SXSW - The Web Agency: There Will Be Blood
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Peter Eckert, projekt202
Chris Bernard, Microsoft
Kevin Flatt – Tribal DBB [agency of the year]
Brooke Nonberg – Pixel
Garrick Schmitt -Avenue A Razorfish
[I came because this session is supposed to be about the intersection of the traditional agency and the new online agency and how they and clients transition].
PE - if you are nimble it’ll be easy to move to this new paradigm. The culture is changing and the internet is becoming mainstream and so this is the key for agencies with specialisations that fill a niche but others will find it hard to move out to this space.
CB – Any creative route or client if you don’t understand it you will risk falling behind and your voice stops being heard. Step out and learn – recipe for continued evolutionary success.
PE -it is going to be very hard to stay up with all the new social media outlets / trends…
BN – it comes down to ideas, she has seen powerful things from unexpected agencies. There are wonderful things out there. Either you have the client relationships and ideas or you let politics get in the way. The team works hard together.
KF – Tribal was born out of DBB and the changing environment. Because it is part of an organisation with a long history there was a lot of learning, transferred over. Our medium is digital but we aren’t ignorant of the wider world of advertising. Across all our offices we can see digital and all forms of communication. The most interesting are the agencies that forget about the medium but focus on the communication and the engagement you seek.
GS – Creative ideas – you need a mastery of the data and the understanding of a user interacts with touchpoints and the influence of each. How to change message and campaign structure to adapt to each one, and what people are saying online and on Facebook etc. This medium is still evolving, data and how to make the judgements against it is native to the net and this platform and it will be harder for traditional agencies to apply their skills over to it.
BN – the net is just one channel not ALL the digital channels – there is so much. The blood will be where people think it’s just about email or a website…. the consumer is moving through all these things all the time, they don’t stop. There won’t be one single answer. Authentic conversations within social media channels? It is a dangerous space to push inappropriately into these channels – social media is something that you need to have a reason to be in… Insights come also from watching what they do as well as data and conversations with real people. Take the tone and attitude and recognise it’s about sharing freedom of speech not pushing adverts.

