Recently had the opportunity to share some thoughts about the "Agency of tomorrow" with the ever resourceful Chuck Kent as part of an interview on Branding Magazine. Excerpt below. Oh, and I have a new job at Edelman. More at PR Week. Happy Friday!
BM: Do you see the opportunity, the need for you to be able to – or any part of Edelman – to be able to initiate a core idea?
DA: I think that’s what’s in play. Not in this example, but in another example we – my team working with some other partners – are working on specific assignments where we’re doing just that role. And I will say that we have a few stakeholders on the client side that believe in it, they believe in, “Ideas are going to come from, well, it doesn’t really matter.”
We work in what I call a more responsive model. We’re not working in linear broadcast, we’re working in these content cycles. You might have a campaign that takes from inception to spreading out six months. We’ll work sometimes in a one month or two month cycle…. What I’ve seen in that situation is that the person who’s acting as CMO in this case believes in that model and is empowering us to do it. But yes… the preconceived notions are still there.
Right now there are conversations being had to say “Look, this other model is at play and nobody really owns it so we’re just going to give the business to people who work in that way. And all that means, just to expand on that, is that I all think that means is that pie gets dispersed a little bit more. At the end of the day, it’s got to be about where the client needs to be relevant.
