McCann Copenhagen have been winning a lot of pitches lately. It’s a re-emergence that has coincided with its partnership with Bandit – a decidedly atypical research consultancy helmed by Brit Rob Scotland and Dane Christian Grubert.

In their own words Bandit is ‘two guys with laptops and big mouths and partly unified thoughts’. A more accurate description can be found on their Facebook page… ‘an organisation that is hell-bent on understanding target audiences, developing business strategies that resonate with them and delivering meaningful and successful brand experiences’.

We’ve been digging deeper into both Bandit and its fledgling partnership with McCann.

> > > > >

What exactly is Bandit?

Christian: Our official title is strategic consultants but at least 50% of what we do is disagreeing – telling clients what they’re doing wrong and steering them in the right direction.

Rob: Bandit is an extension of our worldview. I’ve been a DJ, an American football coach, I’ve done gang outreach while Christian has been a music journalist, he’s worked at agencies and he DJs.

That life experience means we’re closer to the real world than most ad execs. Essentially, we’re a conduit.

Tell me more about your offering – what’s your pitch?

Christian: The pitch at the very beginning was pitiful. We didn’t have a clear business idea – we knew that we didn’t like what was happening in advertising. We knew that most of what was being communicated to people like us was plain wrong but we didn’t know much more than that.

Rob: Our blog helped us to formulate our thinking and gave us a bit of discipline. So we went from knowing what we didn’t like, to looking at the why and the how to fix it. We’ve gathered a network of about 6,000 people all over the world and they are our validating network – it bolsters our thinking, validates our opinions. The network is crucial to what we do.

Christian: Initially we helped agencies gather insights. We made consumer research movies, and had a role jumpstarting agency-client relationships. For the agencies, leveraging that insight through a third party was an effective way of getting to the truth while maintaining the political correctness of most agency-client relationships.

What would you call what you do – qualitative or quantitative research, something else entirely?

Rob: We’re careful about what we call it – a lot of research is post-rational but what we’re doing with our network is getting info that helps us understand where things are going and what might happen, so in that sense it’s a lot softer. We’re trying to decode what people are saying – a lot of people can’t express precisely what they do or don’t like so we have to fill in the gaps. A 13-year-old won’t have the same broad historical perspective of a brand like Nike – the way they engage with them and the way they perceive the brand is profoundly different to someone of our age.

Christian: We call it search – a lot of research is looking back but we’re very firmly focused on the future.

Sounds like there’s something of an overlap with trend analysis. It also sounds like there’s two services there – you’re helping brands and agencies get a handle on the way the world is and where things are going, and also giving them a snapshot of what people think about them or their product right now and why they think that…

Rob: Yep, we know it’s a muddy kind of space and we’re going to try and formalise this but basically we’re helping a brand get a better handle on what people think about them.

So what do you guys think about social media monitoring and similar services?

Rob: Bullshit. Everyone is looking for the golden metric. There are the traditional metrics; the relationship between advertising and the film and TV industry dependent on ratings – newspapers and circulation figures. It feels desperate, because there is a flawed understanding at board level of how social media really works from the point of view of those using it.

Christian: YouTube views aren’t accurate – a Facebook Like doesn’t give an indication of why somebody likes something. You can’t measure why you, me or Rob like something.

So maybe what you do is something in between hard numbers and providing true insights…

Rob: I use the analogy of a Quarterback’s pass completion rate… if it’s 65%, then the assumption is that 35 passes weren’t completed. But until recently nobody was looking at why those 35 passes weren’t completed – did he do what he was supposed to, did the receiver, was the weather bad, what score was it in the game and so on? That’s what we’re trying to get people to realise and help them to weigh the uncertainties and the variables. It’s tough.

Christian: It’s such a hard sell to corporations. They’re so used to focus groups – ten people in a room saying yes, no, maybe. But how do you measure all the stuff around it – it’s almost impossible.

What else do you think about focus groups? What is it about your research that is more accurate than what a brand can learn from a focus group?

Christian: The reason I think what we do works better is because it starts with a personal connection. Trust is implicit in the way our network has developed. It’s always been personal recommendations, somebody suggesting that we should talk to so and so. That trust is a great starting point. If you come into a room and sit with a bunch of strangers, it’s unknown territory. You have to find your place in the group and then there’s a moderator – the whole dynamic is unnatural.

Rob: I think our curiosity is such that people are receptive to us. We are not judgemental in the slightest – we genuinely just want to know what you think.

So how do you actually carry out the research with your network? Mass surveys, more tailored groups, one to one interviews?

Rob: When we first started it was just us asking friends and friends of friends. The way we’ve evolved is just scale – thanks to the Internet we can reach a lot more people, whether it’s through email, Facebook or Twitter etc. Working remotely like that is interesting because it lets people respond in their own way.

I can leave something with them and whenever they’re ready and whenever it’s convenient for them they respond.

Are you stronger in any particular market or categories?

Rob: I think we’ve been lucky in that sense – the world is becoming more homogenous. Semiotically and visually, if I wear a certain pair of shoes, wherever I am in the world it will say the same thing to the same types of people. But our DNA is in FMCG and the youth segment.

So how did the McCann move come about and how is that working out?

Christian: We knew Morten Ingemann the CEO when he was still at BBDO and when he made the move here we got in touch with him. We started working on one project and the world just exploded for us.

It’s been ten months now. The first six months was taking a chance – we covered our costs and that was about it but the past four months have been super-busy.

Rob: I think, essentially, we matured. Or rather our business offering matured. We went from offering research to consulting on what to do with that research so now we’re a lot more involved in the creative process of any given campaign or repositioning or whatever.

We stood out at the beginning because of our honesty.

Christian: I think Morten realised that he needed to somehow get clients to wake up and smell the coffee and that’s basically our specialty. We didn’t care if the client acted on the information, we just told them how it was.

Rob: Morten has been very brave I think in terms of putting us in front of clients. How do you tell someone their mother’s ugly? It’s not easy but we don’t shy away from giving a brand manager the truth as we see it.

Christian: He’s also been very adamant that we don’t become agency people in the traditional sense of the word. He knows that our distance is part of what makes us valuable to him.

Rob: The chemistry has just been right – a very progressive and ambitious CEO, us wanting to work for ourselves and some very brave clients. There’s so much mediocre communication and consulting out there so, in all honesty, it’s not hard to stand out. The proof is in the pudding and McCann hasn’t lost a single pitch that we’ve been involved in.

So, lastly, just tell me about a typical process.

Christian: Morten comes back from a meeting and says, ‘fuck, I need to do this or that.’ We then look at the pitch document, usually try and reshape it. Send it back to the potential client who usually agrees. Then we go away and start thinking about a strategy, either with Morten or other people here in McCann. We then test the thinking with our network and then take it to the client. Then we sit down and create a brief together with the team here. We then dip in and out of the creative process and offer a bit of help.

And where next?

Rob: The next step for us is not overshooting ourselves. It’s been a whirlwind and we’ve been doing roles we’re not used to doing and maybe we need to step back and formalise things. Consolidation basically. It’s great to be playing a role within an agency that’s re-emerging like McCann Copenhagen and really going places.

We follow a lot of agencies on Twitter and most leave us a little cold with their use of the medium. Too much self-promotion and cliquery are the main faults, while many agencies also neglect or are unable to inject any personality into their stream. Gin Lane is different, though, and we’ve been drawn to their humble and earnest approach since we encountered them. The fact that they’re pumping out some awesome work for some excellent clients also helps. We had a transatlantic email session with founder Emmett Shine to find out more.

> > > >

I’m intrigued by your ‘Story’ text on your site. Can you tell me a little more about your beginnings?

Gin Lane was born out of an idea and collective of freelancers at the beginning of the recession. Starting the business during trying times when almost no one had budgets or could spend, forced us to think “high concept, low cost.” This led us to gravitate towards Digital. We love digital because of the explosive talent, creativity, innovation and democracy of who you work with. You can also get great results for your client at a fraction of a traditional media spend. We still emphasize digital, but specialize in curation of content, interaction, and positioning.

You list a pretty comprehensive array of competences – in that sense do you consider Gin Lane to be a full service agency?

We are a full-service agency. We work with global brands, and we work with friends. We offer different competencies for execution because we take each relationship differently. The start of any good partnership is good thinking and communication. If you are well organized and have clarity in your thinking, you can be multi-disciplinary in your actions.

Has your story been more about evolution or did you have a pretty clear idea about the kind of agency you wanted to be from the beginning?

My background was in clothing, photography and design. Doing our own business taught me smart practices of marketing and communication on shoestring budgets. I thought to myself that I could significantly contribute to a brand’s success even with a minimal budget. Not just any brands but ones that were passionate, cared about their community and products. That was basically the reason I started Gin Lane.

Can you tell me more about what you mean by Gin Lane being the place where commerce meets culture…

Gin Lane intersects culture and commerce through our portfolio which is a mix of global brands, contemporary artists, start-ups, media companies and cultural influencers we admire.

Do you have talent mostly in-house or do you collaborate with other agencies and/or freelancers?

Gin Lane has an small in-house dynamic team for account management, design, interactive, development, strategy and mobile. We have a close network we work with of specialists – some in New York and others are around the world. We don’t discriminate on location! We have specialists on our team in 5 continents.

Maybe you could talk me through a recent piece of work? What’s your process like?

A recent project we put online is the adidas by Stella McCartney microsite for Spring Summer 2011. It’s a unique collaboration between a high-end fashion label and a global performance company. We have to wear different hats to toggle between the London-based Stella McCartney house and the German/Amsterdam based adidas brand. The project is exciting because of how forward-thinking Stella’s team is with the creative and how professionally adidas is run. A large part of our job is translating and understanding both companies’ goals and implicit needs. We are moving towards a more interactive experience online and the photo/video shoots are always exciting.

What’s your take on the ‘ad industry’ today? Do you see any fundamental changes in the way agencies are working? (i guess what I’m getting at here is how you guys interpret the debate around whether agencies are retooling in the right ways to connect with more empowered, media-savvy consumers.)

I love dealing with people who are passionate. You can be a carpenter, a bike-maker, a front-end developer, a mobile app developer, or a restauranteur. Whatever you are passionate about. If someone is passionate, cares about their craft and their industry, it’s exciting being able to collaborate with them.

A pro and con of what we do is we are a service-based business. Our “product” is us. It’s not a hyper-scalable model like a digital app that can be downloaded or used by millions instantaneously. However, what is extremely rewarding is getting to personally interact with talented, creative, exciting passionate individuals from around the world. It’s like flowing water – always new ideas, thoughts and innovations.

That being said I think “marketing” and “advertising” can be dirty and shallow if their is no soul or passion. However, if there is a desire to do something fun, get people involved, evoke senses and push boundaries, then it’s great. We try our best at Gin Lane to think about what we do, and make it engaging.

In what way do you think Gin Lane stands out from other independents?

Man there is so much talent out there. It’s exciting. I am blown away every day on Twitter and online by the work we see other people doing. I support it. We are all a 1% of 1%. There is enough opportunity for everyone to go around. Support your peers, focus on your craft and you will be alright.

A few things that help Gin Lane stand out are:
We are pragmatic and realistic. We are not doing fades, transitions, colors, fonts or strategies to make ourselves look cool or to show off. We want to help a collaborator achieve their goals. Show their products, their brand, their message in an efficient, fun, easy to digest manner. Add in some tricks and winks to the hard-core audience but don’t muddle the message.

Additionally, I think we can speak well with brands regardless of size or scope. We have worked with some amazing Fortune 500 CEOs and some brands you may never hear of. We care about the details and the process the same for a business card’s weight to a multi-national roll out.

As some of you know, Agency Future began with a grant from the Danish Association of Advertising Agencies. The only condition of the grant was that I present my findings at the end of the year.

Well, I recently gave that presentation. This, in a much condensed form, is that very same presentation. I’ve attempted to give a very brief overview of the main trends that are driving the evolution of the creative agency. It concludes with what I see as the key agency behaviours that mark out the new breed of bureau – socially engaged, agile, born collaborators, relentlessly curious and tech-savvy.

Enjoy.

Dentsu London opened its doors earlier this year, becoming the Japanese behemoth’s first creatively independent European outpost in the process. I asked strategy director Beeker Northam about the agency’s vision and the goals behind its ongoing Making Future Magic philosophy.

> > > > >

Not much is known about Dentsu in Europe. Can you tell us a little about the agency’s history and culture?

Dentsu is a superpower in Asia, with a really unusual position that straddles media ownership, buying and strategy, as well as creative communications and advertising.  Most people over here know it from their work with Uniqlo.

The Tokyo mothership is a monster skyscraper with its own subway station out of which 5000 people rise every morning for work. Dentsu started as a telegraph and news service over 100 years ago, growing up during the 20th century firstly as a media force – especially in newspapers – and then latterly as a creative entity.  The culture there is extraordinary.  They hire the best graduates every year, giving the brightest, fittest and most eccentric of thinkers and makers a professional home for life.  Its size and history, and the nature of its people and relationships make it one of the most adaptable, intriguing agency models I’ve seen.

In Europe Dentsu is still in its infancy, and has never – until Dentsu London – started an agency with the intention of it being a creatively independent flagship.  The model doesn’t directly translate, lacking the local relevance, longevity and power Dentsu enjoys in Asia.  So we’ve been able to start from scratch.

What’s the history of the London office?

Dentsu London opened its doors in April 2010 when we moved into the Hills Place spaceship, so it’s a short history!  We’ve had a clean slate, so really the job facing us has been about defining what we think the most progressive, exciting place in the market is for us in London; the kind of work we want to make, and the kind of collective we want to be.  It’s been a good first few months, full of interesting work and new people.

And a little about yourself?

I look after creative strategy for Dentsu London, its clients, and its partnerships.  I’m named after a muppet.

The Making Future Magic project really came alive with the recent collaborations with BERG. What are the goals of the project?

Thank you!  Making Future Magic is an idea that was born with Dentsu London at the beginning of the year.  It’s there mostly to guide whatever we make.  As a strategy, it aims to make creative work that is contributory and sensible to its culture and environment; to be exploratory and sensitive with regard to materials and media; to wonder what magical visions (as opposed to the familiar dystopias) of the future of media might look like; and to find new creative business models.

To help bring Making Future Magic to life for ourselves and other people and make it tangible, we started a series of collaborations with different partners.  The first was a set of typographic explorations with ten different illustrators we admire.  The next one was a set of films with Berg, of which iPad light painting was the first.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

In what ways is Dentsu London trying to benefit from the project?

Making Future Magic is a philosophy more than a project, and the series of collaborations are ways of us expressing the beliefs behind the words in tangible, practical form.

Lots of awesome stuff has sprouted from the light painting film, including us making and selling Penki, a light painting app using the same technique.  We’re also selling a book of stills from the film through Blurb, and the soundtrack on iTunes.  Whilst those things were all ad hoc rather than designed from the beginning, everyone involved in the collaboration has benefitted beyond its original intention through these offshoots.  Good projects and collaborations take on a life of their own in that way.

Agency collaboration seems to be pointing toward some future best practises. What’s your take?

Collaboration is one of those words everyone uses.  You sort of have to say you do it.  Mostly with agencies though it’s to do with another word, Integration, and it’s about proving to clients you can work well with other agencies on the roster.

We use the word a lot as an agency, because there isn’t really a better one, but so far it’s been about working with people outside the advertising industry.  If we want to be unconfined in our explorations of different media, we have to collaborate and find the specialists in order to make stuff that deserves a place in the world, which doesn’t just add to the cultural landfill.  We can’t have the best ceramicists, architects, coders and copywriters all under one roof.

What we’re trying to build instead is a group of people who can collaborate in ways the industry isn’t used to: knowing how to conceive of collaborative projects in the first place and set the conditions for success; knowing how to find the best specialists to work with in the first place; being able to shape projects around common goals and interests and cultivate proper working relationships; and finally being able in a practical sense to make all that happen.  It’s a massive challenge, and the individuals who can do all that are gold dust.  But I think it’s crucial.

How do you see the agency landscape right now? Are we too focused on the digital/traditional divide?

I’m not that well up on ad agencies any more, as I think we’re moving away from that model.  But yes I think the obsession with media distinctions is still going strong.  Most agencies that exist now grew up defining themselves by a channel of one sort or another.  In a way I think that’s fair enough – and awesome to specialise in something.  But I also think on its own, media is the least interesting thing you can use to define yourself or your point of being now.  Confining at best, obtuse at worst.

The digital/traditional distinction is based around client budgets and departments, not the way people experience the world.  And it doesn’t actually exist, outside agencies.  Everything is digital, and nothing is entirely digital – it’s not a choice any more – so it was something we wanted to free ourselves from as a label right from the beginning.

Any agencies you think are well-placed to cope with the disruptive forces we’re seeing right now?

The most exciting forces at the moment aren’t agencies (or wouldn’t call themselves that).  They’re designers (of experience, product, media), inventors, coders.  Agencies are brilliant at systems and service.  Not so brilliant at leading the way through the times you mention (so far).

I tend to think of it as the most exciting and precious of times now, rather than disruptive – as largely the disruption is to the agency model, which is no bad thing.  The opportunities are more, and more golden than ever.

> > > > >

Dentsu London on Twitter.

Beeker on Twitter.

Antidote is committed to ‘creating communication ideas that gain momentum in the real world’. It’s a principle that has manifested itself in brand-building successes such as Rapha’s pop-up cycle cafes in New York and London, and the massive-selling ‘Change the World for a Fiver‘ book for We Are What We Do.

I met with Managing Partner Henry Chilcott to learn more about the five-year-old agency and we followed up our meeting with an email exchange, which is what you see here.

> > > > >

What was the thinking behind Antidote?

The exciting thing about our industry is that it exposes us to a multitude of different businesses and business models. You can learn a lot if you listen – it’s an industry that should feed and encourage curiosity and open-mindedness.

Yet, though no two business challenges are ever the same, the vast majority of solutions that come out of advertising agencies are advertising shaped. Given the talent in our industry, that’s just weird – brilliant strategic and creative minds dancing on a pinhead.

So Antidote was created to be an antidote to this approach. Of course advertising can be part of the answer but it’s never where we start. We find this allows our conversations with clients to be more real, more ambitious and more rewarding.

What did the founders feel was lacking in a traditional agency’s offering that they thought they could deliver?

Freedom to apply creative thinking to our client’s businesses, as opposed to simply their advertising.

Do you have beliefs or a philosophy? Can you outline it…

The more open-minded you are with your creativity, the more likely you’ll get to a breakthrough communications idea.

We also have a theory that the ability to buy audiences through paying a third party for media space has made agencies lazy. It’s why there’s so much average stuff out there. Therefore we always aim to create communications that can gain momentum in the real world – ie. stuff that people want in their lives.

What’s your take on agencies’ efforts to meet the challenges of the disruption brought about by the internet?

As with any communication, the challenge is to ensure we’re creating stuff for the right reasons – ie. truly answering (or creating) a consumer desire or need. The internet and the technology that connects us to it has opened a billion opportunities.

The problem is that (often) a low barrier to entry means few brands stop to consider properly when they should be there and, more importantly, in what form.

Strip it down and the internet serves a basic human desire – it connects us to stuff. But, it also offers us more control than ever before. So the challenge is to create ideas that people want to connect to, ideas that enhance lives.

Enhance is a good word – and one that’s often ignored – which is why there are so many ghost-town websites littering the web.

Made By Many have a great expression (which nicely sums up how the web should be used)  – they ‘make stuff out of the internet’. I like the inference of this – they don’t place stuff on the internet (in the loose hope that people will interact) they harness its power, sometimes twisting it out of its frame, and create products and services that engage and excite. The success of any digital campaign is its ability to draw in, curate (and sometimes monetize) a community – to do this you need to build stuff that has value to that community.

How do you see Antidote evolving?

In two ways:

-      More joint ventures – something we call The New IP – or ‘Intellectual Partnerships’ with our clients. Shared risk and shared reward will always lead to a more balanced relationship.

-      Scaling up what we already do whilst staying true to our philosophy (the toughest challenge we face as a business.)

What would you say differentiates you from other similar-sized agencies?

We have a philosophy and approach that we’ve stuck to. This means we can genuinely back it up through our body of work.

> > > > >

Crowdsourcing agencies, virtual agencies and collectives – the agency landscape is seeing a major shift towards collaborative networks. Flexibility, scale and greater creative muscle are often touted as the advantages. Mill Co, from the UK, are one of the latest to enter the fray. We sent some Qs to co-founders Claire Martin and Liz Birkbeck.

> > > > >

Agency Future - What was the thinking behind Mill Co?

Mill Co - Mill Co. is a virtual network of freelance and independent creatives. Quite simply, we saw a gap in the market for a virtual agency that managed freelance creatives,  leaving them free to get on with being the creative and not having to worry about dealing with the client. We have always been natural connectors with a wealth of contacts in the creative world so Mill Co. seemed very natural for us.

Agency Future - How would you describe your model?

Mill Co - Mill Co.  is a virtual community of creative freelance,  independent artists and designers spanning many disciplines. We showcase a plethora of creative talent through our site, blog and store and work with clients/brands by creating  bespoke teams for their brief or project.  No two teams are the same, meaning the client gets the right person for each aspect of their project every time.  Mill Co. project manage every aspect of each project and charge both the client and the creative a small percentage each.

Agency Future - Can you tell us briefly about your backgrounds?

Mill Co – Claire Martin moved to London after working for Manchester’s Grand Central Records. She was Marketing Coordinator for Topshop for three years and marketing manager for Wrangler Europe for two. Claire also managed events, marketing, web and creative projects for Surgery PR working along side designers such as Katharine Hamnett and Henrik Vibskov among many others.

Liz Birkbeck founded Bubble, Manchester’s pioneering online and moving image agency that has over ten years experience working with clients such as Sony, (SCEE, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) JD Sports Fashion plc, BBC, Urban Splash and Argent Group plc

Agency Future – This project is trying to gather perspectives on where our industry is heading. What are your thoughts? Do you see agencies changing fast enough to stay relevant?

Mill Co – I think it’s safe to say that the industry and agencies in general are already becoming more modular. I think they employ fewer full time staff and rely more on freelancers.

Agencies have always outsourced and used freelancers on projects but would often mask the fact.  Mill Co. feel that using bespoke teams for each project is a huge bonus and should be seen as a positive element of the project, not something to be hidden from the client.  We are also very keen on transparency which is something else that the industry will probably move towards.  Clients have smaller budgets now and want to see where their money is being spent…

Agency Future – Can you talk us through a typical project?

Mill Co – We are currently working very closely with Canterbury NZ who came to us looking for a new direction for their brand which started with their stand for fashion trade show Bread & Butter 2010.

We began by asking NoChintz to create the stand which was so successful the concept is now being rolled out internationally across all of Canterbury’s stores.

We then began work on their AW sport and lifestyle shoot and we chose to work with creative director and stylist Georgina Hodson (Arena/Arena Homme Plus) and photographer Ben McDade who has worked with Juergen Teller & Nick Knight and the result was an incredibly fresh campaign which has helped re-position Canterbury as a much more aspirational lifestyle brand.  Canterbury have now asked us to shoot their SS11 campaign, we have designed their new website & look book and are currently working on an experiential consumer event for them. Each of these projects uses carefully hand picked members of the Mill Co community that we know are right for the brand and the project.

Agency Future – What’s been the reaction from clients?

Mill Co – So far very positive. Clients like to feel that they are being given the best creative person for their project, they like the bespoke element and the fact that they can hand over the whole project to The Mill Co. team and know it will be delivered on time and on budget. Canterbury are really pleased with the results and service they are receiving and hence keep asking us to do more and more for them.

> > > > >

Mill Co on Twitter and Facebook.

When I started this project I asked people which agencies they thought I should profile. Many immediately proposed Anomaly. Founded in 2004, they pioneered the notion of agency IPs and today, with rapidly growing offices in New York and London, their agnostic, media-neutral approach continues to set them apart. I met with co-founder Johnny Vulkan in New York to learn more.

> > > > >

Agency Future – Can you tell me about Anomaly, how it came into being?

Johnny – It started with a few people who were essentially all marketing refugees. The core was and is creative thinking.

I think a lot of us had become frustrated with the environments we were in. In my case I was in an advertising agency. One day the realisation came that we had 200 people in a building killing themselves to produce a bad short movie that wasn’t going to be the answer to the client’s problem.

Clients would come in with a product and a proposition and more and more I was thinking that the answer was not advertising. The answer might be distribution, it might be pricing, it might be design, or a whole new way to think about the category. But it’s not going to be an advertising answer. But the incentives of being an ad agency meant that we were paid to do the wrong thing for the client.

Clients would come in with a product and a proposition and more and more I was thinking that the answer was not advertising.

Anomaly was created with the prime aim of asking the right questions and then finding the answer to those questions. Typically a project starts with a client or potential business partner coming in and telling us about their business and us trying to work out what the real question is, seeing if they agree with the re-framed question and then figuring out how we’re going to answer it. And that can involve in-house resources or outside. A big part of our business involves collaborating with trusted partners – we have a big rolodex!

If you go back in time a while, there was a feeling that the ad agency was somehow seeking to control the other components in the marketing mix and now we feel that there’s a more democratic feeling and if we dominate at all, it’s through having clarity of thought rather than any assumed position of superiority.

What we’re good at is setting clear visions for our clients and rallying around to deliver on that vision creatively.

Agency Future – That maybe begs the question, are you more of a consultancy than you are an ad agency?

Johnny – We’re definitely not an advertising agency but we do make a lot of advertising. We have some of the behaviours of a consultancy but I wouldn’t put us in the category of a McKinsey. At the risk of sounding vacuous, we’re in the business of honest answers.

We have a lot of the same core skills that an ad agency would have in terms of strategic thinkers and planners who can look at a market but without any assumptions about what our end product might be. So we try and understand what’s going on in that marketplace, try and work out where the opportunities might lie and then where we instinctively would attack the problem. And that may include advertising and it may not.

We’re never going to go as deep as a consultancy and we might have less ability to create metrics but we are very conscious of the need to go beyond the ‘hey, wouldn’t this be a cool idea’ mentality. We’re much more serious marketers than most ad agencies would consider themselves and we are genuinely interested in all aspects of marketing and not just communication.

If anything, we’re more like a client in that we’re more cognisant of the wider market issues, fluctuations in raw material prices, changing distribution dynamics and so on, and not just what the competitors are advertising. So we look at what’s happening in the marketplace at large.

Agency Future – So do you get briefs in the traditional sense or do potential clients come in and say ‘we’d like to work with you’?

Johnny – We do get briefs but it’s more the latter. We get briefs from existing clients but the way a relationship typically begins – and the way we prefer to work – is that somebody comes in who’s maybe heard of us as this unusual entity and we just sit down and have a conversation

So when that happens we usually have a wide variety of people in the room representing different disciplines, maybe a digital thinker, a design guy, somebody with an ad background, and we’ll listen and we’ll all hear a slightly different version of the story the person’s been telling and then at the end of it we’ll have a very open discussion. Quite often it’s during that discussion that the beginnings of where the answer might lie begins to surface. So it’s not rocket science, it’s simply having an open discussion with questions coming from a variety of angles, and usually the client goes away having had one of the most interesting discussions about their business that they’ve had for a long time.

Sometimes the person will want to engage us but not know exactly how and at this point in our lifecycle we don’t spend too much time trying to make it work. But in other cases they’ll have a clear view on where they think we should start and we’ve become quite good at turning those conversations into lasting relationships.

Agency Future – Have you tried to define your model?

Johnny – We’ve done everything we can to avoid defining the model. One of the reasons for the name is that it gives us the luxury of not having to! If I was forced to encapsulate us I would say ‘really creative thinking applied to business problems’, and that manifests in any number of ways. There is a pro and con to that – the pro being the diversity of projects we get to tackle and the downside is that it’s hard to  build a system that makes it easier for us to work.

We don’t have standard answers, we don’t work in set timeframes, and that kind of ambiguity can also make scaling a challenge. We’re working out what processes we can apply – trying to find out what known, repeatable givens there are.

So maybe growth for us is not about growing one office to several hundred people, but opening similar-sized offices in other cities, which is what we’ve done with London. With success comes a kind of organic push for scale and we just need to be cautious. Which is partly why we hired Karina Wilsher as our president – to help provide that structural rigour and see where we can find efficiencies.

Agency Future – What kind of skill-sets do you have in-house?

Johnny – The overriding attribute we look for is curiosity. Most of the disciplines we have would feel familiar to people in the creative industries. Design and advertising are probably the two biggest backgrounds that we grab people from. We have a lot of digital thinkers and doers. And of course digital knowhow is a mandatory now for people coming in.

We don’t have people who can go deep on distribution but our people are smart enough to know their limitations. We’re aware now of what’s involved in retooling a line and so on so we don’t make those suggestions lightly. But if the solution lies in that direction we’ll work further and further within the organisation to get to the right answer.

Because we’ve not walked through a door called advertising, it entitles us to have other conversations that aren’t just about advertising. To earn that right, you have to have the client’s best interests at heart and you can’t be thinking about what’s right for you. Not having a vested interest in making an ad in other words. If they disagree with us then so be it.

Because we’ve not walked through a door called advertising, it entitles us to have other conversations that aren’t just about advertising.

One of the things we discovered early on was that we’d get hired by people at the top of an organisation and be asked to work with people in the middle of an organisation. That didn’t always work out because the people at the top wanted change and the people in the middle lived in a very pragmatic world and were not incentivized enough to take the risk. If last year they did a poster campaign, this year they’d see their yardstick as a better poster campaign. Not a different way of working that requires pushing themselves. Simply because they’re not paid enough to do that.

Agency Future – What’s your thinking around social media? What sort of things are you advising clients?

Johnny – Business is not driven by what’s academically interesting but by what gets done. One of the problems about social media is that there is a lot of commentary and excitement, but unless it can turn into actions that drive business, all you’re left with is the commentary.

We’re still at that point where the stuff at the bleeding edge of the conversation is of academic interest but not suited to practical application. We first talked to foursquare when it was four people and a few thousand users. We saw the potential but knew it would be too early for most of our clients. Now, if you’re in foursquare you’re doing it for the PR value of being on foursquare.

I think it will become a very powerful platform for marketers but that will be as a result of the data collected as opposed to the entertainment value of checking in and so on.

Now it’s reached the size it has, it’s getting interesting for our clients. But it wasn’t when we first heard about it. The fun conversation to have with a social media expert is about what’s new but the conversation that needs to happen is ‘what can be applied that can have an impact on my business’ because you can only get so far doing cool things to get headlines. You have to drive two million iPads a month, millions of cans of soft drinks and so on. That doesn’t yet happen with social media. Of course those things can accumulate but you still have to know how to turn on the big taps.

What we advise varies from client to client. There are certain categories where it makes a lot of sense. We do a lot of work with Umbro and they’re doing some great work in social media. Our role is a kind of editorial advisor, suggesting different story arcs. A lot of social media is best used around customer service – by having a lot of people on Twitter diffusing situations, Comcast is turning around perception of that brand. But many organisations are reluctant to admit that customer service is now starting to become a marketing function.

If I could get the CEO of Converse to meet every potential customer we wouldn’t need to do any marketing – he’s such an amazing evangelist for the brand. That’s impossible but with social media we can have a conversation with a lot of those people. Their Facebook community is now up to almost ten million people across two groups, making it the fourth largest brand on there and they have to feel comfortable dealing with that many people.

Our role is to supplement and encourage what they’re already doing. So we’ve done a content calendar for the year, and provided a kind of structure.
Looking around at what’s being offered in that space, I’d venture that some digital agencies are now becoming as siloed as traditional agencies have been accused of. The answer is not always digital, the answer is not always social media. The answer is what drives business.

We understand social media, crowdsourcing, digital behaviours and we can activate them where appropriate.

Agency Future – But I see you in some ways as sharing some of the principles of a crowdsourcing agency. If you lack PR competencies in-house, then you work with a preferred partner…

Johnny – I think what’s happening there is new language being put on old behaviours. If you look at the way a TVC was produced, you’d choose who you think would best execute the vision you had and they’d rarely be in-house. So yes, maybe we’re working with bigger rolodexes these days. That said, the means of production have become a lot cheaper so we can produce a lot in-house. But if we decide that we need a big, epic, expensive film to solve the problem then that’s what we’ll do.

The interesting thing about Old Spice is that it’s not just a digital success, it’s a successful marketing idea. The character was premiered on a TVC. You establish the persona and that allows you to leverage digital media. However many views we’re up to now (this interview was conducted in late July), 20 million maybe, that’s still less than the number of people that saw the initial commercial. So neither is better – they work well together, and that’s what’s important.

This is a good sign for the so-called traditional agencies, if they can pull it off. And actually if you look at some of the hires – Iain Tait going to Wieden + Kennedy from Poke for example – they are adapting. The other point here is that big clients don’t want their big agencies to fail. If you’re a P&G, a Unilever, a Nestle, you’ve reached a certain scale in your operations and with your agencies that means you can activate things globally in an efficient and co-ordinated way.

Neither us nor Made by Many nor the Barbarian Group are going to take on Nestle’s global business any time soon.

So clients have a vested interest in getting a better understanding of what’s coming next. There’s a role for us as provocateurs and as we scale, taking on bigger things. But there’s still a role for big machines that can interface with other big machines. Yes, they need to be leaner and more flexible but there’s a market reality that says they will get there.

The challenge if you’re a digital agency is ‘what do they want to be when they grow up?’ Do they want to have the strategic conversation at the top of the organisation? In which case they need to feel comfortable talking about all media, including traditional media because I don’t think much of it is going away. Or do they risk becoming suppliers and production-focused. There’s no shortage of young digital talent who want to have their own business and can easily undercut the big players.

Agency Future – That conversation around digital versus traditional does seem to have gotten less apocalyptic in recent months . . .

Johnny – Radicalism is fun and creates headlines, and everyone wants to be part of the revolution. Another good aspect of us having our own businesses is that we stay in touch with reality. By all means experiment but at some point those experiments have to start bearing fruit. It’s no coincidence that most clients are slow to change.

I think the reality is that we’re all evolving into a brave new world, rather than maybe running as fast we can into it. It’s hard to predict what the industry looks like three or four years from now but a lot of big agencies will have evolved to a far more interesting place. In fact we’re already seeing that happen with the likes of W+ K, Ogilvy and McCann doing interesting digital things.

Agency Future – A part of the reason Anomaly is so well-known is because you went out and started your own businesses and forged your own IPs. Was that part of the plan from the start?

Johnny – Yes. It was always a part of the equation – and it was driven by us being a bit irked by not being able to share in the success that comes from a successful communications idea. It exists in some of our client relationships where we’re incentivized in certain ways. And we wanted to learn what it would mean to develop our own businesses. It’s evolved over the years from us starting a business from scratch to now being something of an accelerant in businesses that are partially formed or are about to be formed. We work out where we’re going to add the real value rather than running businesses in their entirety.

We have a TV show that is on PBS in the US and which recently won an Emmy and we’ve just finished shooting season 2. That TV show has a book deal and we’re handling all those individual components. We also do a cosmetics show that has a book deal and we’re doing a pilot. They’re a lot of fun to work on and they’re good long-term bets in terms of future growth but most importantly they teach us the fundamentals of business. If you’ve lived through it with your own businesses you’re coming from a place of experience when it comes to advising other companies.

Agency Future – What’s the revenue split in terms of time you sell to clients and your own properties?

Johnny – We don’t sell time. We don’t do timesheets, we don’t charge by time. The reason is that we think it encourages bad behaviour in terms of trying to make more money by taking as much time as possible to solve the problem. We try and solve problems quickly by using the right people and the right number of people. Some is project-based and some is retainer-based. Less than 20% of our business is coming from our own IPs but that doesn’t take into account what the long-term value of those properties might be.

> > > > >

The joint Norwegian, Danish and Swedish carrier is publicly owned and operates with a fraction of the marketing budgets of some of its competitors. Despite this, it has been something of a pioneer in the social space, teaming up with CP+B Europe to create the award-winning Globe of Fortune Facebook campaign, and recently winning plaudits for its handling of the ash cloud crisis, during which it used its Facebook page to get real-time information to passengers. I met with Marketing Director Christian Linnelyst to talk about SAS’s agency set-up and to get his views on the shifts in the industry.

> > > > >

Agency Future – What kind of competences are you looking for from an agency today?

Christian – I joined the company two and a half years ago and we started looking for a new agency. What we decided was that we wanted an agency with a proven track record in delivering communication platforms. We could have chosen an unknown agency but I didn’t dare. We chose Wibroe, Duckert and Partners because we felt they could take our brand platform to the next level.

We already had Relationshuset/Gekko handling our direct marketing so Partners were brought in as our mass communication agency. They had Net People in the same family so we initially used them for digital.

There was also a good chemistry with them and that’s sometimes underrated. We invested a lot of time in helping them get to know us. The first half-year was almost all research. They came to understand every aspect of our business and that led to the ‘As Good as Home’ platform, which has been a success.

Agency Future – Was that campaign pan-Scandinavian or just in Denmark?

Christian – Just in Denmark. We have gone back and forth from local market communication to centralised communication and right now our strategy is on communication tailored to each market.

Agency Future – So you use different agencies in each market?

Christian – Yes, for mass communication. But Relationshuset handle all our direct marketing and now CP+B do all of our online so there is some localisation needed there. Recently we chose Wunderman to handle our direct marketing and they will take over from Relationshuset in the near future.

There are also important differences in the three core markets. Norway and Sweden are much larger countries so we have a lot more domestic traffic there. Another point to make is that us Danes think of SAS as a Danish company but in Norway people are more patriotic towards Norwegian. And in Sweden there are a lot of smaller, local competitors.

Agency Future – So you favour specialist agencies? You wouldn’t let an integrated agency handle all of your communication?

Christian – Definitely specialists. It didn’t work out with Net People, even though they were part of the same house as Partners. So we chose Crispin for our online and that’s the set-up now. We don’t think having one agency doing it all is optimal. In my experience, even if you’re in the same family, you’re never acting as one toward the customer. You always end up having dialogue with offline guys and online guys and so on.

We don’t think having one agency doing it all is optimal. In my experience, even if you’re in the same family, you’re never acting as one toward the customer.

We have tried three times to have one agency prepare a brief for all three markets but we’ve never found one great idea that can work in all three countries. So the way we are doing our price campaigns now is with Partners as creative lead, and Crispin handling online and social media.

Our thinking is that this brings down the creative costs, which is true, but it increases logistics and travel costs and so on. And we rely a lot on local adaptation to the extent that you end up more or less with local campaigns.

Agency Future – Right now you’re working in bursts and campaign cycles – do you see that changing in the near future?

Christian – Of course, we’re looking at what’s happening in social media. And while SEO is not necessarily social, we’re spending a lot of money there. With social media we need to see the good business idea first. It’s great to have a lot of fans and so on but there has to be a return on the time spent.

Having said that, it’s not always smart to only think in terms of ROI, and where we’re maybe looking at social and mobile for effect is in terms of changing the image perception of SAS.

Agency Future – Can you tell me more about the first steps into social media? You gained a lot of fans on Facebook recently with the way you handled communication during the ash cloud crisis.

Christian – The Facebook thing was quite organic actually. It was the initiative of a couple of people in our customer service. They set up the page themselves.

We found out about it and of course we had some questions – who’s controlling this, what are they saying, and so on – but we could see that it was succeeding and so there was no need for us to do anything.

Agency Future – I guess that says a lot about SAS as an organisation, in the sense that your employees care so much about the brand and feel empowered in that way?

Christian – Yes, and also the customers’ reactions are the most important thing. They appreciate it, and it’s a natural way for us to communicate with them.

We also got a lot of positive PR from it, and that’s something we do monitor.

Agency Future – Do the people behind the Facebook page register their time? Are you thinking of ways to formalise your social media efforts?

Christian – Not yet, but we are looking at ways to introduce some structures, but of course it’s a very natural communication channel and we don’t want to formalise it too much.

Agency Future – Do you think there’ll be any agency involvement in the way you develop your social media initiatives?

Christian – I’m sure there will be!

Agency Future – What are your thoughts in general about the way agencies are evolving? Are they keeping up with people’s changes in media habits?

Christian – I don’t know who’s going to take ownership of these new channels. Actually media companies are often the first to suggest initiatives for us, and helping us identify social and mobile opportunities. Maybe agencies are lagging behind there.

> > > > >

SAS on Facebook and Twitter.

Formed in 2005 by an Englishman and a Dane who shared the vague notion of creating a kind of Threadless for badges, Spoiled Milk has since morphed into a thriving digital services agency with offices in Copenhagen and Zurich.

> > > >

The back-story

Dane Casper Hubertz met Englishman Russell Quinn while taking a year-long course in graphic design at the University of West England. The pair began collaborating on a range of projects, from stop-motion films to record covers.

Russell, a computer scientist then developing debuggers for Sony, was looking for more creative outlets and was easily persuaded by Casper to join him back in Copenhagen and continue their partnership.

The fledgling company was initially focused on print and design, but Russell’s programming background helped them win more and more digital jobs. About a year into their partnership, mutual friend Frederik Cordes – then studying Philosophy and Economics at Copenhagen Business School – joined the company to help professionalise and structure their operations, and was soon heading up new business. Growth followed rapidly.

I met with both Casper and Frederik to hear more about their vision for the company, and some of the innovative ways in which they work.

The interview

Agency Future – What sort of agency did you set out to create?

Frederik – Initially, we didn’t think of ourselves as an agency at all. What I bought into was the coming together of people from very different backgrounds with a passion but with no clear idea of where we were headed. Slowly that began to change, and we started using the word agency but we were very focused on being our own kind of agency, and defining ourselves outside the regular model.

Agency Future – So how did you think of yourselves in the early days?

Casper – The word we used most was collective! We were very focused on more creative, arty projects and we didn’t want anyone’s personalities to be dominated by someone else’s.

Frederik – We spent a lot of meetings dreaming, making plans for the future. But we never nailed that vision. It’s still alive, and still being discussed and for us that’s part of the beauty. We recently launched our own resource management tool, Blueprint, and so now we’re a company with its own product. That maybe means a different future, and a different vision.

Agency Future – So around the time you did begin to think of yourselves as an agency, what was your offering to the market?

Casper – We very quickly realised that we were winning more web-based projects than anything else. We all shared an interest in technology and had an awareness of the web and where it was heading and obviously that shaped us.

Frederik – We were using Basecamp as a project management tool right from the beginning. So we were using virtual tools even when we were just four people sitting in a single office. We were thinking globally. We had a sense that maybe one of us would move abroad or that we might have multiple offices.

Casper – We were moving towards the web but we didn’t describe ourselves that way. We still had ambitions to win other kinds of projects but the market was most definitely pulling us toward the web. We were also doing more and more sub-contracting for Danish agencies who maybe lacked certain digital competences, and that’s still a part of our business today.

Even though we were working more and more with the web, we retained that sense of craft that Russell and I started out with.

Frederik – In terms of positioning, the story we told back then was that our unique thing was our ability to combine old and new media. We didn’t necessarily always use Photoshop or Illustrator, but sometimes maybe we’d build something physical first and then make something digital out of that.

Agency Future – So a kind of tactile ideation?

Casper – Exactly.

Agency Future – Is this idea of tactility, maybe making the web more tangible in some way, is that still a feature of how you work?

Casper – I think yes, in the sense that we strongly believe interfaces should be easily recognisable for the user . . .

Frederik – Intuitive!

Agency Future – OK. One of the main areas I wanted to cover – and one of the main ways I think you guys differentiate yourselves – is the amount of emphasis you put on working smarter, using more Agile processes and so on. Tell us a little more about how those have evolved. I guess it was partly by necessity when you opened the Zurich office?

Casper – Partly, but as Fred said before, we implemented a lot of these structures early on, even before we had Zurich. Plus the ways in which we were backing up files and so on, we were using massive systems given our size! We knew that if we got it right from the start, it would be a lot easier if we grew.

Frederik – A major factor has been that we’ve thought like a product company from the start. 37 Signals – a product company – was a big inspiration. Product companies are able to work a lot more virtually than a service company that has a lot more client contact. So we think of ourselves as a service company but with the mindset of a product company.

Agency Future – Is that something that comes from business school?

Frederik – Many of the tools we use have been evolving as we have grown and we’ve followed their development and have been able to integrate them into the way we work very naturally.

Agency Future – Right, I think you say it pretty well on your site where you describe yourselves as a young team who’ve ‘grown up in the glow of the information age’. So these systems and processes – Basecamp, Skype, Yammer and so on – they might seem alien to a big, traditional agency but are completely natural to you?

Frederik – I think that has a lot of truth. And I think our youth has also differentiated us also from the start. But that might be a problem in 10 years when we’re not so young!

Agency Future – How do you guys see the ad industry right now?

Casper – To me it seems that a lot of agencies are scrambling to keep up but maybe don’t have the mindsets in-house that can help them natively understand the way things are changing.

There’re still a lot of buzzwords being thrown about, people looking for the easy solutions, and agencies offering social media expertise without really understanding or using social media themselves . . .

Frederik – I think the most important thing is how you work, and not what you offer. Everyone can offer social media marketing, everyone can go out and hire a social media guru from San Francisco. We deliberately don’t write ‘social media’ on our website as it’s become too generic.

What’s more interesting is the way you work. Can you inspire your clients along the way?

Casper – The shift towards new media has maybe caught a lot of big agencies napping. The way they were set up, the way they worked, everything was geared towards campaign cycles, print, maybe TV. But now you have a whole new world and the smart agencies are the ones trying to hire the people for whom negotiating that world just comes naturally. The problem is most of those people are starting their own agencies – it’s just easier! They’re doing in smaller teams what a big agency uses 40 people to do.

But now you have a whole new world and the smart agencies are the ones trying to hire the people for whom negotiating that world just comes naturally. The problem is most of those people are starting their own agencies – it’s just easier! They’re doing in smaller teams what a big agency uses 40 people to do.

Frederik – I think clients want three things: fast, good and cheap. You’re not going to get a cheap website from a big agency whereas we can deliver on the fast and the good and still offer great value for money. And you’re probably going to get much better consulting from us because we live what we deliver.

What the big agencies do have in their favour is the laziness of marketing directors. They will always favour a big agency because they can minimise the risk, they can cut down on the number of account managers they deal with and so on.

In the case of Denmark, you just have to look at how few agencies are sharing, and participating in their communities. It puzzles me because it takes so little and the advantages in terms of relevance to young people looking for a job, and winning new clients are huge.

Agency Future – Let’s talk more about some of the tools you’re using, and what the workflow’s like between the two offices.

Casper – We use a lot, and it can be daunting to someone new joining the company but they find their feet pretty quickly. We use Campfire for group chat, or for sharing links and so on. Every day we have what we call a ‘morning brew’, which is just a Skype between the two offices to go through what everyone’s working on.

Frederik – We also use Backpack, which is another 37 Signals product. It’s basically a nicely styled Wiki, and we can use that to create and share pages with one another. Campfire is probably the main way we share stuff with one another. We have a room we call the Milk Bar and we’re all expected to be in there. You can ping one another directly in there so if I find something on iPhone development, I’ll ping that directly to Lasse.

Casper – In terms of face-to-face meetings, we also have weekly meetings where we each do five-minute presentations on something that’s interesting to us. It’s based on the Ignite concept, and it doesn’t have to be about work. It helps to get to know one another, to share inspiration and so on.

We’re always trying to find ways to improve the sense of togetherness and camaraderie, and to make sure nobody ever feels like they’re working in a bubble.

Frederik – All of our people have side projects and are busy outside of work and that’s very important. When we look to hire people, we look at how they’re engaged in their communities, if they’re twittering and blogging and so on.

Agency Future – One last question, how do you see the agency evolving?

Frederik – What’s most important is continuing to learn and grow, as individuals and a company. The day we stop learning is the day we dissolve. We don’t see ourselves becoming a product company outright; we’ll stay a digital services agency but maybe look to strengthen the consultancy side so we’re not top-heavy on production. We’d love to keep growing, and get to a point where we can hire more skilled people and see where that takes us.

Casper – What he said!

Agency Future – Thanks guys.

> > > >

Spoiled Milk

Located in Copenhagen and Zurich, Spoiled Milk was formed in 2005 and currently has 12 employees. Key clients include Phaidon, JP/Politikens Hus, Le Cool and 3 Plus TV Network. .

Key case – Wallpaper iPhone app

Spoiled Milk on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the founding directors of the influential Boulder Digital Works, and now Director of Digital Development at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Allison has a keener handle than most on the increasingly important role digital is playing within the agency scene.

We sent her a few questions and she was kind enough to take time out of her new role to send us some answers.

> > > > >

It feels like things are changing at light speed right now and it’s hard for agencies to keep pace. What’s your take on the way the industry is reinventing itself?

Yes the pace is quick, but this allows for more opportunities to break out of traditional client/agency structures than ever before. Despite recent economic challenges, experimentation has been widely accepted and often preferred. I’m most interested in organizational reinvention for knowledge sharing, redefinition of roles, and innovative group structures. We’ve also moved quickly past the “T” shaped person, I think there is a lot of potential around hiring, training and developing a new type of worker.

This project is, very broadly, about emerging business models. What’s interesting you in that respect? Which agencies do you think are pioneering new approaches?

For the last two years, I have spent the majority of my time looking across the industry at agency structure, output, and talent. It’s been fascinating to identify the commonalities, particularly challenges as they relate to digital practice. I’ve interviewed leaders, spoken with major consumer brands, and listened to employees talk about a need for more formal programs to improve skills.

The most interesting new models address some of the more common challenges such as eliminating silos and cultivating linchpins.

A few interesting models come to mind. I like the work that John Winsor and his team are doing at Victors & Spoils in Boulder. Opening up team structures (expanded, beyond the walls) is fascinating. I also seek out leaders who are interested in creating new ways of working, as mentioned. So, the reinvention of the “Lab” is a hot topic for me. I’ve been following Made by Many in the UK for some time, really like their work and approach.

Do agencies have a role to play when it comes to social media? Have we earned the right to include it in our overall offering?

Agencies should be leveraging, experimenting, and offering services to support social media. Absolutely. I find that the more employees use social media on a personal level, living digitally and such, the more interesting their social ideas and applications for clients. We have to use these tools ourselves and often. I’d argue – to the point of being a bit uncomfortable with the transparency.

Also, we can’t forget how useful social media has become. Twitter is certainly social, but many are using this as a tool for managing and screening critical content. The follow list has replaced the RSS feed. This is super powerful. How could agencies not be involved?

Crowdsourcing and the emergence of the creative technologist are two of the most talked about trends in recent months. What’s your take, and what other trends do you see emerging in the industry?

I think there is opportunity for Crowdsourcing to simply get better. It’s always a controversial topic. I’m not convinced that we’ve uncovered the true usefulness. But, I’m definitely for opening up the circles of contribution – which is a bit different, but often supported by similar technologies. At Boulder Digital Works, we brought in a few leaders in the Crowdsourcing field and students and professionals we’re often very divided on the topic.

As for Creative Technologists (CTs)…I believe the most interesting work environments allow for cross-disciplinary exchanges.  In the early days of my digital career, I tried to hang out around the development department as much as possible.  CTs have skills that often translate across departments. In turn, we all get smarter.

There is also a growing need for “generalists or hybrids”; CTs bridge knowledge gaps internally and externally. Also, CTs can come from any background, not just the expected developer or creative track. I believe we’ll see more CTs who started as brand managers, producers and strategists. These useful hybrids are the people you seek out in the lunchroom – or repeatedly invite to happy hour.

> > > > >

Follow Allison @swervshop