Paul Isakson is in the branded utility camp. So am I, but allow me to point out the most important word in the passage below:
As an industry, we have to stop just looking for ways to “build brands” through messaging and start looking for ways to actually help people have better days and build better lives.
The key word is “just.”
Change isn’t as black and white as various change agents sometimes proclaim. It’s a gradual process where old and new co-mingle and overlap.
As I’ve said in other recently published posts, “messaging” isn’t dead, sick or necessarily a bad thing. It’s just (there’s that word again) that messaging can’t be a progressive company’s sole marketing effort.
And here is where we are in 100% agreement. So can agencies quickly move beyond the “just,” because clients need them too?
I don’t see the agencies of old caring too much about branded utility or social media, for that matter (not enough money in it). But that’s okay, because a new breed of bootstrapped, light on their feet communications collectives are rising to meet the challenges ahead.