“Marketers don’t need agencies.” So says Mark Wnek, a man with a storied agency career, including a run as Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Lowe New York.
He thinks brands will benefit from bringing much of the work in-house.
Brands investing in their in-house capabilities is nothing new, but the level of complexity and the need to be always-on, like the web itself, have changed the score. One big change is the myriad of agency partners in the room. The concept of an agency of record, or lead agency (with an outstanding reel), doesn’t fit all that well in today’s world, where big ideas can take shape in a variety of ways.
I’m curious, would you be interested in going to the client side in a creative role?
I can see the benefits of such a move, particularly for social media marketing practitioners. The social voice of a brand really needs to be owned by the brand. A copywriter at an agency can act as the voice of the brand, but there’s too much distance there for the performance to carry much weight. The real voice of the brand, at least in social channels, needs to be on-premise.
