Digital trends are sending mixed messages about the industry

13 May 2010

Readers of The Financial Times will have seen a survey by the CMO Council forecasting a decline in the need for digital agency services. In the same week, and the same paper, Havas announced it had a buoyant first quarter, doubling its revenues from digital advertising and marketing. So what’s going on?

For the past eight years Pearlfinders has been interviewing senior marketers, 5,000 of them in the past 12 months. At the end of each quarter, we aggregate their topics of interest to project trends and draw conclusions.

This year looks interesting. Yes, there has been a decrease in the number of new marketers hired with briefs specific to digital (down 2.4% in Q1). However, their roles now include an ever-growing remit across the digital spectrum. We also observed that recently appointed digital marketers are much less likely to be hiring new digital agencies straight away (down 11.3% in Q1); they’re increasingly being brought in to run digital marketing internally and create teams with the right mix of skills. So are we saying companies are upgrading their in-house digital capabilities? Not necessarily.

From speaking to chief marketing officers, the overall trend is an increase in the number of opportunities for agencies. But this is accompanied with a steep decline in non-strategic, project-based briefs. Digital work is being increasingly dissolved into the marketing mix, so digitally focused agencies should ensure they’re constantly focusing on a client’s or prospect’s overall marketing plan. The digital elements of this plan are also less likely to fall purely to the online marketing manager or head of digital. A range of marketers are now pivotal when it comes to digital strategy, from comms directors to brand managers.

We’re also being told that too many digital agencies are focused on project work in a rather process-driven way. Instead, they need to show how they can work on a retained basis to deliver a strategic product. Digital agencies take note: your clients are no longer novices. A senior digital marketing decision-maker at one of the UK’s largest retailers told us recently that agencies are fellow practitioners of digital marketing and no longer the gurus they so often believe themselves to be.

As brands continually strive to be part and parcel of a consumer’s day, digital will play a bigger and bigger role. At the beginning of the digital revolution, the knowledge gap between in-house marketers and out-house specialists was huge. The gap is getting narrower.

It’s time for digital agencies to talk to and work with in-house marketers as peers, just as other marketing disciplines have to do.

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