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In Forrester’s research they show little overlap between the “big 5″ agency types–advertising, direct, media buying, interactive, and PR. This, to date, has been leading towards a splintering of agency relationships for clients where no one agency can provide all solutions. The race, it would seem will go to the swift — those who are more agile, grow new skill-sets internally and form long-term relationships with valuable solution providers.
What do you think? is the answer growing strong multi-disciplinary digital skills in one agency organization, eventually resolving this cross-vendor dilemma through service and skill consolidation? What do you see as the role of agencies in the ‘Adaptive Marketing’ future?
With 14 years of experience in Internet Development and Strategic Marketing Consulting, I approach solutions from both a strategic and technical perspective to produce online solutions and strategies ranging from Social Network Marketing, SEO/SEM, Site Development, Mobile Marketing and more with end-to-end metrics tracking performance. I live to chew up problems and spit out solutions. Oh, and I brew beer. Really good beer. 
Kevin,
If the past is any indicator, there’s no way the agencies heretofore described as “full-service” will refrain from bringing digital and social into their service offering. Some are already well on their way. We saw the same thing unfold with web design. It will probably start with partnerships, and quickly migrate to proprietary service offerings, either through acquisition or learned experiences. Too much at stake for large conglomerates to turn their backs on.
Absolutely, Eric. I think we saw a similar situation with general computer consulting in the 90s. Organizations which had typically turned to third-party specialty firms for their IT services began to integrate those skills into their workforce. The “full-service” agency of the near future will have to either develop these skills in-house or create strong partnerships with organizations providing those services. I’d even go one step further…they may need to simply purchase such a third-party specialty firm in order to expand their digital offering and side-step some growing pains. I think Disney was in a similar situation with their ‘partner’ Pixar films — when the partnership was about to come to an end, Disney realized how valuable an asset Pixar had become and bought them outright to remove the risk of the partnership dissolving.
Agencies will have to grow…as they did with radio, tv, web 1.0 (well, some did), etc, etc.