Traditional Vs. Interactive Agency

Will the traditional or interactive advertising agency win the battle for dominance in the future?

This debate has raged in the ad community for quite some time now and many ardently believe that interactive agencies will reign victorious. The reasoning stems back to a mixture of interactive agencies beginning to win “agency of record” posts mixed with the decline of traditional media consumption. Yet the down side being many interactive shops are relatively small agencies that sometimes can’t handle the sheer amount of work from larger brands and bigger concepts.

On the flip side, the traditional rooted agency has structure on it’s side. It already knows how to create big picture, original creative work in a timely fashion and take on the volume of the big brand. Yet the same structure can often cripple it in response to quick fire needs such as negative publicity on social media feeds such as twitter or blogs.

Ultimately my money is on the idea agencies. At the end of the day it’s great to be able to spread the word across the globe or respond quickly to negative twitter backlash; but, if there is no great creative concept that will cut through the clutter there is no point in getting started in the first place. Today the “idea agencies” tend to be rooted in traditional; yet, interactive shops are rapidly catching up to speed.