On the one hand, clients want to keep control of things but on the other, with so many different agencies involved in the eco system, the conundrum is how to keep control of the mix while making sure the overall message is consistent across all platforms.
The variety of digital specialists required in terms of performance of content, creative content and social media channels mean the variables grow rapidly and how it can all be integrated is a challenge that keeps clients awake at night.
According to president and CEO of SCOPEN, César Vacchiano, in an ideal world, there would be a team of people ensuring the cohesiveness of the various players and that everything happens when it should.
“But the truth of the matter,” he says, “is that marketing departments are not as big as they used to be and are often under resourced. This puts greater reliance on the agency personnel to manage the integration.”
SCOPEN 2023-2024 figures show a small uptick in the number of key industry professionals who will only work with an integrated agency, but markets such as Portugal, Argentine, Chile and Brazil are joining others with a strong commitment to integration.
Wading through the options
With specialty agencies on the rise – including digital platforms, advertising agencies, media agencies, digital agencies, PR and more – Johanna McDowell, chief executive officer at Independent Agency Selection (IAS) and managing partner of SCOPEN Africa, suggests there is a pervasive anxiety among business leaders to determine what specialists they require.
“Often, there’s a curve ball with every new industry specialist that comes along,” she asserts, “pressuring clients to consider their value before there is any data to prove their worth,” she says.
For each specialty, McDowell notes, analysis is also required as well as campaign reporting. “Somewhere in the ‘specialisation gold rush’, it’s easy for the brand essence to get lost.”
Both Vacchiano and McDowell note from the SCOPEN research that this revolution needs an integrator to make everything work. “The opportunities for agencies to grow with marketers looking for integrators can be seen in the SCOPEN study,” says Vacchiano.
“Those who choose to work only with integrated agencies at the moment appear to be growing, especially in South Africa where the current number is extremely low, but plans for the future take the clients up to around 20.”
Here, McDowell adds that as things stand now – where marketers are working with an average of 15 agencies – it’s an untenable situation.
“In South Africa, the mantle of ‘integrator’ tends to fall to the creative agencies but they, too, are not necessarily the best entity for the job, being preoccupied with their core purpose,” she says.
“What is better and more obvious,” she continues, “would be for the media agencies to be the integrators. They know what the channels are, can see the bigger picture. However, what they would be unlikely to keep track of is whether all the messaging is correct and cohesive.”
Searching for a unicorn
Bottom line – clients are looking for a Unicorn; a person or group of people that will be responsible for making sure the brand’s messaging is cohesive, that things are done on time and that money isn’t wasted.
Vacchiano, like McDowell, believes that right now, there is a lot of “don’t know” across the industries, given the speed at which new platforms, Martech and marketing opportunities are cropping up.
Says McDowell: “Globally, clients are talking about risk a lot more than they used to. Is that because of the economy? Certainly everybody wants to ensure that whatever money they spend gets the maximum return, which is what is driving a lot of the move towards integration.”
Marketing teams have got to deliver; they’ve got to make sure they know how to deliver; and they’ve got to have the right teams in place to deliver. This is over and above their regular work, making them a knowledge-rich but time-poor group, and one that has to trust the agency personnel and their systems.
Even with the looming potential of AI, marketing is an intuitive business, according to McDowell. “It’s art and science, which no machine right now can replicate to the standard of what a human can do. We’re not there yet and until we are, marketers and their various agencies have an onerous task ahead in finding that integration Unicorn.”