Ben Malbon has a great post at his blog Less, But Better, questioning whether agencies need innovation officers.  The comment stream is better than the post, but that was Ben's intention.

Jonathan Fields has a thought provoking post on a subject that everyone from Nick Carr to Henry Jenkins has written about.  The distraction of the web and the stream. But we need it.
The question Jonathan asks is whether there's a way to manage it effectively.

My comment back.

Wow. I am late to this conversation. Great question. We are challenged by the need to know and be in the loop and the need to find quiet time to think and create and write. Real dilemma is that if you think, create and write about the new stuff — social, digital, the people in the space, the ideas that emerge out of it — if you apply that thinking, knowledge and technology to clients and your own work, you sort of have to be there. Figuring out how to do it effectively is key. I am not sure that I have the discipline to do what you suggest. In some ways I like the serendipity of discovering what comes through the stream when I happen to check in (based on time available or when I’m not engaged with something more important.) The key, I believe, is to surround yourself with the right people. Others whose knowledge and content is inspiring and valuable. My choices for learning, staying up to speed and finding inspiration are to read  (the right books, magazines, novels) and cull the best ideas, content and links that my community shares. One feeds the other and they both feed my own ideas. If I ever get to the perfect formula for how to do it efficiently, I’ll let you know.

Bud Caddell, The Bucket Brigade, digital strategist, blogger has a great post and interesting deck on solving complex problems.  It's a little generic but promising.  My comment below.  (Saved here because I can never remember where and when I comment on stuff.)

Logical yes.  Thoughtful yes.  Hard to implement.  You will need masterful persuasion, a razor sharp understanding of individual and group motivation, and a carefully curated crowd of problem solvers.

Clay Shirky does argue this is possible and shares many examples in Cognitive Surplus re women's rights and transportation and others. But most were opt in, many were small scale, and even those with big ideas, i.e. PatientsLikeMe -- where patients share treatments and histories publicly (an approach that is the antithesis to the way health care and patients conceal informaiton) in order to help doctors assess treatment, get smarter and apply learnings from what does and doesn't work -- have few participants.

Zeus Jones attempted a great sustainability idea as part of Phizzpop a couple years ago at SxSW.  It never came to fruition because of red tape with local government.  Adrian Ho can share that nightmare with you.

And finally, we are seeing some crowdsourcing platforms slowly disappear or amount to little because of the wrong crowd participating or not enough of the right crowd.

Problems are still solved with small teams of smart, focused, committed people who have some kind of vested interested. Not necessarily based on extrinsic rewards -- purpose is a great motivator, too -- but a motivation that is self-directed.  (Read Daniel Pink if you haven't.)

Anyway, excited to see where this goes and to try the tools.  But a little skeptical that the tools alone will be enough.  The idea you have is great.  But ideas are easy.  Execution is everything. 

Hope I get to help this succeed.

Bud follows up on an @faris post re research. I am not a fan of bad research, but good research, the kind that Ideo does, is brilliant.

My response to Bud's post.

Ian Schafer has a great post on his blog arguing that the engagement model is the future of agencies. Well worth a read.  Below, my response.  Looking forward to engaging with Ian at next Tuesday's 4As session in Philadelphia on Ad Agency Transformation.

Ian,
Great post and provocative questions.  Agree with you that most awareness oriented agencies don't have a chance. But there are others, like Mullen, working to re-invent the model by re-defining integration.  We take an approach that looks down the funnel, realizing that consumers get to the top and then have multiple modes within which they may want to engage: learn, share, connect, transact, explore, be entertained.  Participation happens at different depths. If an agency has fully embedded and integrated capabilities that include PR, social influence, digital, technology and earned media (working hand in hand with paid media) it may be just as poised to succeed in the new age of marketing as the big guys who scaled message and delivery systems in the past. There are numerous models emerging: Co:, V&S, the engagement model, our Unbound model. Hopefully there will be room for us all and the chance to learn from one another.

The NY Times (always doing a great job at crowdsourcing and being digital) asks readers to weigh in on debate inspired by Gladwell's New Yorker piece on whether or not Twitter can inspire genuine mass movements, i.e. Freedom Marchers.

My comment:

Malcolm is smart, but he is making declarations so very early in the development of social media and platforms like Twitter. Once again he is doing what everyone does when they evaluate the new stuff; he's comparing it only to the past as opposed to what it might create. Imagine if you will that a couple of organizations, one in US, one in North Korea (or some other country that we may be rivals with but can reach digitally) created a way to connect classrooms of young kids via Twitter, Facebook, Skype, whatever. Imagine if they could not only share their lives, fears, anxieties, but actually interact and work on conflict resolution, or play at games where they are two opposing delegations. (There is an organization in Boston, Axis of Hope) that actually thinks this way. It is possible that across geographies and generations that the connections and interactions, fostered by social media and technologies like Twitter (don't forget that Twitter can connect us to the unwired parts of the world) we would create or inspire alliances that some day may actually result in a peace accord, or better cooperation around global warming, or joint efforts in bringing human rights to places from which it is woefully missing. Or maybe just teach two different cultures to understand each other and be better at conflict resolution.  Gladwell emphasizes that Freedom Marchers were more dedicated and had to make a greater commitment to their cause and whileTwitterers simply have to hit a button. (Easy commitment.) That may be true if we're talking only about that kind of action.  But there are bigger opportunities. We should stop focusing on what Twitter (and social media) isn't and dream about what it might possibly become.

@melex (Mel Exon, founding partner of BBHLabs) has a great post on the lab's blog about participation.  You should read it.

My response below:

Brilliant post, Mel. A simple road map for anyone thinking about this kind of stuff. Love that 360 circle by the way. So true. But it’s because people (agencies) sometimes do things just for sake of doing and to check off box. I think the smart way to start is with a consumer’s interaction or use of content, community, media, technology. Then structure engagement and ideas around that. Makes no sense to go or use something irrelevant. (Unless there’s an award show category ;-)) That’s another dumb reason agencies do things. Finally, as for participation, two current ideas resonate with me. 1. Thinking like the Grateful Dead and finding a way to let your most loyal customers join in on their terms, partly defining the experience and interaction. 2. New ways of influencing, whether it’s, as you say, entertaining/useful content, or something that drives more ongoing and daily interaction, or group involvement, both of which are achievable by thinking about how to apply gaming dynamics. And yes, clients may still opt for the TV spot cause it’s so damn easy. Has a beginning, middle, end and can be measured.

Your seven suggestions are great:

1.  Be entertaining or useful
2.  365 better than 360 (read the post, if you want explanation)
3.  Be true to your self and brand
4.  Short time frame campaigns
5.  Make a difference:  interesting happens do those who ARE interesting
6.  Don't declare death of anything (nothing goes away)
7.  Organizational behavior matters:  you have to express who your culture says you are

One of my favorite media thinkers and bloggers (and a very funny Twitterer) @benkunz had a smart post on media planning.

My response:

Ben
As always another great post. We've (the industry) has been talking now for years about how media is the new creativity. And that when it comes to strategy, that we have to be as concerned with insights regarding how consumers interact with media, content, technology and community as with how they relate to a brand or product category.

Media response is a smart way not only to buy media but to inspire the creative and content as well.  Some customers will prefer to opt via mobile geo apps. Others are sharers, distributors, posters and will want to be first to know. Still others want a role in creating, participating (crowdsourding, if you will).  Some just want to feel as if a brand "gets" them -- who they are, where they engage, etc.

It's also worth taking into consideration who among those folks are influencers, as they may be more valuable.  Oh, and one more thing. Re: McLuhan.  His real message wasn't so much that the medium shapes the message.  It's that the medium actually shapes the user, re-wiring how they receive/engage/interact with content.  If you want a really good modern interpretation of McLuhan, read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows.

Lastly, your approach makes more work for people. Which means they have to make the effort and, of course, get paid for it.

Jason Falls, one of my favorite SoMe bloggers has a good post reviewing Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus, the digital/social book of the summer so far.  Agree pretty much with Jason, who focuses on Shirky's emphasis on the good that will come out of our new connectedness.  I would put even more emphasis on the fact that what's happening now has little to do with marketers and more to do with our desire to return to the days of community (pre car, tv, suburbs, cubicle, and living/working/shopping in different places). Marketers are just trying to get in on the action (after all we put ads anywhere).  But to do so requires some new thinking.  Comment I left on Jason's blog below.
Go there and add your own.

Good review of a good book. I think another take away form Shirky is this: media in general, was never created for marketers. Certainly the wall space above urinals wasn't. Nor was Facebook, Twitter, blogs or anything else. As "connective tissue" that lets us share, comment, spread, distribute, create, publish, connect and yes, sometimes simply veg out, media doesn't need marketers at all. (Though it does need great content.) Neither do the people who use it. We use it for the things that matter to us: we want to learn, join, search, advocate, and sometimes purchase. Brands need to unlearn a lot and learn even more if they're to have any impact on consumers as they (particularly the next generation) move farther and farther from being viewers and spectators and more and more toward being creators and distributors, using media in the aforementioned ways. Yes, these "amateurs" will  inevitably generate a lot of crap as well as ideas/content/movements of virtue. And as the web allows, each of those two types of content will be discovered and sought out by the people who want what each has to offer. Lesson for brands? Forget messages. Forget platforms. Forget your own selfish wishes (or at least don't start there.) Start with what a consumer wants from a category, a product, technology, media and community.  And then be there with utility, ideas, support and inspiration. Otherwise it's all going to happen without you.

Provocative post by Mel Exon of BBHLabs asking agencies if their clients still need them.  I'm optimistic that long term agencies will still be essential partners in the marketing relationship.

My comment:

This is one of those topics that could be debated and discussed ad nauseam as there are plenty of agency structures that have lost their relevance and others that are potentially defining the future. The best ad agencies are those that constantly embrace change, experiment and have liberated themselves from the old models of media based compensation and simply executing the big idea every now and then.

During my time in the business we have seen DDB redefine creativity (actually before my time), Fallon show that small can rival big, Chiat Day set new creative standards, and Crispin come out of nowhere to become the envy of everyone. Now we are seeing digital agencies, crowdsourcing agencies and the emergence of not only different companies but truly different models.

The end of agencies or the diminished relevance of agencies has been a hot topic for years. But keep in mind that the ad agency has been around for 150 years, evolving its role from an agent for the media, to the marketing department of F 500 companies, to strategists, to creative idea generators, to niche suppliers of DR, digital, social, to whatever comes next.

My guess is that agencies will continue to be needed and play a far more important role than any naysayer suggests for a number of reasons: one, creative people want to work with and be surrounded by like minded members of the tribe in an environment that focuses on solving problems the way creative people do; two, even in an age of conversation and community brands still need creative ideas (that are fresh, new, and different than what’s come before) to live in those spaces and most companies can’t do that themselves; third, agencies are filled with pretty smart people who will figure out new products, services and ways of partnering with clients that keep them an essential resource; and finally, most companies want and need outside resources that aren’t confined or constrained by corporate think. Not all agencies will figure it out. I’d just try to make sure you’re working for one that will, or be among those who help your current agency get it right. Hint: don’t hold onto the past whatever you do.