Ad Agencies Are Building Out Their Own Consultancies to Better Compete for Digital Dollars. As consulting and IT firms continue to acquire agencies and add marketing services, traditional advertising companies have begun to fight back by launching practices to provide business-transformation counsel to help clients more effectively compete for customer dollars in the digital age. The media arm of the Paris-based holding company is taking a two-pronged approach. Two years later, Publicis Media launched its global business transformation practice. “This led the client to invest in new digital channels and change their content strategy for paid social activity.” Though digging deeper into client budgets sounds alluring, experts caution agencies to proceed with care and cultivate a clear understanding of the craft, along with the vision to integrate new disciplines across the enterprise. Maicon joined the Dentsu-owned agency in 2010. Currently, the team is working with Campbell Soup to identify emerging consumer shopping behaviors and recommend steps the marketer should take to more effectively meet the challenges of an evolving global landscape. "Great agencies have played a large role in the evolution of brands’ business for decades, and that should not be discounted." Such an undertaking “isn’t just communications,” he says. “It’s a shift in how you think about data, a shift in how you go to market, a shift in essentially your business model.
As consulting and IT firms continue to acquire agencies and add marketing services, traditional advertising companies have begun to fight back by launching practices to provide business-transformation counsel to help clients more effectively compete for customer dollars in the digital age.
“Marketers are keen to remain innovative and future-focused, so having consulting solutions available helps to ensure they’re always one step ahead of disruption stemming from technology and consumer change,” says Richard Hartell, global president of transformation at Publicis Media.
The media arm of the Paris-based holding company is taking a two-pronged approach. Its $3.7-billion acquisition of Sapient in 2014 added digital design and related services to the fold. Two years later, Publicis Media launched its global business transformation practice. As an example of tangible value, Hartell points to the group’s new “Predictor” study, an analysis of how AI, evolving payment methods and seamless shopping will impact banking, cars, consumer electronics and other sectors in the next five years. He also cites work for an undisclosed client that involved “an in-depth audience insights project with a panel of over 200 participants.”
As a result, the client “was better able to understand granular behaviors of millennial consumers within specific sites and across different devices,” he says. “This led the client to invest in new digital channels and change their content strategy for paid social activity.”
Though digging deeper into client budgets sounds alluring, experts caution agencies to proceed with care and cultivate a clear understanding of the craft, along with the vision to integrate new disciplines…
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