by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) NEW YORK: The 2014 AdForum Worldwide Summit in New York City is done and dusted, and the highlights from Day 5, Friday 10 October, 2014, include the news that R/GA is to open in Cape Town!
RECMA
RECMA, the research organisation that monitors media agencies globally — including South Africa — is branching out into digital agencies and will be providing up-to-date knowledge early next year of what is happening among digital agencies in France, as a starting point.
Most important is the attribute aspect for digital: who are the real digital agencies and what does a genuine full-service digital agency comprise in terms of services, attributes and talent types? This will be a very interesting study and RECMA is highly rated by clients and agencies alike.
Advertising Agency Association of America
We then went to the 4As (Advertising Agency Association of America) and had a good discussion around pitching processes, speculative work, paid-for pitches, and remuneration in general. It is the kind of discussion that all ad industries have everywhere, and South Africa has very similar issues to the US. What was interesting was to hear the various points of view from the different consultants in the different markets.
R/GA
Our final agency visit was a highlight. Visiting R/GA is always a treat and Friday was no exception. It is just so far ahead of the pack — inventing products, solving business issues for clients, coming up with brilliant campaigns — it is one of the best agencies in the world at the moment.
Its network is expanding and, having just won a large chunk of Samsung business, it is opening up five new offices during the course of this year. R/GA will be opening in Cape Town as well, not because of Samsung but because it wants to be in the highly creative Cape Town community — this is a feather in our caps!
One of its innovations is a business-accelerator project for tech start-ups; highly successful, it has changed the way the agency works. Also, R/GA is not so sure that it is an agency any more — but it has not found a suitable replacement word.
Showing us work and case studies for Beats, we were inspired on this final day of the Summit.
And so it ended.
Next year
The Sprint Summit will be in London in 2015, and the New York dates are fixed.
So it is bye-bye, New York, until next year.
All the best
Johanna
@jomcdowell @agencyselection
#adforumsummit
Johanna McDowell is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), which stands at the forefront of the complex world of agency selection in South Africa, and she is one of the few experts driving this mediation and advisory service in SA and globally. Twice a year she attends AdForum Worldwide Summits as an international consultant, which helps her lead the SA advertising industry forward to keep in line with international trends and remain competitive. Follow her on Twitter at @jomcdowell.
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