FOCUS: 2000 Previews - Clients have headstart over agencies - In this issue: more agency heads share their visions of the future

Even the most farsighted agency futurists are trying to ponder what the new millennium will hold for our industry. Technology is changing things so fast and so dramatically, the creative possibilities offered are almost unfathomable. Surprisingly, advertising, which should be the most creative business in the world, is in many ways the most conservative and resistant to change. Our clients have clearly leapt out of the starting blocks ahead of us. Niall FitzGerald, CEO of Unilever, uttered this chilling quote in 1997: "There is an alarming discrepancy between what our brands are going to need and what agencies are good at." So we had better get creative about our future and quickly. In the next few decades, the organisation we now call an advertising agency will have transformed itself into an organisation that not only builds brands but creates and licenses them. It will have leapfrogged the consultants not only by providing better strategic advice based on better knowledge of both the brand and the consumer, but by virtue of its capacity, execute all the commercial communications and events necessary to realise the strategic objectives and, most importantly, ask to be held accountable for the results and paid accordingly. This new millennium agency will probably have merged with both an entertainment company in order to provide content for the Web and television and an Internet company in order to distribute that content. What won't change, of course, is the importance of an idea. An idea that is relevant, presented in an original and compelling way, and delivered with impact. Together they will add up to the optimum return on investment of communication dollars, just as they always have. Creativity will be more interactive. No more product-centered monologues. Our relationship with customers will be based on a fluid dialogue and will need to be very high on entertainment value. In Asia, the agency of the future will need to customise its service to the ever-expanding permutations of client needs. Some clients will want only brand consulting, others only tactical execution. Some clients will want to work on a project basis; others will want an ongoing relationship. Most important, the agency of the future will have learned to get paid for its thinking. And agencies that consistently produce the best results will command higher fees than those who don't. It promises to be a challenging time for us all.

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