A creative at one of Sweden’s biggest agencies insists that web production is heading the same way as film production. That advertising agencies will get treatments from several different web production companies and get to choose which agency will get to produce.
I’m not so sure. First of all, in the sort term, demand for top notch web production is way higher than supply. The good web production companies won’t NEED to leave speculative treatments. They can just choose a different project.
Secondly, web production companies seem to have a different agenda. Rather than accepting their role way down in the value chain, they seem to want to claim the idea- and concept development phase from the traditional advertising agencies (Farfar being one prime example). No wonder, since most big Swedish agencies don’t understand web yet, and thus will come up with print concepts or television concepts distributed via the Internet. Furthermore we need to ask ourselves what we mean when we say “web agency”. If we mean the programming, that is best made in India, Estonia or China in a couple of years. If we mean content, like film, images or sounds, we have brilliant companies with extensive experience producing that already (and sure, they may keep making treatments).
No, there won’t be treatments where “web agencies” (a dying word) will do the advertising agencies work for them. Why would they. Advertising agencies need to understand pull-, interactive, and digital social behavior. They need to understand how programming services are bought, and they need to start delivering modern communication. That’s how you stay in the game. Not by paying your way out.
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