I’m not a huge fan of 1-stop-shops in advertising. When agencies promise to do everything well something invariably drops in quality. Focus makes sense to me, excellence in what you do, bearing in mind there’s a lot of grey in-between.
The promise of a 1-stop-shop is often: efficiency, turnaround time, accountability and ultimately cost saving. However, communication, together with centralising insights and data is seldom a reality. When you lift the roof off of a 1-stop-shop you may still see siloed departments, poor communication and a lack of centralised effort.
It is this space between that exists between agency types as well, between the brand agency and the advertising agency, between the advertising agency and the digital agency, and between PR and media – the list continues, and sometimes includes the client.
So, we go on and on about integrated marketing when we can’t really deliver on the important stuff – the stuff we learn from as a collective, the stuff we wouldn’t have exposure to normally.
Ownership, in my opinion, is at fault. Who owns the data, who owns the insights? Who owns the gap. We claim it when there’s visibility, but we will never claim the empty gap.
Now, tell me again why you’re afraid of consultants in advertising.