Steve Hall

Over the past decade, a myriad of published articles have lamented the demise of advertising agencies and what should be done to improve a struggling operating model. In fact, searching for "death of ad agencies" returns 114 million Google results. That's a lot of negativity! But, as with any major shift, more attention is given to the negative aspects instead of innovative models which rise from an ever-evolving landscape. The agency model as we know it is not completely gone. It has morphed into something different with new players, technologies and methodologies for driving business.

Agency managers vs. agency creatives: it's a relationship often fraught with friction and discord. How can you find a healthy balance between the two sides?...

For the better part of the past year, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang has been trumpeting what he calls the collaborative economy. Loosely defined, it’s all about people getting what they need and want from each other without buying. Think Uber, BlackJet, Rent the Runway, Airbnb, LendingClub, etc. I reached out to Jeremiah to ask him what this shift means for brands and how they need to rethink their marketing efforts to mirror the changes brought about by the oncoming collaborative economy.

I reached out to several folks in ad agency space and asked them how they face change, deal with feet-draggers and successfully convince and inspire people to adopt the necessary changes an agency faces as it grows, wins new clients or gets acquired.

In a nutshell, a creative wants a trusted, enthusiastic partner who can bring insight, savvy, honesty and inspiration to the table.

Collaboration. There’s a lot of talk about how it can help improve workflow and your end product. There’s the notion that two minds are better than one. And there’s the notion that when you’re on a team, each team member motivates the other to achieve greater things…and to achieve them on time!

It’s an age-old battle…uh. excuse me…relationship between agency account managers and agency creatives. It’s a relationship that, at times, can be the best kind of relationship and, sadly, at other times, can be the most disastrous.

Just because your ad agency is big doesn't mean your better. Sometimes small is the way to go.

If you hadn’t noticed, in the world of advertising, things come and things go. What’s cool today is passé the next. It’s a fickle business with an inherent lemming-like underpinning that almost requires brands to quickly jump on the latest trend lest they be viewed as stodgy and out of touch.

Since the advent of YouTube, and even before, online video has become (or most certainly should become) an integral component of every marketer’s tool kit. Why? Because people are visual, they like to be entertained and when they want the answer to a question, they don’t want to work too hard to get it. Video delivers on all three fronts.

A little over a decade ago, blogging was something done by individuals, certainly not big brands – or brands of any size, for that matter. Flash forward to today; everyone’s blogging.

Music. It stirs the emotions. It sways the mindset....

Can Zuckerberg, whose baby now realizes 41% of its quarterly advertising revenue from smartphone and tablet-centric promotions, really make a go of it when recent Pew research find teens have a "waning enthusiasm for Facebook"?

While many have chastised Cole for his tweets, this is why we think his controversial tweets are smart marketing.