Only Ad Agencies Can Put Themselves Out of Business

Watching the Dollar Shave Club video take off last week, it got me wondering: How many brands out there can get by without advertising agency help? And what does it take for ad agencies to survive these days and in the future?

The rise of digital, social, and mobile marketing, on top of all the other traditional media, means more work needs to be done. More microtargeting of the audience. More tactics to pursue. More, uh, “deliverables” to produce. All of which requires more labor.

That requires a lot of heavy lifting, and most client-side marketers aren’t staffed or equipped to do it themselves. The emails? The direct mail? The in-store marketing? All the ways you entice people to discover a new app or service? That work needs to be done by some type of advertising or marketing agency. Frankly, it’s still just as much about interrupting our customers’ days as it as about engaging them. Much of it isn’t glamorous, but an agency that can do that stuff well won’t need to worry about going out of business.

It’s the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo.

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