I just read an interesting article on the Advertising Age website. The author, Phil Johnson, talks about the trend toward agencies wanting to incorporate more interactive capabilities and provides some insights from his own efforts.

Phil talks a bit about his own frustrations with trying to increase his agency’s interactive offering. The following observation is worth reading.

One deliberate step I took was to discover what truly separated interactive agencies from ad agencies that were pitching interactive capabilities. I’m simplifying, but I found three qualities in the interactive agencies that were missing in traditional agencies.

1. The truly interactive shops had senior technology leadership that was shaping agency direction and client engagements. That’s a big difference than having a wicked smart programmer who’s dancing to the tune of the creative department.
2. They worshipped information architecture. The interactive agencies had a deep respect for a discipline to which ad agencies, at best, play lip service.
3. The agencies that got it didn’t try to push interactive engagements through a process developed 100 years ago for advertising. If you’re an ad agency, you will need to break some bones to reset them correctly. We should be walking again soon.

Because of my experience working for agencies in a technical role via Agency Fusion, I can tell you that most agencies we work with haven’t quite figured out the three things quoted above.

Most agencies aren’t lead by people who understand the interactive world at all. Most agencies don’t seem to know what information architecture is and the fact that it’s every bit as important as design. Most agencies try to shoe-horn interactive into the same processes they use for print and everything else.

We do work with a few agencies who either truly get the interactive world or, if they don’t, they trust us enough to let us help them succeed on interactive projects. I’d love to see the rest of our clients move away from hiring us to be “a wicked smart programmer who’s dancing to the tune of the creative department.”

If you’re trying to build a stronger interactive offering at your agency, read Phil’s article and spend some serious time pondering his three observations. If you have questions or comments, please post them or feel free to contact my company for help.