The End of the Beginning

by Justin Lewis, Co-Founder & CEO of Instrument, Guest-Editor for the 2020 SoDA Report

Some joke that I wasn’t born with the gene that makes us nostalgic. I’m not one to romanticize the past or desire to believe that the beginning was anything but difficult. Many of us worked unbelievable hours at the dawn of the internet, mostly fueled by innovation, caffeine and the vastness of what might be possible.

Most of us worked across the table from larger Ad Agencies and wondered aloud about the strategic positioning, or lack thereof of the work we were doing. Most of us yearned for the day when digital underpinned strategy and we longed for a shift in power away from the things we considered “traditional.”

I believe we got what we asked for. Budgets and power shifted, new business models emerged and just about everything became digital. I also believe that we squandered away some of that opportunity. In our lust for change and innovation we forgot about the consumer, and, more importantly, we forgot that the consumer was human (and matters more than anything).

So if this is the end of the beginning, I say good riddance. I’m no longer fueled by the Digital vs Traditional divide. I’m solely concerned with our shared human experience and I’m motivated by the services we provide that make digital a tactic, not the strategy. Today we think less about things like websites and apps and more about things like: emerging business models, sustainable growth, creativity, change, culture, democracy, learning, data, access and end-to-end experiences. Many of these things are enabled by digital, but they don’t have to be digital. Removing this siloed thinking has enabled us to consider the impact of our work and better allows us to steer the right approaches that connect our clients to their consumers in ways that create true meaning and impact.

So what if the best is not behind us? What if the truest potential of change ushered in by our innovation was to make digital ubiquitous and invisible, enabling us to get back to the things that matter most… creating community, providing opportunity and democratizing access to our world. What if our collective accomplishments are nothing more than a launchpad for what’s to come? What have we learned? What are we going to do differently with the voice we’ve gained. How are we going to use it to benefit the world around us?

I’ve always needed to believe that the best thing I’ve ever done hasn’t happened yet. I’m thankful that I picked a path where I truly believe that and know it is possible.

I’m not saying that the path ahead won’t be without challenge. As our collective businesses have gained notoriety and our industry has solidified its position in the market, we now experience some of the same business conditions that drove many of us to the horizon in the first place. In this moment, we are experiencing industry challenges around rate pressure and in-sourcing. These factors, coupled with tremendous global, economic, and political uncertainty, test our will to move forward.

And yet, we do move forward. We move forward out of a love for our people. We move forward out of a genuine passion for the work. And we move forward because we believe the work we will do matters more than the work we have done.

Eyes open, heart forward, towards the future.