Someone I know recently moved into a new role split across two agencies. Once of the agencies is below the line, the other well above the line and they are going to be working with both.
What interested me in this move was that one of the big reasons why it was so interesting to them was that they wanted to get solid industry experience in an ATL environment, something this person had not had before, and they were very keen to take this up.
ATL is an interesting thing for me, as I’ve often chatted to people about how those in the TV side of the ATL world have not really been exposed to the benefits and features that we in the digital world have taken for granted for some time now – and yet this is going to change for them almost overnight at some time in the very near future.
A big thing for me, and something I’ve been talking about for a fair few years, certainly since 1999 (I distinctly remember a heated debate at an agency bash in Covent Garden when the digital team were speaking with some of the TV creatives and it almost got out of hand), is that when TV starts to get delivered over an IP network, TV people are going to be suddenly thrust into the world we now inhabit and will have a massive learning curve to grab hold of.
I know of many large integrated agencies around London who are, at this very moment, cross training a lot of their staff in all aspects of marketing, digital and not digital, to make sure everyone knows and understands how to work together.
I don’t think any of us, back in the day, imagined that IPTV would mean anything like P2P and Joost, or the BBC iPlayer (NO MAC VERSION!!! ARGHHH!) but even so, the way TV advertising is going to change, and therefore the TV people change with it, is a massive leap forwards. I know it’s not mainstream yet and we’re still glued to our Sky+ and Freeview boxes, but it can’t be too far off now.
I personally think TV is going to be a very exciting place to be in the next few years as those people grab hold of the space we inhabit. I mean, let’s not beat around, TV still takes a whopping great percentage of the ad spend in most client’s budgets, and it’s still seen as a very effective medium by many a marketing director. We should not ignore this, and the fact that they will soon be playing in the same space as us is something we all have to think seriously about.
This kind of leads me on to a point I also discussed with some people recently – the fact that in agencies we still have specialist people in relation to digital – Head of Digital, Director of Digital, Digital Strategist etc.. The list goes on.
How long do we see this happening? Surely we’re all going to end up as just marketing experts in the long run? We don’t split creative teams up into PRINT CREATIVE or TV CREATIVE etc., but for some reason we still specialise in digital. I know a lot of this has to do with the current level of skills and experience but this surely won’t always be the case.
I firmly believe that ten years from now the role of Director of Digital will cease to exist and that separate digital teams within integrated agencies will have disappeared.
“New media” isn’t new any more. “Digital marketing” will become just plain old marketing.
Howard
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Tags: digital-marketing, digital marketing, digital, marketing, above-the-line, above the line, atl, tv, advertising, iptv, future
