There’ll be few athletes at the Olympics competing in multiple events. Even Usain Bolt, who will run in the 100m and 200m, won’t be lining up for the marathon or shot-put. He’s become a world-beater by focusing on a specialist set of skills. If he tried to run the marathon as well as the 100m he likely wouldn’t qualify for the finals of either.
Yet, as an industry, we seem to be determined to do everything. Media companies now have creative departments, PR agencies have built teams of developers, and digital agencies are offering everything from user-centred design to pay-per-click (PPC). We’re becoming an industry of generalists, in a time where skills are becoming ever more specialist.
The appeal of becoming a generalist is obvious – more areas of work for which we can bill clients. And, to be fair, there’s an obvious appeal for clients – fewer agencies to co-ordinate, fewer agencies to pay fees to and, in an ideal world, seamless campaign delivery across all platforms. But can one agency ever do everything brilliantly?
Can one agency identify the customer experience map, create the advertising campaign, build the website, run the experiential activity, book the media placements, plan the SEO and PPC and manage the social content? Possibly, but not well.
It’s a full-time job doing any of those things. Yes, a big agency can build new teams around specialisms or buy and integrate specialist companies, but unless everyone in the agency – including accounts teams, planners, creatives – understands the specialisms, the newly acquired skills won’t be utilised to their fullest.
But, if agencies narrow our focus we’ll have the time to deepen it. Rather than trying to learn a little about everything we can learn a lot about specific things. And this will only improve our work, and ultimately the impact on our clients’ businesses.
For instance, focussing on specific services allows digital agencies more time to research and test the technologies we work with. A good example is the contactless payments and robotics we combined to create Krispy Kreme’s #HoleInTheWall doughnut ATM - the communications for which were run very successfully by another specialist.
By narrowing our focus, we become far better at what we do and, as a result, we deliver better results for our clients. Which is what it’s all about. Because in the long-term, if our clients do better the whole industry does better. So maybe we should all park our Olympic sized egos, stop entering every race, and try to win just one. We’ll do the best by ourselves in the long-run.
Sam Taylor works on client services and business development at Kerve Creative
This advertisement feature is brought to you by the Marketing Agencies Association, supporters of the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Agencies hub
