COMMENT: Industry has what it takes to reinvent itself for the future

Several enhancements should be considered:

- Develop business planning capabilities: clients today look for partners with an ability to address complex marketing issues. Hence, the new generation strategic planner must have strong business analysis skills, from scenario planning to financial modeling to channel marketing and strategic CRM.

- Build category knowledge and expertise: while the general communication principles are applicable to most industries, specialist knowledge is now the pre-requisite in servicing more complex industries. Only through a strong knowledge-based culture, will we be able regain the leading role in the marketing business.

- Attract best talent: with the industry losing its steam for a number of years, it has become increasingly difficult to attract the best new generation talent. Yet, our industry - characterised by the unique on- and offline integration, mix of business wisdom and technology applications - offers a golden opportunity to draw in talent.

- Cultivate strategy-based creativity: we have a fairly good pool of creative talent. However, we have to make it clear that creativity is everyone's responsibility, not simply the creative department. It is equally important that the creative team recognise that distinctive creative thinking is only part of our game. Our work must be solidly planted on a tightly-defined strategy.

- Broad applications of technology: with fewer resources, shorter campaign timelines and a rise in multi-tasking, our industry must make a committed effort to upgrade logistical management of the business. Investment in online work tracking, real-time work approval and electronic client billing system are vital for maintaining long-term competitiveness.

- Service remunerations: like our clients, we will only be in a position to negotiate a fair remuneration scheme when we have a superior product/service.

However, discussion towards time/fee-based compensation seems focused on revenue protection. If we are to encourage client buy-in, we must start talking about this from the perspective of 'customer benefits'. The more confident we are in our team, the easier it will be to list the benefits - i.e. guarantee team quality (as the client is now buying the time of an identified/committed team) instead of speculative storyboards or layouts; promote the operating team's efficiency and protect the integrity of our professional recommendation.

We are in a strong position to re-invent ourselves as long as we are committed to building our unique offer to clients through insight, ideas and imagination.