Integrator role seen for advertising agencies

Business model will increase value proposition for client.

Fragmentation in the media world has led to everyone doing everything and value spaces having lost focus. A one-source point that can help the client coordinate and aggregate communication across all platforms is the need of the hour.

With media proliferation happening at a rapid pace, the question arises: Do advertising agencies need to become integrators of the overall brand solutions?

Marketing consultant Rama Bijapurkar firmly believes in a model where ad agencies need to examine the role of an integrator, taking the load off the client.

However, at a recent advertising symposium, she stressed that adopting such a model would increase the value proposition that an advertising agency actually brings to the table.

In the present scenario, ad agencies cater only to the creative mandate. All other aspects of communication and marketing are looked after by specialised entities.

In a nutshell, the client "� and not the agency "� plays the role of an integrator, transforming other parties involved into mere vendors.

While ad gurus agreed to the basic proposition, the approach suggested to be adopted in the future seemed to evoke diverse responses.

Arvind Sharma, chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett, said, "For agencies to don the role of integrators they need to bring on board the right kind of people with multi-dimensional expertise."

However, Lowe's president and COO Pranesh Misra felt that creative agencies would revert to being full-service agencies in future. He said, "Clients today are wasting a lot of time on integrating marketing and advertising services of different specialists. The future will necessitate that the client and the agency strategise jointly, and the agency will then ensure execution, across all mediums." Media analysts foresee the emergence of an umbrella agency, under which a number of specialist shops will function over the next couple of years.

Interestingly, the global trend, too, seems to be aligning in the same direction. Recently, HSBC globally partnered with the WPP group for all its communication needs.

HSBC now works with JWT for its creative and with MindShare, for its media services. For all other specialised services, HSBC will utilise WPP's outfits.

Although Santosh Desai, president, McCann Erickson, pointed out that the old practice of full-service agencies would mean sacrificing premium income, integration must surpass unification, and ad agencies must begin providing business-building support to clients.

"The change one is likely to see is that agencies will own the brand conceptually, and there will be overlapping with cross-fertilisation of abilities, across all specialised services," said Desai.

Group M CEO, south Asia, Ashutosh Srivastava, threw a different perspective saying the integrator could either be in-house, outsourced or played by the creative agencies.

Painting a more drastic picture, Starcom managing director Ravi Kiran opined that the future would see the emergence of an orchestrator and that the term integrator is passe.

He said, "Who plays the role of an orchestrator will depend on which specialist unit has the ability to do so. It could be a creative agency, a media agency, a below-the-line specialist or an interactive agency."

Disagreeing with Kiran, Sripad Nadkarni, consultant, MarketGate Consulting, said, "The role cannot be taken away from the client, who will always remain the final aggregator. There is a definite need for the agency to ensure that the essence of the brand is not compromised on, across the media mix."

He further said the future would bring in more of an intellectual aggregation, with the agencies playing a role of an equity monitor.

What emerged a consensus was that creative/advertising agencies wanting to play the role of integrators effectively would need to take the route of outsourcing, or acquiring, or synergising with specialist units to ensure the delivery of a total communication package.

All said and done, this trend is being seen fast emerging globally, and it is only a matter of time before the concept trickles down to India.