Evolving Digital Agency

by Sandeep Singh, business director, Quasar Media

Let me start by saying - “I love my job”. Anyone would love, when the job is to run in a race where the tracks change faster than you expect and every time you see in the rear view mirror, you see new players joining the race which makes you keep on pressing the accelerator as you manoeuvre your way through the new tracks to stay ahead in the race.

Yes, the digital race is getting exciting by the day – I believe it's the only industry where one can never complain of a stagnant job profile. Day before yesterday, you were just planning and buying impressions, yesterday you were building capabilities to run your campaigns on Search and Mobile, today you are experimenting with Social Media, tomorrow you might be developing expertise in IP TV and Bluetooth kiosks – it's not a single track road and you need to keep steering your organization and team well to avoid going off the track and of course keep running at the same pace. That's what the digital agency business is all about.

Having witnessed the changing advertising landscape through the eyes of digital media over the last 3-4 years, I know for a fact that developing digital capabilities is on the radar of all advertising agencies – big or small. For most of them, developing capabilities to a large extent mean hiring few people with some digital experience. Doesn't really work! To me, the key factor to success is the DNA – how strongly digital is integrated with the DNA of the agency. That's where I believe the specialized digital agencies will have an edge for some time to come. Advertising may be all about being creative but digital advertising is all about being creative with technology. So, understanding of technology and digital ecosystem is very critical – you never know when a cool technology breakthrough becomes an advertising opportunity.

Look at Search or Mobile as an example. The pace at which such opportunities hit you, it's difficult to latch on to them as an early adopter unless you have an in-house team construct which can identify these opportunities early and train themselves to deliver on them. Such self motivation comes purely from passion for the medium – that's why identifying passion for the medium is the number one criteria for our recruitment process.

The support and vision of the core leadership also plays its part in gearing up the team to constantly innovate and upgrade the group's capabilities. This connects back to the point of having "digital thought process" as a core DNA of the agency for success in this space. But it’s good to see digital getting the mainstream attention, it will help grow the market faster and increase the share of digital in the overall advertising pie.

The specialized agency model has come of age and has proved itself to be a successful one. The success can be seen by the interest large global advertising networks and VCs have shown in the space. During one of the recent conversations I was having with a senior executive from a large global communication conglomerate, he mentioned that he was surprised to see the trend of VCs investing in the agency business models in India – this itself is a strong indicator of the growth this model promises.

Now, with specialized agency model getting more specialized and niche (search marketing agencies, mobile marketing agencies, social media agencies, and digital creative hot shops making their presence felt) the scene is heating up further. For the clients, the advantages vary from getting into a goal based engagement to a more focused approach within digital marketing activities but in the larger scheme of things the disadvantage is the lack of a cohesive approach to digital media. So, the role of digital strategists will gain importance for putting all these digital pieces together and drive synergies.

I believe we are still in the qualifying round of this race. As we move into more exciting years ahead, taking a pole position today becomes extremely important to the success of any agency having ambitions to do well in the digital space. I am ready for the race – Let's do it without any pit stops.