Interesting Snippets

In the early days of electricity, companies would have had a head of electricity because it was new, scary and might kill you. Now companies have a head of Internet or head of digital because it’s new and scary.
“We’re at a point of inflection from the Internet being a specialised thing to being, like electricity, something you have to do to do your job better

Technology startups also digitize away agency roles. MediaMath, DataXu, and X + 1 are racing to deliver automated ad-buying platforms; Buildabrand.com [1] has reduced the branding process to an algorithm that produces customized logos in five minutes; Lotame is doing audience data management, which tracks every dollar spent and how it performs. Web 2.0 stars like Facebook and Foursquare are starting to work directly with brands, sometimes cutting agencies out of the conversation entirely.

The attack on the industry is also coming from agency expats. Former Crispin Porter + Bogusky exec John Winsor recently opened Victors & Spoils in Boulder, Colorado. Victors & Spoils has virtually no staff and “operates on the principles of crowdsourcing”

Conde Nast’s creative-services unit, CND Studios, will now accept assignments from clients regardless of whether the ads are earmarked for Conde’s websites, and, as such, marks a significant shift for the publisher, which in the past has only done creative work for advertisers buying space in one of its publications. Conde produced content for Kenneth Cole’s retail site as well as ads that appeared on YouTube and Facebook. “We do a lot of creative services for our clients,” said Conde Digital Chief Revenue Officer Drew Schutte. “Last year we were doing over 30 custom programs per quarter, and now we’re doing 50, and often people were asking us, ‘I have this other thing I need you to do.’ And we had to pass on it. So we thought, ‘Why are we turning them away?’