Breaking agency silos: Not the easiest, but absolutely a necessity

We've long been talking about the need to break down silos, but the reality is, they still exist - and quite prominently across industries. This is true in the ad agency world as well. According to the latest survey done by DENTSU CREATIVE titled "The power of modern creativity: Insights for today and tomorrow", majority of surveyed CMOs globally think that despite consumer behaviour having undergone rapid change, the agency model is yet to respond fully.

In fact, the study also saw the majority (78%) of CMOs feel that the silo-ed agency model is no longer fit for purpose, while 82% want to see agencies seamlessly combining capabilities to deliver new and innovative solutions. Around 51% of clients agreed that one of the major barriers to modern creativity is the silo-ed thinking which prevents the right blend of talent coming together to connect brand and experience, data and technology and culture and commerce.

Knowing this remains a problem, many agencies have now attempted to integrate offerings tying back creative and media. Managing director of Havas Hong Kong, Andrew Cawte said Havas was one of the early adopters in bringing creative and media services back together under one roof, resulting in 70 Havas Villages globally. By having one account management team and one strategy team working across all creative, social, media and eCommerce services, Cawte said Havas could ensure that a single strategic thread runs through everything that clients do and that everyone is pulling in the same direction, working to achieve shared success. However, the road to getting there wasn't always easy but the key is in putting the client first.

Cawte added that the need for integrated services was driven home for him personally in a recent pitch where the agency was asked to participate in what seemed to be a full-service pitch for a global hotel group. "We soon realised the pitch was actually the client looking for an agency to manage their agencies. At that point we withdrew, as it sounded like an impossible job. Competing agencies all want to take thought leadership, all want a greater share of the client’s time, all want their strategy, tactics and ideas to be employed. It must be like herding cats and it’s no wonder that a client, feeling pulled in so many different directions, might feel the solution is to employ yet another agency to manage the situation for them," he shared. 

Antony Yiu, CEO of PHD Hong Kong said PHD creates bespoke working teams by including the right talents across Omnicom group to work with its clients. “We also have OMG Fuse, our internal content and creative unit to work closely with clients on an all-integrated solutions,” he said. Due to the ongoing innovations that it can drive both online and digital formats, the agency also works with clients on their existing creative partners from the brainstorming stage, rather than just copying the above the line assets and adapting them for digital, Yiu added. 

While network agencies such as PHD and Havas are taking the lead to turn things around, there are still plenty of agencies out there struggling to onboard this integrated offering. Yiu added that the struggles many agencies face often comes due to a lack of talent that can bridge the gap between creative and media agencies. A special calibre is needed to speak from the needs and views from creative agencies, as well as possible media innovations. He also shared that many agencies are good at selling an integrated offering, but they fail to deliver because the mindset is still mainly either creative or media driven. He shared:

The so-called integrated offering becomes a simply cost efficiency exercise, rather than truly being an integrated offering to clients.

"Change isn't easy. It requires vision, hard work, and resilience. It also requires an organisational culture that empowers people to build something different," said Tim Lindley, managing director of VaynerMedia APAC - an agency that has long prided in creating meaningful creative work fit for mediums. "For years, agencies have built empires through a combination of consolidations and spin-offs. Not only does this put skills into siloes, it also creates fragmented teams with no unifying vision or incentive for change,” he added.

Currently, the firm is putting its utmost effort into building an agency incentivised to move faster than anyone else, to bring different disciplines together in the most efficient way possible, and not to fear cannibalising something it has done in the past, said Lindley.

Starts with culture 

The emergence of siloed agencies came when media first split from advertising agencies to form stand-alone independents back in the 1990s. That’s when the global holding companies embarked on a twenty-year wave of mergers and acquisitions, which created situations where former partners were thrust into competition and former competitors were thrust into partnership, said Havas Media’s Cawte. “The political and logistical fall-out from that makes it much harder for those holding companies to now remerge their agencies,” he said.

Indeed, uniting all siloes is the ultimate mission that agencies want to achieve. Havas Media’s Cawte shared that within each Havas Village it starts with culture and collaboration where there are cafés with coffee machines, beer taps and more, where the staff all congregate for lunch or drinks and talks. “The cross fertilisation of ideas happens when copywriters are in conversation with planners, art directors with strategists, social content creators with data analysts, media buyers with production managers, managing directors with university graduates,” he said.

And because we all work together, play together and pitch together, that familiarity and understanding of each other, comes across to clients.

With a single strategy team and account management team working across all disciplines, we offer a genuinely collaborative and integrated service.

While a holding group might consist of multiple agencies with overlapping roles, the key is to embrace the overlap, and most importantly nurturing talent who have the humility to admit they don’t know everything, but the mindset to learn everything they can, said VaynerMedia’s Lindley.

“We put media and creative back together and added deep analytical capabilities, production, and specialist skill sets such as commerce, influencer, and Web3. We have one team, not multiple agencies that never talk. We have integrated account leads who understand every element of our business. Our media experts help build creative briefs, and our creatives obsess over platform updates,” Lindley added.

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