In January, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising published a major report on: ‘The future of advertising and agencies – a ten year perspective’. It concluded that ‘agencies will need to re-invent themselves’ as ‘non-traditional areas of marketing communications’ grow’.

Some have extrapolated from this that current agency structures based on procedure, account management and meetings galore allow agencies a financial safety net in lieu of ideas that are below par. They point to the emergence of businesses that sell ideas or advertising on-line as one solution, since they do away with most of the procedure and offer the essentials.

And since clients and agency groups are increasingly and openly saying that they don’t care where the ideas come from as long as they work, why have an agency relationship at all?

On the face of it, this reading of developments might appear excessively negative, but given the recent emergence of the power of the Internet through sites such as My Space and You Tube, there are now real grounds for concern.

Some respected industry figures have also started addressing the question. Hamish Pringle, director general of the IPA, believes there will be a place for virtual creative suppliers but says that they won’t affect the status quo. He recently dismissed companies such as OpenAd in The Independent as a: “small online outfit unlikely to trouble the big boys’.

Judie Lannon, a marketing consultant and former planning director of JWT opened the debate up still further. She suggested that a company like OpenAd.net would be a good place to buy one-off ad ideas, but not a whole campaign, because of the need for ‘to-ing and fro-ing, dialogue, and refining’.

Katarina Skoberne, co-founder of OpenAd.net (pictured), is predictably bullish about the ability of on-line companies such as her own to deliver on-going campaigns. Even though, as users of a relatively new operation, her clients such as Emap, Lastminute.com, Make Poverty History and a local representative of Mercedes Benz have not yet tested the longevity of ideas they have bought.

All bought work after posting a brief on OpenAd.net’s website, which has an on-line community of both freelance and agency creatives, currently numbering 7200 in 115 countries. A client services team supported each, albeit a team concerned only with getting the brief right and then delivering the basic idea, sometimes in as little as 24 hours

Despite the lack of account managers normally associated with nurturing long-running campaigns, Skoberne argues: “Many great ideas for long-running campaigns have come to creatives in a flash and have needed little, if any, refinement over the years. One of the best recent examples is the long running ‘Wassup’ campaign for Budweiser, which was a student film, an idea, and all that was added to it was the brand. Consequently, great ideas can be procured from a growing number of sources, as we see increasingly with Professional User Generated Content.”

And she thinks there is no reason why agencies should not use OpenAd.net as an on-going resource: “briefing our creatives when a campaign needs to move on, just as they would brief their own creative teams.”

Nor is she alone in her beliefs. Charlie Robertson used to be planning director of Bartle Bogle Hegarty before he founded virtual brand strategy consultancy Red Spider 13 years ago. It recently helped an ad agency in California win an important pitch by working remotely with it, having met the managing director of the agency just once, 12 years earlier.

Robertson is convinced that on-going relationships can be forged between advertising suppliers and clients over the net and even argues that ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ in most agencies can detract from putting together a focused, on-going campaign.

He says: “A lot of agencies lose clients because they lack the ability to define campaign ideas and stick to it. So much babble and going back and forth can take folk off track and disguise a lack of rigour in defining the brand idea. It’s audience insight and the creation of a compelling proposition that spawns execution after execution.”

Of course, not everyone agrees with Skoberne and Robertson. James Kirkham, managing director of digital strategy agency Holler, whose clients include E4, Mercury Records, and Virgin Holidays, is one of those who doubts whether long-running campaigns are achievable through an online medium because of the lack of dedicated account handlers.

He argues: “You could clearly ‘buy’ an idea or a concept no problem, but most of the campaigns that we are involved with are really organic and change with loads of variables. That means we can respond to different conditions and climate changes often making them even more successful’.

 Brian Mansfield, managing director at branding agency Blue Marlin Brand, who’s clients include Unilever, Fosters, and Nestle, counters this by suggesting clients simply use on-line ideas providers in much the same way as they might use a ‘bricks and mortar agency’:

He says: “Social or commercial context does change, for example animal activism killing off the PG Tips chimps. But if this were to happen during the life of a campaign, you need to rethink. And isn’t that time to re-brief online again? Access to talent is more important, and conventional structures won’t endure in the new media age he quality of the idea and the insight it taps into depends on the quality of the client brief and the strength of the big creative team.”
 

Perhaps while on-line advertising suppliers are still an emerging force, it is too early to say what effect they will ultimately have on the media business as a whole. Certainly, different clients will always want different things from the professionals who create their advertising. Some will look for the security of an agency relationship, while others will enjoy the freedom of buying ideas on-line.

Virtual ideas companies may not be for everyone, but they are clearly not going away, either. If traditional agencies fail to adapt to the trend, they will miss out on supplying clients with a speedy and viable service.