What is interesting to see now however is that as digital evolves and becomes even more complex, the debate is now just as relevant to the digital space itself. The diversity of digital channels from search to mobile, content creation to social media is again, specialist.

At a technical level, even the concept of building a basic website often requires an agency make a choice whether they will use .net, or PHP, whether they will build all their solutions around sharepoint, develop their own inhouse CMS or become integrators of other systems. Do they need dedicated IA’s do their creatives have the muscle in action script etc.

The challenges here are the same, to have expertise, you need experts. Experts = headcount and you can’t carry headcount unless you have enough revenue coming from a particular channel (or area of focus) to justify the investment. I would take my hat off to any agency that can truly claim to have genuine experts in every field of digital both strategic and executional who are fully utilised but not overworked.

So this session on the ad:tech program should be interesting. Cora kicked off the Voice of the industry some time ago with a post about this topic and last week I was able to catch up with Jules from the Hallway to get his take on what the real questions are. To get another perspective we talked to Mike Zeederberg from Profero who takes the position of being both specialist and generalist which is another tactic…

Jules and Mike

I’d be really interested in your thoughts or questions for the panel and if you have any points to discuss here on the brain.
You can see the whole ad:tech program here and you can still book tickets.

In a recent article by David Meerman Scott, he advises marketers not to trust an advertising agency to build their website – is he right?  When it comes to websites, does an advertising agency understand what’s required and how to do it?

But what about trying to bring a digital agency in line, get them to understand your brand and the plethora of other campaign communications that need to stay aligned?  Do digital agencies know what to do when it comes to playing their part in your integrated campaigns?

If it’s all about different skill sets working together should one agency be responsible for bringing those skill sets together or should marketers be responsible for bringing together the right specialist agencies.   Do marketers get the best of breed under one roof?  Is the time spent having to work with different specialist agencies worth it?

I’d be interested to hear from marketers i.e. the clients (rather than agencies, integrated or specialist or otherwise, who obviously will have their own agendas) what works? what doesn’t? Has your experience been better when using a specialist digital agency? Or does your integrated agency provide all you need/want?