Big Hello Design

AMV talks digital

September 26th, 2008

Congratulations to everyone who made it into nma’s annual Top 100 Interactive Agencies guide this week. I love the idea of digital specialists, but want to discuss why we at AMV think it’s time to blow apart the myth of what a traditional ad agency thinks about digital.

Let’s start by being very clear on two things: first, advertising is constantly evolving; second, ad agencies are all about tapping into consumer behaviour. In the 1930s, BBDO broke ground with creative programming of radio ads. In the 1950s TV ads were new and hard to understand, but someone cracked it and we all know where we’ve ended up. Ad agencies respond to new technologies, sometimes driving consumer take-up, sometimes following the consumer.

Digital is ubiquitous and has truly infiltrated life in so many ways. Thus, it’s very normal for ad agencies now to have a real role in driving digital forward in the lives of our brands and their consumers. The perception that we sit here in an ivory tower merely looking to put a TV ad online via YouTube is just not accurate. We understand consumers and so have permission, and indeed the commercial need, to build digital elements into strategies and creative work.

So what about the practicalities of getting into a world where people have been nurtured on a diet of TV, radio and print, all wrapped up by the wonderful invention of the retained account? It’s true to say that adding digital into a place like AMV is no small task, so from a structural point of view the first rule about AMV Digital is that there is no AMV Digital. We’re more of an insurgence than a department, with digital specialists dropped into the disciplines that make up AMV. This way we can have an osmotic effect on the whole company and be open for business right from the start, avoiding being in one corner and ignored.

We’re now at a point where the agency understands that digital isn’t free, might not be the quickest turnaround and that we have to take time to cut through the 90% that’s crap to find that Really Brilliant Thing.

And here is where I see a major difference in what an ad agency or a digital specialist can deliver for any brand. Creativity is the thing we live or die by. We can take time to get to the perfect solution and more often than not would rather not do something at all if we didn’t feel it was right for the client. This is what, if anything, digital agencies can learn from ad agencies. Some are doing this already, I’m sure, but if more borrowed this tried and tested route it might help us achieve our common goal of getting digital first on the agenda of every client.

Charlie Cannell, Director of digital services, AMV BBDO

(Taken from http://www.mad.co.uk)

Charlie makes a good point. To sum up the above - just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, something many agencies forget. Really great work comes from a simple, pure, human truth or insight, this is not AMV’s sole domain but the responsibility of us all.

Go Badges Go!

September 5th, 2008

What’s the most important thing when promoting an agency? We say badges! They are made with bright day-glo and Pantone papers. Drop us a ‘hello’ for your free set! Wahoo!