I don’t usually use our agency blog to promote a competitor, but I just read an interview with Adam Kleinberg of interactive agency Traction, and I felt compelled to share some of his really sharp comments.

I think Adam is spot-on in his vision of the agency of the future, writing “Interactive, obviously. But more so, I think agencies are going to need to move up the value chain and become true strategic partners for their clients.”

I could not agree more!

Adam also brings up some interesting issues regarding business development. Particularly, the debate on doing spec creative. Adam noted that “[he] just emailed a potential client a half hour ago to tell them [they] wouldn’t do spec work.”

I have conflicting thoughts on that one. One side, doing spec creative cheapens your creative product and is done in a vacuum without actually colloborating with the client (which you would never do in a client working relationship.) On the other side of the argument, spec creative can help communicate a strategic concept in a way that even the smartest strategy or “insights” would miss. We are in the midst of a review where if we had not done spec creative, we would never had made the final round.

I’ll leave you with what I think was Adam’s most salient statement:

“What [agencies] can offer that is unique and invaluable [is] the abilities to uncover insights, to translate them into strategically relevant creative expressions of a brand, and to uncover opportunities to get those messages in front of the right audiences at the right time with the right vehicle.”

Jose Villa

President

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