In the modern marketing climate social media continues to gain serious ground, and micro businesses and individuals are taking more market share every year from the traditional advertising agency. This leaves ad agencies looking for new ways to build their business profitably and stay competitive. Given their closeness to the market and customers, some agencies are using their knowledge, creativity and marketing expertise to do more than just advertise. To that end, a New York advertising agency called Grey Advertising has created a new business within their existing umbrella business, Grey Group, called Grey Adventures.
The Link is Creativity
Grey Adventures is a new unit designed to work with clients of the ad agency to flesh out new products and services that may come to light during the process of branding and campaign development. Grey isn’t the first ad agency to move into this new area. Others have added similar units, with results such as developing toys designed for parents with paralysis to be able to play with their kids and starting an accelerator program for startup companies.
In the same way that social media and online marketing have taken over large portions of the total marketing and advertising market, and that traditional careers and titles have become meshed together in new ways, the role of marketing and product development may now be coming together in some ways. The link between the two is creativity and innovation, so the marriage — or at least limited partnership — of these two traditionally separate roles makes some sense.
Grey’s first example of such a synergy was with their client Volvo, when they pitched the idea of a temporary spray paint, called Life Paint that could be applied to surfaces or even fabrics and would be invisible during daylight but would become highly visible and reflective at night when hit by lights such as car headlights. This new type of partnership will allow the ad agency to be an actual partner in new products rather than just creating the advertising spots to promote them.
The Beginning of Some Beautiful Relationships
If this idea continues to take root and grow, those seeking jobs in advertising may find themselves expanding their skill set, albeit only sightly. It may also bring new blood into the field who would otherwise have followed a different career path. In both situations, ad agencies will have found a great new opportunity for expanding their revenues. For the Grey Group’s part, they want to keep their focus for this new unit in avenues such as virtual reality, augmented reality, the Internet of Things, and other new and emerging tech fields.
The key to success in this new area is partnerships, something Grey Group admits. For an ad agency to suddenly begin developing new product ideas on its own would be more of a stretch, both financially and in terms of existing talent, than wold be feasible. When those ideas emerge organically from existing partnerships, however, it might be an extremely profitable situation for both involved parties. Media Jobs will continue to keep an eye on these developments and possible new job opportunities in the advertising field.