Agency Seminar: Digital Immigrants v Digital Natives

The idea of digital as a different way of working was discussed by the panel of Nick Manning (Ebiquity), Mark Read (WPP), Paul Phillips (AAR), Greg Grimmer (Hurrell Dawson Moseley and Grimmer) and Nigel Morris (Isobar) at this morning’s ‘Future of the Media Agency’ seminar.

The panel picked up on a generational aspect to the digital world, with Paul Phillips illustrating a split forming between “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”.

Phillips felt that businesses are more likely to prosper if they have a “digital native” in control of their marketing activity. This is in contrast to a “digital immigrant” who would look to see digital as one of many channels as compared to technology to build the entire business model around.

In terms of digital v media agencies, Mark Read said that there may be a split in the future of digital and media in the same way that media split from creative back in the ’80s. This is primarily due to media agencies being unable to keep up or adapt with the speed of change within their digital arms.

Morris also quoted a recent survey of CMO’s in the US where it was felt by one CMO that if “we can’t crack digital, we won’t exist”, illustrating the need for all business to embrace and adapt to the digital world, or die.

It also was felt to be a challenge for a modern client – in the ’80s a marketing director may have had two agency relationships whereas there would be a wide roster today including media, creative, digital, experiential, dm and many more. Paul Phillips said it was important for a client to find an agency they can trust, whatever area of the business that may be.

Nigel Morris stated that whatever the agency is, they have to understand technology, with Mark Read drawing the contrast between a media agency knowing what is “cool” compared to a digital agency that knows what “works”.

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