Adapt or Die Time: Forrester looks to "interaction agencies"

(Image credit: redmeat.com) 

Forrester Research analysts Sean Corcoran, Dave Frankland and Vidya Drego just completed a report called "The Future of Agency Relationships" that challenges marketers and their agencies to evolve their relationships and their offerings.

The executive summary on Forrester's site, where the report can be purchased, explains its premise:

Agencies continually reinvent themselves to serve their clients — they have to quickly adapt to changes in marketing strategy, media, technology, and society. And with the rise of social media and digital proliferation, we are entering an Adaptive Marketing era. In this era, mass media is no longer the foundation of marketing communication, forcing yet another change in the expectations of what marketing agencies can and should deliver. Marketers should assess their partners using the three I's — ideas, interaction, and intelligence — to select the right partners. Marketers who change their thinking will lay the groundwork for partners that are more agile, can build long-term relationships with active customers and communities, and can use data to drive real-time decisions.

Much of the study primarily addresses the traditional advertising agencies who thrived in the "Mad Men" era of the 1950s through 1970's and had to adapt through the "Unbundled era" of the 1980s through 2000 and into the Internet era of the present decade.  The analysts are advising their marketing clients inside companies to revise the way they evaluate their agency partners to make sure they have evolved to be successful and useful to them during the current "Adaptive Marketing" era.

It's an interesting study and parallels much of our own thinking regarding how all strategic communications firms need to evolve and adapt in order to best serve the changing needs of their clients. A couple of my key takeaways are:

"Analytics is the new black for agencies." 

Clearly, the agencies that are able to help their clients with holistics strategies based on analysis of the right data that successfully connects them with their customers and potential customers will be the ones that marketers will hire and rehire in the future. 

"The interactive agency of record will die."

The analysts believe interactive marketing will become obsolete as the most valued agencies will be interaction agencies that successfully work across the broader mix of media (Forrester calls them paid, owned and earned.)

"Agencies (and other marketing outsourcers) will become more important than ever."

The speed of advancement in new technologies require specialists to effectively (and efficiently) reach customers and adapt to shifts in customer behavior and buying patterns. 

Agencies indeed need to adapt or die to continue to be valuable to their marketing clients, as media become less critical influencers of buying decisions.  I'm encouraged by the Forrester Report as it confirms what we believe -- that the agencies that start with strategy and an understanding of the right messaging to engage with customers have a leg up in the race to be the right marketing partner.  Strategic communications firms entrenched in PR principles already are content-based and have embraced technologies themselves -- or through partners -- to bring the analytics needed to help marketers reach customers directly, as well as through the shifting influencer channels.

Let the race continue.