In addition to balancing the budgeting issues between traditional and interactive advertising, settling who has control over the creative is another problem confronting ad agencies looking to meet the demands of integrated marketing. Alan Schulman, SVP, ECD for imc2, speaking at an afternoon session for the OMMA Advertising Week conference, the digital side, in general, has a lot to learn from the traditional side when it comes to developing a narrative form that fits the interactive space.
Too often, the digital side’s view is, “What sort of banner ad should I use?” followed by “Let’s come up with a viral video by chopping a 30-second spot in half and creating a pre-roll.” As for some examples at how digital agencies are trying to look traditional, some are creating animated flash movies “hoping their clients will see them on TV” without realizing that flash can’t run on TV. But traditional creatives, in large part, find it hard to imagine online as an extension of the work they largely do for TV. “They aren’t thinking of how to tell stories contextually; they aren’t thinking of creating work that will fit with what people are already clicking on.”
Click on “read more” for comments from the panel that followed.
During a panel discussion following his keynote, a few creative directors at major ad agencies offered some other takes on the supposed skills gap between digital and traditional creatives:
— Steve Nesle, ECD, Tribal/DDB: It’s more than just a battle between digital and traditional. “What we’ve found is that there’s not just a left and a right, but a top and the bottom. You have the PR and media company also in the decision process, each trying to own the big idea. So creatives on both the digital and traditional sides having to work even harder.”
— Peter Nicholson, partner, chief creative officer, Deutsch New York: “I like to partner with the smaller shops, because they can do things that we can’t do.” Tapping the skills of a smaller digital agency provides an extension to the agency “without having the bureaucracy that would come if they were in-house.”
— Ty Montague, ECD, JWT: Echoing Nicholson’s point, Montague added, that the successful company knows how to make collaboration work. “The way we think of ourselves is like the old movie studios. You have an infrastructure, but you have people of diverse talents coming together… No one is born knowing how to code and no one is born knowing how to do commercials. It’s a matter of getting the right people, who have developed a talent and honed an expertise together in the same room.”
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