The Next Partner Model Must Build Business Value, Not Ads
by Bruno Lambertini, Circus Marketing
The past year has seen significant change in the way people connect with brands and each other digitally. While this has been great for some major players—Disney+ surpassed 50 million subscribers in just five months since its launch, a milestone that took Netflix five years to achieve, while Netflix added another 40 million in just a year—it’s also led to heightened complexity for marketers to navigate in the form of touchpoints, channels and technologies to serve. These changes also come at a time when marketers feel the pressure of accountability like never before.
But 2020 was not only an accelerator but also a testing period: the rapid change in environment forced brands and their partner agencies to put their agility to the test, the results corroborated that a modern way of advertising was not just an ideal but a necessity. Those who came out victorious showed a flexible and nimble way of working, while the one who were not as successful had a hard time stepping away from their traditional ways. Today’s CMOs want a partner that can build business value, not just marketing campaigns. And they must do so at speed, connecting an integrated offering that enables a seamless brand experience.
With No Silos, Agencies Adapt at Speed
One of the fundamental ways that agencies must change to meet the modern marketer’s needs is to do away with the big idea. Big ideas are outdated—they’re not transformative. Instead, the next partner model must create new types of ideas that touch every aspect of business from top to bottom and everywhere in between: in the app, in media, in communications, in experiential and in PR, in addition to advertising.
Every brand wants to be the most talked-about in their category but doing so means keeping an ongoing drumbeat of the brand narrative, end-to-end and everywhere. Eliminating stakeholder silos and offering uninhibited access to multidisciplinary talent will become more and more important to marketers as the decade continues. A traditional holding company divides up its influencer teams, video production and platform developers into different agencies and teams—requiring new SOWs, briefs and the like to utilize each—but how can they show up for brands the moment they need to tell a new story or support a new channel before the conversation moves on?
To tell an overarching brand story across the CDJ, agencies will likewise need to adopt a unitary model that spans disciplines and speaks to those different stakeholder needs. Consider content studios composed of not only advertising creatives, but also strategists, interface designers, PR officers and more. This setup will prove essential for helping brands offer values to audiences where and when it matters most.
The Next Agency Model is Local and Data-Driven
Brands need a partner who’s fit for brand, fit for market and fit for format. This means driving consistency throughout the myriad channels where consumers connect, but also taking into account local and regional relevance—delivering actions, not just ads, that truly resonate with consumers and how they engage with the world.
As brands aim to drive this level of cultural relevance with greater precision, agency partners must strike a careful balance between aligning the brand narrative globally, but implemented with hyperlocal relevance. This means more than just speaking the language: the next agency model will connect teams around the world who are better capable to cast talent and tell meaningful stories that reflect the local audience. At the very least, they will have strong DEI practices in place to speak to diverse audiences. Being multi-local is about understanding, interpreting and speaking to multiple markets to convey a unified message while resonating in a local way.
Finally, content must be data-driven and delivered at scale—and what resonates with one audience segment or channel might not make sense to another. A content studio that includes data scientists, data analysts and creative technologists will make all the difference through the use and implementation of dynamic tooling.
Again, the next agency model will thrive on bringing these talents together across the organization, helping marketers prove the value of marketing as an investment that builds the business. Today’s brands are in a constant state of navigating disruptions from every direction; partners and agencies must evolve to bring together strategy, media and creative capabilities in a way that offers the flexibility brands require to not only keep up with the conversation, but truly lead it in ways that consumers find meaningful—both now and well into the decade.
Bruno Lambertini, Circus Marketing