Let’s talk about ideas.
I cut my teeth in ‘traditional’ advertising where ‘the idea’ is the agency’s bread and butter. Bringing an idea to life has always been about selecting the best individuals to craft it, visualise it, give it sound and generally bring it to life in its respective mediums. I like to think of it as an Agency birthing an idea, and the production department sending it off to finishing school.

One of the reasons I left 'traditional' advertising was that a little thing called the 'Internet' meant that lots of money was being spent online, and little specialist digital agencies evolved from finishers of ideas (or suppliers) to full fledged, full service digital agencies. In the online space, so often an idea is the technology solution that enables it. So the more the internet has splintered in terms of ways to reach your audience, the greater the scope of solutions a clever and adaptable digital agency can offer. The more clients want to spend money online, the more digital agencies have started chipping away at the traditional agency holy ground - the idea.

So back to ideas. Paul Isakson (who has a fantastic blog if you are into brand strategy) highlighted an emerging debate around who actually owns 'ideas' and more specifically who should be getting awards credit for them. In a nutshell:

“a point of contention among the digital shops that bring traditional agencies' concepts to life, blew into the open in Cannes [in June ] when BBDO took top honors in several categories, including a gold Lion in Cyber, for HBO "Voyeur." The crux of the issue: The HBO "Voyeur" site was created by Big Spaceship, a small Brooklyn digital shop. The lack of credit given to Big Spaceship caused jury chair Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at TBWA, to mention the forgotten partner when giving the award to BBDO. Still, the snub riled Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz, who served on the Cannes Cyber jury. He maintains that BBDO did not deserve all the credit for something it didn't create.”
(Thanks to Brian Morrissey of Adweek for the summary)

I’m of the opinion that what makes a great agency is not only the ability to have an idea but to bring it to life. Case In point; the last 'traditional' campaign I worked on centered around a guy riding a set of drums… unless you can bring it to life it just well… lifeless.  I put the BBDO / Big Spaceship debate to the MD of a much awarded large 'traditional' Agency :

“The fact is that with the production of the idea being handled elsewhere and not at BBDO, it makes the idea the only thing that is left to defend and protect for a company like BBDO - it's the old freelancer risk argument - get a freelancer in to set the type, all is cool, they come in and have the idea, it presents significant risk.  The argument that BBDO is not tabling, is their ability to provide the service and long term support , in addition to ideas, that a lot of big clients seek out, something a digital hot shop cannot always deliver to.  BBDO's positioning feels defensive though and that exposes to me a lack of confidence, telling me that the little digital company who produced the work, might have done a lot more than just that!”

What this response highlights to me is that every time an agency has to outsource digital expertise it’s potentially exposing a flaw in its 'delivery armour'. Success is going to come down to which large agencies can adapt and diversify fast enough. Reading blogs from large agency heads like Giles Rhys Jones and many others just shows that there are plenty of large agency groups that are anything but ‘traditional’, and are well and truly In the race to conceptualise and produce online winners.

 Rob summed it up best:
“[It’s] symptomatic of the industry's bubbling issues at large… Interesting times ahead!”