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“Gee, mom, this is swell for a head cold…look, I can breathe now,” says a cheery blond boy wearing a striped polo shirt, holding a bottle of Vicks Va-tro-nol. “Better still, son, it helps prevent a lot of colds if you use it soon enough,” replies his perfectly coiffed mother, looking adoringly at her son.

A print ad from 1929, a time when television was still an experimental medium, when kids used words like “swell,” and when comic-style real life situation with speech bubbles was a popular form of advertising.

There was no Internet in 1929. No satellites or fibre optics. No hundreds of television channels. No digital radios. No glossy magazines. And a whole lot less scepticism. Pitch an idea like the 1929 Vicks Va-tro-nol ad today, and it’ll probably be rejected, or used to convey modern-day cool, in a cynical way. Sort of like, “Oh yeah, I see what you’re trying to do, and that’s really funny. People will love the throwback to the 20’s, and will buy the brand because we’re doing retro-cool.”

Except in 1929, they were serious about this kind of advertising. And what’s more, it worked.

There’s no avoiding the cliché; the world is a very, very different place today. Consumers have changed. Jon Wilkins, owner at Naked Communications – an independent ideas agency – explains people’s cynicism. “A classic example: if it’s an advert on television for a lovely new car, historically that lovely new car is being driven by an attractive couple along the French Alps. In reality, today if I’m thinking of buying a car, I type in the name of the car in Google, I can find hundreds of sites that will connect me to real drivers talking about the experience, I can negotiate the price of that car through a whole global network of dealers, and I can start to sort of circumvent the advertising process.”

In other words, the very nature of consumption has changed. (And yes, sadly, some of the magic of advertising has been lost along the way.)

Over the past couple of decades, the pace of change in the communications industry has been astonishing, and technology has played the key role in this development. With digital innovations keeping everyone on their toes, both consumers and advertisers are moving quickly into the future. Every change needs to be anticipated and worked around, so how are agencies moulding themselves to move forward with their target audiences?

Wilkins’ Naked agency was touted as an example of the “agency of the future” by Mark Tungate in his book Adland: A Global History of Advertising. Wilkins visited Dubai at the height of the financial crisis, when the real estate sector began to fall apart and agencies were wondering where else to go. “A lot of the agencies in Dubai are still quite old fashioned in the way they’re structured and the way they use channels,” he says. “The media agencies seem to be doing a better job than the advertising agencies, at least trying to embrace a lot of the newer channels.”

But regional advertisers disagree, however. They say they’re moving into the future their own way, with eyes fixed firmly on the evolution of the regional advertising market.

CHILDREN OF THE EVOLUTION. “I once created a presentation where I attached a picture of the advertising agency of the future,” says Ronald Howes, regional managing director for the GCC at Memac Ogilvy & Mather. “It was a burnt out, gutted room. That is the advertising agency in the future, if it doesn’t embrace digital, and if it doesn’t embrace a true 360 offering.”
With digital at the core of the agency of the future, Howes also says that this agency is one that will necessarily be more attentive to client and consumer needs, be flexible, and act fast enough to keep up with the pace of change.

Laura Desmond, global CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), spoke on the subject of the agency of the future at the 2009 Dubai Lynx. “It’s about evolution, not revolution,” she said. And her colleagues at SMG in Dubai are advocating the same strategy.

 “You can use Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest and evolution to look at what the agency of the future needs to do to survive,” says Mark Hamilton, integrated planning director for the MENA region at SMG Dubai. “It’s not the strongest of species, nor the most intelligent, but it’s the one that’s most adaptable to change that will survive. Be that from a consumer standpoint, from a client need standpoint, or be that from a media platform standpoint.”

And for adaptability to occur and evolution to thrive, it seems right now that integration may be key. Once upon a time, agencies broke off into different companies, with independent media companies, digital agencies, public relations firms, and creative agencies mushrooming all over the industry. Specialisation became the key, and clients had a plethora of companies to choose from to solve their marketing problems in any given area.

Today Jaikumar Menon, vice president of MCN Media in Dubai, says narrowly defined functional boundaries have become the biggest problem with agencies. “The most important thing for the agency of the future is to get disciplines to work together,” he says. “We have come so far down the line in terms of separation, that not everyone will suddenly come back together under one roof overnight. But it can happen at a practical level.”

And that’s what agencies like MCN Media, Memac Ogilvy & Mather, and AGA ADK are doing in Dubai. Whether they’re calling it integration, a 360 approach, or a new corporate strategy, agencies are pulling their units together to adapt to the changing consumer, and client, environment.

“What we’ve done within our 360 offering is we have completely different units that cater to specific requirements,” says Memac Ogilvy & Mather’s Howes, who stresses the 360 approach is only applied to those clients who demand it. “We have the advertising agency, an activation unit, a direct marketing unit, interactive and digital, and a PR unit, all under the Ogilvy umbrella. So when a client has a requirement, he can talk to one person and that person then fans out the different tasks. So based on the requirement that the client has, maybe PR will lead, and will coordinate with any other discipline if there’s a need.”

Roger Sahyoun, president and CEO of AGA ADK, launched a new corporate strategy for his agency to ring in the new year, with an aggressive plan to face all problems head on. The strategy was accompanied by the announcement that all AGA ADK units would be coming together under one holding group. “All of our units at AGA ADK are under one umbrella; they work independently but they are integrated,” he says.

THINK TANK. But it’s about more than just bringing units together under one roof and working with clients. Those who have adopted integrated approaches say the goal is to achieve integrative thinking; to create a more open and neutral space for idea generation. “It’s a chemistry thing,” explains Howes. “I don’t want to limit what people’s contributions are based on where they sit within their disciplines.”

And Sahyoun says the integration of AGA ADK Advertising & Marketing, Pencell PR & Events and E-AGA has a strong positive affect on the flow and quality of ideas, by getting all units to brainstorm together. “We’re giving a total, global solution,” he says. “This is where we see ourselves as a force; one strong sell.”

And at SMG, Hamilton echoes his views. “I think clients in the region predominantly want a one-stop-shop. I don’t think that’s any more or less sophisticated than just having a boutique agency … We have the ability and luxury to offer all different types of services so our clients can save time, can leverage the efficiencies, and really give us greater control over their brand. The service is fully integrated.”
At MCN, Menon says the agency also goes by integrative thinking, in keeping with the evolving needs of clients and consumers. But that doesn’t mean he advocates coming to his agency for all marketing problems; Menon encourages clients to get different agencies with different strengths together in order to ensure an efficient solution.

“Given all the complexity today, you can’t break the puzzle and solve it sequentially like you did in the past,” he says. “It requires people from different disciplines and perspectives to come together and think of the client’s marketing problem. That’s integrative thinking. It seems simple, but it’s a very big deal. Clients should put all the companies they are working with in the same room for hours and give them the same brief, so they can hear the problem at the same time. “

THE HUMAN ELEMENT. “The agency of the future is a human experience company, one that has a profound understanding of human behaviour,” said Desmond during her Lynx speech.

Hamilton explains that the SMG strategy to move forward revolves around three key pillars, agility, diversity, and digitally focused, and core to this is human experience and content. Keeping that in mind, he says, advertising is fundamentally no different than it was a hundred years ago. “This is still a very human industry,” he says. “And our jobs remain the same; we create connections that captivate our consumers, which results in driving our clients’ business. The only difference now is that the human experience has changed. Those agencies that build a clients’ business around that human change are those that will succeed in the future.”

Consumer engagement is key and common to all agencies looking to move into the future, a movement Hamilton says has been spearheaded by the advent and widespread reach of digital. “It has fundamentally changed the way consumers consume media, how they participate, and how they engage with media. There’s absolutely no doubt that the agency which is able to understand digital and use the platform in the right way with consumers is going to succeed.”

While he is unconvinced over the regional agencies’ response to the changing industry, Wilkins at Naked does agree with this point. “The consumer is very much in command, and I think it’s through technology,” he says. His company’s manifesto reads, “People’s relationships with brands has profoundly changed – the old certainties of marketing are losing relevance. The world of communications has also changed from mass communication with people as passive receivers to tailored communication where people have an active role in the process.”

In other words, agencies today operate in uncertain times and unchartered territory. They are now almost as dependent on the consumer and on technology as they have ever been on the client, budget and product. Both the innocence and simplicity of those 1929 Vicks Va-tro-nol ads is long gone, destroyed by sweeping cultural change and incredible technological developments, and the average agency is having to adapt rapidly to survive.

But whether advocating integration, specialization, or a mix, the agencies we spoke to did seem to agree on one thing when it comes to the agency of the future: The agency of the future must be capable of ongoing and rapid evolution if it is to survive and prosper in the new age.

After all, the only thing now truly certain in the industry is change itself.

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