WARC’s Future of Strategy Report 2019 highlighted how strategy as a discipline is changing – looking to new areas such as customer experience while battling competition from non-agency shops.
A survey of 800 senior strategists found almost half were doing more experience strategy work for clients this year, while a quarter indicated that work for direct-to-consumer brands had increased notably.
As CX rises up the marketing agenda, expertise in this area is also driving demand for non-agency strategic services in the shape of consultancies, which have used their tech and data heritage to position themselves as experience experts.
Read more: The Future of Strategy 2019
Accenture Interactive, one of the biggest of this new breed of consultancy, made a statement of intent when it bought creative agency Droga5 in April.
“The future of brand building is not just about creating great ideas; it’s about creating great experiences,” said Brian Whipple, global CEO Accenture Interactive.
Read more: Accenture Interactive CEO wants to create a different kind of agency
Agencies can take some heart from a study of senior client-side marketers in the UK which showed that people and talent remain a crucial part of agencies’ draw for clients. But the research by SCOPEN also warned that the generally high-level of UK agency performance in the creative space is in danger of becoming something of a “commodity”.
Sourced from WARC
