Whither advertising agency?

Taking a second look at the You & Mr Jones press in Campaign, wherein "brand/tech" is the latest agency model. Here's the telling quote, via Dylan Williams, Publicis Worldwide’s global chief strategy and innovation officer: 

"The single biggest challenge to our industry is future-proofing the relevance of an agent."

Or, perhaps not the relevance but the definition of agent/agency (e.g. "to work on behalf of"). If you work for a traditional agency, you assume the agents of advertising are all of us writers, art directors, designers, planners, account executives and producers. 

Williams' quote continues: 

"Disintermediation is a bigger threat than the fact we sell man-hours or that people are increasingly able to avoid what we produce. If Jones’ business is about helping brands go direct to consumers via tech companies, it’s one to watch."

Indeed. What if the idea of advertising agency is no longer best (or only) supplied by us writers, art directors, designers, planners, account executives and producers? That's the crux of what Mr Jones is offering, via technology and his curated crowd. It's what Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook offer directly to marketers. It's what all of the stars on Snapchat, Vine and YouTube offer (witness "Tips for Great Brand-Creator Partnerships From One of YouTube's Biggest Stars"). 

They'll collaborate to write a brief or define an assignment. 

They'll pitch ideas. 

They'll produce those ideas.

And they'll distribute them too, since they are also quite often the medium. 

In other words, how traditional ad firms go about "acting on behalf of" is at risk. If anyone can come up with great ideas, why not seek agents who live and work in the (digital) medium or perhaps even own it? Shouldn't Facebook's team do a more efficient job of developing and optimizing ideas on Facebook for Client X than Client X's agency of record? 

That's the bet here. And it's worth a sidebar into advertising history to gain context.

The advertising industry has never sold the value of ideas. Have you ever seen a Scope of Work where the agency is compensated solely for ideas, never mind the performance of those ideas? Per Williams' quote above, the ad industry sells hours. In the era of newspapers, copywriting and art direction were given away as a means of securing a 15% commission on media. 

Yes, we tout the effect of great ideas. (See Peter Field's IPA presentation.) But we don't base compensation on that effect. Our industry has taught clients that "agency" means labor, not output.  

So it's no surprise to see new players usurping the definition of advertising agency, when all it stood for was a blended hourly rate. 

And the narcissism.

As Dan Hon wrote, so much of advertising agency seems focused on "talking about things," "enabling a conversation about things" and sometimes to "make a thing that is talked about." So little of advertising agency, according to Hon, is tasked to "actually solve business problems." Traditional agency seems to dwell on ideas about ideas. Whereas, as Marketing Week suggests, "brands should be investing in digital technology rather than simply pushing money into digital advertising." The appeal of brand/tech agency is that it seems more about infrastructure and functionality as the idea. Does that get a marketer more directly or even more quickly to the business problem solving issue? We'll see. 

Then, yes, it boils down to relationships. More specifically, the focus of the relationship. 

Facebook's relationship as an advertising agent is going to focus on Facebook, only. A YouTube star has a very narrow range to offer as an agent of advertising; and the focus is the star who built their brand, not the marketer. I think even a curator like Mr. Jones is only as useful to clients as the distribution channels and types of crowds under his control. The closer you get to the point of distribution, the more rigid the client/agency relationship--the focus becomes quite narrow. Whereas, in theory, a traditional agency is able to embrace all of the above on behalf of a client. 

Clearly, the battle to define advertising agency will continue.