Digital behaviour is becoming the “dominant behaviour,” not a campaign add-on and STW-owned agency DT is gearing its business to service the next breed of CMO, who think “digital first”.
DT CEO Brian Vella told AdNews that the agency, which is coming up to its 20th anniversary, hasn't referred to itself as a digital agency but rather a “creative technology” agency for some time and is looking to service a business problems rather than just provide digital campaigns.
“We've stopped thinking about ourselves as a digital agency, we are an agency that serves marketers and just happens to have grown up in the digital era,” Vella said.
“We didn't set out to say at this point we won't be a digital agency any more, I think the market and the world has set the direction.”
While many digital agencies are looking to move into creative as the lines between above-the-line and below-the-line blur, Vella said the agency is not looking to build capacity in traditional media such as television or radio. Instead it's set on “future-proofing” client's businesses.
DT partner Tim Evans, who leads digital strategy at the agency, said DT is moving away from campaigns and instead towards long-term engagement tactics, using the “digital transformation” of Tourism Australia's Australia.com platform as an example of such work.
“It's about taking a behaviour-first approach to things and it just so happens that digital behaviour today is the dominant behaviour,” Evans said.
“Ask any CMO and they'll tell you the customer has actually outpaced brands in terms of the way that they experience the world. We specialise in catching up to the consumer and that does require an investment and those discussions do tend to need to happen at the board level.”
“The cost of not doing it could be an organisation killer, because the size of the digital opportunity is so big that if you don't capture it, you might not be around tomorrow.”
Recently appointed executive creative director and partner Jerker Fagerström added that part of the shift is adland understanding that people don't experience work through an imaginary “digital” and “creative” channel distinctions.
“I've been in this business for years and I've never met a consumer, they don't exist, they're people,” Fagerström said.
“It starts with a real person experiencing the work, so it's never creativity for creativity's sake or technology for technology's sake. It's about moving someone from A to B.”
Vella said while the agency still primarily handles digital duties for its clients, the last six to 12 months has seen “more conversations about broader creative duties than ever with existing and new clients”.
He said the issue tends to be that brands are still siloed, which dictates how briefs come through.
“We're on a mission now to break down this paid, earned and owned media myth. Maybe that was useful a few years ago, but now we're increasingly talking to our clients about reach, relationship and depth of customer experiences and to do that you need digital running through,” Vella said.
“It's increasingly becoming a conversation with clients and we're leading that in most cases so the tide is starting to turn.”
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