International media agency giant PHD has launched a new book outlining the changes and challenges the industry will face over the next five years.
Media Agency 2014: PHD on the Future of the Media Agency is credited to Mark Holden, managing partner of PHD’s Sydney, Australia office, and journalist Suzy Bashford. The 65-page document examines how shifts in technology, consumer behaviour and client expectations will force media agencies to alter their structure and operations.
Among the book’s key predictions is the continued blurring between previously distinct media categories. For example, PHD believes that the tendency of consumers to go online to view content that would traditionally be seen on TV will increase, an evolution that could render the separate roles of the television buyer and online buyer obsolete.
By 2012, according to the agency, media firms are likely to employ “audiovisual” buyers, whose responsibilities would encompass multiple platforms.
Media Agency 2014 also projects that mobile devices will become a significant enough platform that some agencies will employ mobile planning and buying specialists, and that the distinctions between entertainment and advertising, consumers and publishers and real and online experiences will become more blurry.
In addition, PHD expects clients to demand more accountability and transparency from media agencies.
While Holden acted as the point person for the project, said Fred Forster, president of PHD Canada, the book’s insights arose from discussions involving the leaders of several PHD offices around the world, including his own.
“I don’t think we started out to write a book. We started out by saying, what is this agency going to look like five years down the road based on our changing media landscape,” said Forster. “What ended up happening was a compendium of ideas around what a media agency needs to look like in five years’ time.”
Forster said publishing the book positions PHD as a thought leader in the evolution of media.
“We have no reason to keep it internally. We want to invite dialogue and conversation, and the more the better,” said Forster. “It’s important for us to get our ideas out there, for people to know that we have some ideas about what the future is for us and for media.”
Forster added that some of the structural shifts predicted in the book are already happening in his office.
“It’s a whole different way of thinking in terms of putting messages out there, so what that means internally is a lot of training, structural change in terms of having our digital people and buying people doing a lot of the same things, and changes in the way you write plans and present ideas to clients,” said Forster.
Media Agency 2014 is available as a free electronic download from the PHD blog, PioneeringPHD.com, as well as in a hard-copy edition.
