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We were digging around the back catalogues the other day and found this arther provacative article, which made our eyebrows, and we're sure those of marketing agencies everywhere, raise a few inches. Kevin Roberts of Advertising Agency Saatchi & Saatchi makes four big claims in his article entitled ‘Marketing is dead’. These are:

1. Strategy is dead
2. Management is dead
3. The big idea is dead
4. Marketing as we know [it] is dead

It's quite a statement, but reading further, we find ourseves agreeing with Roberts’ support points. Cynically, however, we suppose, in true Saatchi style, his headline points were meant to provoke. The social movement has changed the face of marketing and of the marketing agency. As did the internet. TV. Radio. Moveable type, etc.

If Roberts’ goal was to shock and generate discussion around the change that the industry is experiencing; he succeeded.

But, it’s our view that brands will continue to engage with audiences in order to drive sales and as the industry fragments further, moving from one to many communications toward one to one interactions, the role of the marketing agency and advertising agency will become more important. While the current marketing landscape and social tools allow the top 10% of brands and products to generate organic awareness and interest, this won’t be the case for the majority of firms and products. Most will still look to specialist firms to save themselves the learning curve of implementing full marketing programmes internally.

What do you think? Is marketing dead? How do you think the role of the marketing agency change in the years to come?

Back in 2000-01, I was working agency-side and just about every new brief was for a website pitch. At the time, we’d go into the client’s offices (or invite them into ours) and discuss our methodology for developing a great website, gather their brief, show them relevant examples of our work for others and provide a proposal and estimate thereafter. As ours was a small boutique creative agency and the average site build was less than $30,000, this was most often adequate to win the website pitch.

Now, in 2012, things have changed–obviously. As surfers today, our online behaviour patterns are ingrained and we now have access to much more sophisticated analytical tools to assess user’s actions. So then, why do so many small, boutique digital and integrated agencies still pitch in much the same way?