Macala & I were inspired by Wayne Arnold’s article on Agencies as Change Agents published on AdAge.com. Wayne states that “a company that describes itself as an agency is doomed”. He’s right. What Wayne speaks of is nothing short of a revolution in how agencies approach their clients. Agencies can no longer survive, nor should they, by establishing themselves as intermediaries between the media and their clients.Macala’s Observations:How does one deconstruct the traditional agency model and reposition a company to make it play an integral role in it’s clients’ business? We become their partners, we provide guidance, we mentor emerging and established leaders and give them the tools they need to survive with new media. By releasing the same control we are telling our clients they have to relinquish, we can once again become strategic partners we once were. We move from the role of middle man to the role of Change Agent by enabling our clients’ brands to survive in the digital age through embracing it.Being an Change Agent means looking at “business issues.” If you think of yourself as an agent of change, then the ideas you have for your clients start to look very different indeed. Agents of change recognize that brilliant ideas can come from anywhere, and increasingly it’s not from agencies. – Wayne ArnoldThe Fashion industry isn’t the first, or last, industry to be impacted by digital technologies. But it’s going to be one of the most hard hit if industry professionals don’t integrate it into their business strategies.As fashion industry marketing professionals, in order to be successful for our clients, we must not only embrace online media, we have to live for it. We must be as passionate about its function and integration into the Fashion industry as the designers who create the fashions consumers wear. We have to look beneath the surface and find commonalities between traditional and new ways of doing things. Digital impacts everything, from sales and marketing to distribution to customer service. As Arnold believes, “it’s the biggest single lever agencies can use to create business changing ideas” and regain credibility as creative, strategic business partners for brands, designers and retailers.Maria’s Observations on Community:The proliferation of new media channels has lowered the bar (in terms of cost and lead time for execution) for reaching certain groups of consumers; access to media is no longer a selling point for agencies. Brands and retailers need to be strategic in the ways they build a community or speak to an existing community online. They need to be even more strategic, and slightly cunning, in they ways that they inspire those communities to take action. Strategic community engagement goes beyond jumping on Twitter and starting a blog (anyone can do that). How are a brand’s community efforts supporting its overall marketing initiatives, indentifying brand ambassadors or more impactful, cost effective advertising outlets?As community developers, it’s important for us to realize that not all groups of consumers will respond to the same message in the same medium. Wayne’s pharma client who wants to get closer to the medical industry is a perfect case study. Instead of giving them an ad, he gave them a strategy that built individual relationships with nurses and doctors and solidified those relationships through long term measures that made the doctors more efficient and nurses more cost effective. Understand these fundamentals and you understand the true value an agent of change brings to the table.The relationships that are built, are built around more enduring, long-term values versus a product with a quick, short-term message. Products come and go, some are seasonal as the current “it” color in fashion, but a brand’s relationship with the consumer stays. A while ago I wrote about how each brand should be like a person; your consumer should be able to articulate your brand personality succinctly, and the closer that it is to what you think you are, the better. Being an agent of change moves the consumer into a closer relationship with your brand’s values, helps your consumer “make friends” with the very personable brand.
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