Great “confessions” article. I thought this was an interesting take on things:
Do traditional agencies fake it with digital?
Yeah, definitely. We find that there’s a major name, and they’ve got an outpost in a major city. They say, meet the head of our digital team. It’s one person scared shitless that if they get a lot of digital work he’s got no team. He’s got to pretend he’s got a team, and if he wins it he’s got to use a vendor behind the scenes to get it done and build a transition plan to migrate the work to his team if he builds it.
Why still?
It’s hard. When it comes to digital work, you’ve got some serious competition when it comes to hiring those people. It can be tough to find the right people, the people who can do the strategic thinking, deal with clients and constantly shift their focus among different brands — that’s not an easy mindset. Digital is far more complicated. We have to deal with the messaging, creativity, interaction, platforms. A big part of the job is just keeping up with technology.