The culture inside agencies is changing as post-pandemic work realities, demanding employees, new revenue opportunities and economic uncertainty collide.
Global consultancy Forrester foresees a future in which the creative environments, leaders and experiments of agency life give way to a focus on new product solutions, leadership, lines of revenue and opportunities to reclaim digital media authority.
Forrester, in its annual predictions written by Jay Pattisall with Keith Johnston, Mike Proulx, Jen Sanning, Kelsey Chickering, Ted Schadler, John Arnold, Thomas Husson, Lexie Lawhon, looks ahead to 2023 and the emergence of a ”brave” new agency culture.
“The rapid adoption of digital behaviour, a shift in the balance of power between employees and employers, and permanent changes to how people work will alter the very culture of agencies and the value that they bring to CMOs in 2023,” says Forrester in its study, The Talent Transformation Forces The Culture Change In Agencies
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Hybrid work realities will erode agencies’ creative culture advantage. The agency buzz will exist in smaller, less-concentrated doses. Forrester says the agency creative environment has always been a superpower. However, hybrid work is altering how agency employees interact and collaborate. In 2023, the physical culture of the agency will be replaced by a virtual one that will no longer offer the same dynamism of in-person collaboration or presentation.
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Product-plus-service opportunities will initiate a changing of the guard in agencies. “The role and skill set of the client services leader, which have served agencies so well for more than a century, will be replaced by a product marketing leader whose skill set is better suited to manage agencies’ increasing portfolio of products and solutions. The software products and services within agencies will grow enormously, whether they are agency operating systems like Omnicom’s Omni or Dentsu’s Connect.”
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Web3/metaverse follies will accelerate the digitisation of creative/media agency skill sets.“Agencies will hastily double their investments in Web3 and metaverse capabilities, clambering to capture the business of the nearly 70% of B2C CMOs looking to establish strategies for marketing’s latest shiny object."
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The race to acquire B2B marketing expertise will emerge as the next agency gold rush. “As marketers move more dollars into B2B digital and marketing transformation, B2B marketing services will provide significant revenue opportunities for both B2C agencies applying their branding, design, creative, and media skill sets to business audiences and B2B agency specialists applying their expertise to a market projected to reach $30 billion.” Holding companies have signalled their B2B intentions: Horizon Media launched Green Thread, Dentsu consolidated DWA and Gyro into Merkle and Publicis Groupe bought Octopus Group. “ Anticipate a 3% to 5% influx of client-side B2B marketing expertise into agencies in 2023. The outflow of B2B marketing talent will represent yet another culture shift inside agencies as the worlds of B2B versus B2C, client side versus agency side, and specialist versus broad practitioner collide in 2023.”
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Brands will walk back in-house digital media expertise to skirt uncapped privacy liability. The digital media function will shift back to outsourced agencies from brands reluctant to assume liability surrounding consumer privacy in paid media. “As a result, 20% of media management master services agreements will be rewritten during 2023, such that external media agencies will take on more consumer privacy and data risks. Consequently, in 2023, we will start to see the digital media strategy pendulum swing back toward agencies as in-house digital media capabilities will exist in less than 20% of corporate in-house agency operations.”
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