to execute their ideas; leveraging specific skills and technology and expertise on a project by project basis. We have worked for them this way many times and it seems like a sounds model. And I would imagine also attractive to clients. Consistent thinking and superior execution at the same time.
That being said, we are sometimes asked to be the primary strategic thinkers and subsequent executors for a brand. All I can say about this work is: “it’s gonna be awesome.”
1 comment
I'm a firm believer in hiring experts in the field (usually agencies, sometimes individuals) with a strong, proven portfolio in what they're doing. Here is some advice I found on hiring digital agencies which I prescribe to -
http://www.demonzmedia.com/DemonzBlog/?p=11
Specifically hiring a digital advertising agency which understands the broader scope of what you're trying to achieve and can put you in contact with experts in the field that they have successfully worked with before. This agency develops the strategy, and then uses their internal people or other digital agencies for the desired execution.