Mediabrands’ George on Bridging the Silicon Valley-Madison Avenue Divide

What shift going on right now is under-appreciated?
This agency trading desk thing is a big deal. It’s not a phase. There are open concerns around compensation models. But that aside, clients are getting great value, agencies are getting fair returns, the right publishers are getting compensated and consumers are getting more relevant ads. We want to be the performance-based compensated agency. Stop rewarding us for activity and start rewarding us for results. Agency trading desks are giving us higher confidence in understanding what performance ought to be.

What’s the biggest challenge facing agencies?
For creative agencies the challenge is “what is my role?” because the traditional notion of the brand steward is eroding. Many clients want great creative but they can buy it from a small specialist shop and use a big media agency to distribute it. There will always be clients that have significant needs, but it’s hard to justify for a big global brand that does a few difference messages a year that you don’t need a big creative agency network. On the media side, there’s frustration on the client side to understand the implication of separation of media and creative. I don’t think the automatic answer is to reintegrate. But there’s been significant damage done by keeping them separate.

It used to be Google that was feared as distermediating agencies. Should agencies worry about technology displacing them?
What we’re likely to see is that clients will hold agencies to be more efficient in what they do. The smart agencies are figuring out that technology can enable that. It’s more of a dependency than a threat. We need to figure out how to use technology to be more effective. That’s what clients demand. Marketing isn’t getting easier. Clients expect more from us and expect us to manage it. It doesn’t matter if Google is the point solution. The client is more likely to hold us accountable to do that. If Google allows us to perform a function with a tool, then why wouldn’t I use them? If I don’t make a dime on commoditized labor in any event, what’s the point? That’s not the game anymore. That’s not where the margin opportunities are. We want to get compensated by high-impact, strategic work that drives business results. Google won’t give that to you. You still need a highly strategic capability to do that. You have to combine the human competency with smart tools, then you have a good business.