A colleague sent this awesome email the other day, from the outer reaches of darkest Portland:
I had carrot sticks with <famous Internet guy> and Portland's IxDA group last night. He was *going off* on how ineffective the agency model is for creating and sustaining great, long-term interfaces/software/websites. He called us shortcuts and a guaranteed method for design failures and that the only way to get the quality of, let's say, Netflix is to go in house and never use an agency. And while I agreed with him on several fronts, I was most impressed by this entertaining and horrifying quote he spat out:
"Agencies are the liposuction of the design world."
-<famous Internet guy>, Feb. 17, 2009
You heard it here first. Are we just a pack of sexy, short-term solutions that leave our clients temporarily svelte if they have enough money to afford our, um, procedure? Do they go back to their bad bloated selves as soon as we leave? Are we preventing them from regular exercise and a healthy diet?
And another colleague sent this awesome response:
Well, I think <famous Internet guy> is right on at least one point – we are sexy.
However, apart from that - although I can see where he’s coming from, I respectfully disagree. The problem he’s describing is not unique to design/ux/creative/whatever. Innie v Outie is a classic conflict. Are we sustained organizational change? Hell no. Can we make something better, faster, and stronger than institutional Innies can make? Hell to the yeah we can. Will the elegant solutions we deliver be bastardized and Frankenstein-ed after we leave? It all depends on the client. We are not a guaranteed method for failure, but nor are we for long-term success. We are less like lipo and more like Jenny Craig, we can give you the tools to succeed, but whether you keep using them after the program is over is up to you.
Personally, I'm in both camps, and I don't mean that as a cop-out. I see a symbiotic relationship between clients and agencies where the agency can provide leading-edge, broadly-informed, and swiftly-executed online strategy, and where clients can provide depth of expertise and long-term accountability.
But I think there's a huge gap today, which has to do with the way budgets are structured in the marketing world: Innies tend to have funding for a project, which they hire Outies to execute, and once the budget is gone the concept languishes.
The gap, in other words, is operational. Agencies can provide vision, but we can't, even on retainer, provide true follow-through. Nobody can get in between businesses and their relationships with their customers. (And that's just as it should be.)
Your thoughts?
Nice. I don't really have anything to add. I just think it's an awesome post.
Posted by: Tyesha | March 23, 2009 at 01:53 PM