Over the years i’ve seen numerous ‘few man bands’ evolve out of the bigger agys when one techie guy, a PR man and one adman leave to do their own thing. When the economy was good they would have plain sailing for a while…and then reach a stagnation point.

In this economy however, they will need a lot more momentum to exceed the ‘gravitational force/escape velocity’ needed just to take off. Beyond that, only the ones who can embrace the “scalable intimacy” that Mike T. refers to will succeed even in the medium term, let alone the long term.

Anyways, it will be a most interesting time watching the Phoenix that arises from the ashes.

Ogilvy has been the steward of the American Express brand for 50 years. Same with Coke and McCann, BBDO and Pepsi, Levi’s and FCB. O&M in particular talks about “Brand Stewardship” which defines the role of the agency over time in the face of changing personnel on both the client side and account team.

My point is that consistent execution over time has always been required to build brands. What’s changed is the nature of that execution; the new tools and approaches required to be effective as we move from the era of broadcast media / mass marketing to the era of social media / interactive marketing.

The big agencies of today almost all made their name in print media, then were able to make the transition to television. Social media is fundamentally different from either, and the established agencies are struggling to deliver what brands need to be effective in the next wave.

And what is that, exactly? I call it scalable intimacy and think the agencies that can deliver it will dominate for the next 50 years.

As you are probably aware, there are many creative and pr agencies out there who want to implement (largely) good ideas but who do not have the technical skills to create it.

On the flip side, there are plenty of techy agencies who do not have the “slight of touch” and soft/creative skills that social media requires.

In my mind, the agency that will win through will be people like Robin’s (and KMP) who can manage both the relationship building side of social media as well as build the tools that make social media so useful…and who can offer strategic recommendations based on fact (or some fantastic buzz/sentiment monitoring and influencer analysis!)