Formed in 2005 by an Englishman and a Dane who shared the vague notion of creating a kind of Threadless for badges, Spoiled Milk has since morphed into a thriving digital services agency with offices in Copenhagen and Zurich.

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The back-story

Dane Casper Hubertz met Englishman Russell Quinn while taking a year-long course in graphic design at the University of West England. The pair began collaborating on a range of projects, from stop-motion films to record covers.

Russell, a computer scientist then developing debuggers for Sony, was looking for more creative outlets and was easily persuaded by Casper to join him back in Copenhagen and continue their partnership.

The fledgling company was initially focused on print and design, but Russell’s programming background helped them win more and more digital jobs. About a year into their partnership, mutual friend Frederik Cordes – then studying Philosophy and Economics at Copenhagen Business School – joined the company to help professionalise and structure their operations, and was soon heading up new business. Growth followed rapidly.

I met with both Casper and Frederik to hear more about their vision for the company, and some of the innovative ways in which they work.

The interview

Agency Future – What sort of agency did you set out to create?

Frederik – Initially, we didn’t think of ourselves as an agency at all. What I bought into was the coming together of people from very different backgrounds with a passion but with no clear idea of where we were headed. Slowly that began to change, and we started using the word agency but we were very focused on being our own kind of agency, and defining ourselves outside the regular model.

Agency Future – So how did you think of yourselves in the early days?

Casper – The word we used most was collective! We were very focused on more creative, arty projects and we didn’t want anyone’s personalities to be dominated by someone else’s.

Frederik – We spent a lot of meetings dreaming, making plans for the future. But we never nailed that vision. It’s still alive, and still being discussed and for us that’s part of the beauty. We recently launched our own resource management tool, Blueprint, and so now we’re a company with its own product. That maybe means a different future, and a different vision.

Agency Future – So around the time you did begin to think of yourselves as an agency, what was your offering to the market?

Casper – We very quickly realised that we were winning more web-based projects than anything else. We all shared an interest in technology and had an awareness of the web and where it was heading and obviously that shaped us.

Frederik – We were using Basecamp as a project management tool right from the beginning. So we were using virtual tools even when we were just four people sitting in a single office. We were thinking globally. We had a sense that maybe one of us would move abroad or that we might have multiple offices.

Casper – We were moving towards the web but we didn’t describe ourselves that way. We still had ambitions to win other kinds of projects but the market was most definitely pulling us toward the web. We were also doing more and more sub-contracting for Danish agencies who maybe lacked certain digital competences, and that’s still a part of our business today.

Even though we were working more and more with the web, we retained that sense of craft that Russell and I started out with.

Frederik – In terms of positioning, the story we told back then was that our unique thing was our ability to combine old and new media. We didn’t necessarily always use Photoshop or Illustrator, but sometimes maybe we’d build something physical first and then make something digital out of that.

Agency Future – So a kind of tactile ideation?

Casper – Exactly.

Agency Future – Is this idea of tactility, maybe making the web more tangible in some way, is that still a feature of how you work?

Casper – I think yes, in the sense that we strongly believe interfaces should be easily recognisable for the user . . .

Frederik – Intuitive!

Agency Future – OK. One of the main areas I wanted to cover – and one of the main ways I think you guys differentiate yourselves – is the amount of emphasis you put on working smarter, using more Agile processes and so on. Tell us a little more about how those have evolved. I guess it was partly by necessity when you opened the Zurich office?

Casper – Partly, but as Fred said before, we implemented a lot of these structures early on, even before we had Zurich. Plus the ways in which we were backing up files and so on, we were using massive systems given our size! We knew that if we got it right from the start, it would be a lot easier if we grew.

Frederik – A major factor has been that we’ve thought like a product company from the start. 37 Signals – a product company – was a big inspiration. Product companies are able to work a lot more virtually than a service company that has a lot more client contact. So we think of ourselves as a service company but with the mindset of a product company.

Agency Future – Is that something that comes from business school?

Frederik – Many of the tools we use have been evolving as we have grown and we’ve followed their development and have been able to integrate them into the way we work very naturally.

Agency Future – Right, I think you say it pretty well on your site where you describe yourselves as a young team who’ve ‘grown up in the glow of the information age’. So these systems and processes – Basecamp, Skype, Yammer and so on – they might seem alien to a big, traditional agency but are completely natural to you?

Frederik – I think that has a lot of truth. And I think our youth has also differentiated us also from the start. But that might be a problem in 10 years when we’re not so young!

Agency Future – How do you guys see the ad industry right now?

Casper – To me it seems that a lot of agencies are scrambling to keep up but maybe don’t have the mindsets in-house that can help them natively understand the way things are changing.

There’re still a lot of buzzwords being thrown about, people looking for the easy solutions, and agencies offering social media expertise without really understanding or using social media themselves . . .

Frederik – I think the most important thing is how you work, and not what you offer. Everyone can offer social media marketing, everyone can go out and hire a social media guru from San Francisco. We deliberately don’t write ‘social media’ on our website as it’s become too generic.

What’s more interesting is the way you work. Can you inspire your clients along the way?

Casper – The shift towards new media has maybe caught a lot of big agencies napping. The way they were set up, the way they worked, everything was geared towards campaign cycles, print, maybe TV. But now you have a whole new world and the smart agencies are the ones trying to hire the people for whom negotiating that world just comes naturally. The problem is most of those people are starting their own agencies – it’s just easier! They’re doing in smaller teams what a big agency uses 40 people to do.

But now you have a whole new world and the smart agencies are the ones trying to hire the people for whom negotiating that world just comes naturally. The problem is most of those people are starting their own agencies – it’s just easier! They’re doing in smaller teams what a big agency uses 40 people to do.

Frederik – I think clients want three things: fast, good and cheap. You’re not going to get a cheap website from a big agency whereas we can deliver on the fast and the good and still offer great value for money. And you’re probably going to get much better consulting from us because we live what we deliver.

What the big agencies do have in their favour is the laziness of marketing directors. They will always favour a big agency because they can minimise the risk, they can cut down on the number of account managers they deal with and so on.

In the case of Denmark, you just have to look at how few agencies are sharing, and participating in their communities. It puzzles me because it takes so little and the advantages in terms of relevance to young people looking for a job, and winning new clients are huge.

Agency Future – Let’s talk more about some of the tools you’re using, and what the workflow’s like between the two offices.

Casper – We use a lot, and it can be daunting to someone new joining the company but they find their feet pretty quickly. We use Campfire for group chat, or for sharing links and so on. Every day we have what we call a ‘morning brew’, which is just a Skype between the two offices to go through what everyone’s working on.

Frederik – We also use Backpack, which is another 37 Signals product. It’s basically a nicely styled Wiki, and we can use that to create and share pages with one another. Campfire is probably the main way we share stuff with one another. We have a room we call the Milk Bar and we’re all expected to be in there. You can ping one another directly in there so if I find something on iPhone development, I’ll ping that directly to Lasse.

Casper – In terms of face-to-face meetings, we also have weekly meetings where we each do five-minute presentations on something that’s interesting to us. It’s based on the Ignite concept, and it doesn’t have to be about work. It helps to get to know one another, to share inspiration and so on.

We’re always trying to find ways to improve the sense of togetherness and camaraderie, and to make sure nobody ever feels like they’re working in a bubble.

Frederik – All of our people have side projects and are busy outside of work and that’s very important. When we look to hire people, we look at how they’re engaged in their communities, if they’re twittering and blogging and so on.

Agency Future – One last question, how do you see the agency evolving?

Frederik – What’s most important is continuing to learn and grow, as individuals and a company. The day we stop learning is the day we dissolve. We don’t see ourselves becoming a product company outright; we’ll stay a digital services agency but maybe look to strengthen the consultancy side so we’re not top-heavy on production. We’d love to keep growing, and get to a point where we can hire more skilled people and see where that takes us.

Casper – What he said!

Agency Future – Thanks guys.

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Spoiled Milk

Located in Copenhagen and Zurich, Spoiled Milk was formed in 2005 and currently has 12 employees. Key clients include Phaidon, JP/Politikens Hus, Le Cool and 3 Plus TV Network. .

Key case – Wallpaper iPhone app

Spoiled Milk on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the founding directors of the influential Boulder Digital Works, and now Director of Digital Development at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Allison has a keener handle than most on the increasingly important role digital is playing within the agency scene.

We sent her a few questions and she was kind enough to take time out of her new role to send us some answers.

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It feels like things are changing at light speed right now and it’s hard for agencies to keep pace. What’s your take on the way the industry is reinventing itself?

Yes the pace is quick, but this allows for more opportunities to break out of traditional client/agency structures than ever before. Despite recent economic challenges, experimentation has been widely accepted and often preferred. I’m most interested in organizational reinvention for knowledge sharing, redefinition of roles, and innovative group structures. We’ve also moved quickly past the “T” shaped person, I think there is a lot of potential around hiring, training and developing a new type of worker.

This project is, very broadly, about emerging business models. What’s interesting you in that respect? Which agencies do you think are pioneering new approaches?

For the last two years, I have spent the majority of my time looking across the industry at agency structure, output, and talent. It’s been fascinating to identify the commonalities, particularly challenges as they relate to digital practice. I’ve interviewed leaders, spoken with major consumer brands, and listened to employees talk about a need for more formal programs to improve skills.

The most interesting new models address some of the more common challenges such as eliminating silos and cultivating linchpins.

A few interesting models come to mind. I like the work that John Winsor and his team are doing at Victors & Spoils in Boulder. Opening up team structures (expanded, beyond the walls) is fascinating. I also seek out leaders who are interested in creating new ways of working, as mentioned. So, the reinvention of the “Lab” is a hot topic for me. I’ve been following Made by Many in the UK for some time, really like their work and approach.

Do agencies have a role to play when it comes to social media? Have we earned the right to include it in our overall offering?

Agencies should be leveraging, experimenting, and offering services to support social media. Absolutely. I find that the more employees use social media on a personal level, living digitally and such, the more interesting their social ideas and applications for clients. We have to use these tools ourselves and often. I’d argue – to the point of being a bit uncomfortable with the transparency.

Also, we can’t forget how useful social media has become. Twitter is certainly social, but many are using this as a tool for managing and screening critical content. The follow list has replaced the RSS feed. This is super powerful. How could agencies not be involved?

Crowdsourcing and the emergence of the creative technologist are two of the most talked about trends in recent months. What’s your take, and what other trends do you see emerging in the industry?

I think there is opportunity for Crowdsourcing to simply get better. It’s always a controversial topic. I’m not convinced that we’ve uncovered the true usefulness. But, I’m definitely for opening up the circles of contribution – which is a bit different, but often supported by similar technologies. At Boulder Digital Works, we brought in a few leaders in the Crowdsourcing field and students and professionals we’re often very divided on the topic.

As for Creative Technologists (CTs)…I believe the most interesting work environments allow for cross-disciplinary exchanges.  In the early days of my digital career, I tried to hang out around the development department as much as possible.  CTs have skills that often translate across departments. In turn, we all get smarter.

There is also a growing need for “generalists or hybrids”; CTs bridge knowledge gaps internally and externally. Also, CTs can come from any background, not just the expected developer or creative track. I believe we’ll see more CTs who started as brand managers, producers and strategists. These useful hybrids are the people you seek out in the lunchroom – or repeatedly invite to happy hour.

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Follow Allison @swervshop

Guided Collective ‘curate an exceptional community of the hottest creative talent to create OMG amazing stuff for consumers to use, love and share’.

Less than four months old, this approach has already garnered them a lot of attention. I paid a visit to their East London HQ where I chatted with founder Sam Reid and collective member Joe Sinclair.

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Agency Future – Tell me about Guided. Do you have a philosophy?

Sam – If we do, then it’s creating stuff that has a right to exist in people’s lives. That is perhaps our core proposition. Stealing attention is no way to create a relationship between a brand and a consumer.

Agency Future – What’s the core idea? How do you differ from regular crowdsourcing agencies?

Sam – Crowdsourcing agencies have been around two or three years and some have done it better than others. But a professional creative person looking at those early sites was probably thinking ‘Is this really something I want to be involved in?’

We came at it from the point of view that to get true creative talent on board, there needed to be more than just a dry functional platform. So from the outset we wanted to build something that top-end creative people would feel excited to be a part of.

The other thing to say is that we were looking around at what was happening in the world with social and digital experiences. People today are connected in so many ways and in the past few years this change is near exponential. Our question was how is this going to affect business, and not just advertising? We now have a very dynamic engagement system so how can this be continually modelled for success?

“Marketing’s response, until very recently anyway, has just been to try and find new ways to push and interrupt.”

For us, traditional advertising departments are too narrow. Copywriters and art directors are great when it comes to saying something on a large scale in a mainstream medium. But now brands need something more. They’re asking how to build engagement, and how to reach a target audience more efficiently and meaningfully. However for us it’s not about adopting every newfangled channel in a box-ticking exercise. It’s identifying the correct channels and mapping a pathway to your end goal.

Are the ad agencies the best people to do that? Yes, they do offer lots of value from a strategic and client service point of view, but is the creative department equipped to deliver in a transmedia environment? Is a production-driven model ever going to say ‘actually you don’t really need this so we won’t make it for you’?

So we thought that if we could take the best elements of crowdsourcing and traditional agencies, we could create a hybrid with access to a much broader network of creative talent but still with a core client-facing team to handle strategy and logistics.

Joe – A big facet of our offering is that we think we can deliver communication that is culturally relevant. Because we can call on all kinds of creative talent from sculptors, to illustrators and app developers – as well as terrific copywriters and art directors – we can deliver ideas that perhaps play a more meaningful role in the consumer’s life.

Sam – In that sense – and it’s still very early days for us – we see ourselves fitting in more in the branding side of things.

When we started the company, one of our first priorities was to ensure that we keep our network engaged. The creatives in the network are our equity and so we have to galvanise and inspire them and build a sense of community among them. Now that’s not going to happen if they know they’re one of 2,000 people, or if they get 50 quid for winning something, or if nobody gets back to them after submitting an idea.

Our sense was that we had to try and build a crack team and they needed to know that they can get involved in briefs beyond their core discipline. If a furniture designer has an idea for an Guerrilla stunt, then great, together with a PR expert from the collective they can realise it.

Collaboration across disciplines builds into another trend everyone’s talking about more and more today – breaking down silos. Right now if you’re at a big agency, the creatives think of the campaign and the digital people are left with the task of building something that should have had their input from the beginning to ensure maximum relevance.

Joe – It’s not about creating a multitude of things for brands, it’s about looking for gaps that brands can occupy and fulfil a function in people’s lives.

Both brands and agencies are too ready to categorise. Brands think ‘OK, I need this particular problem solved, so I’ll go to that kind of agency’ and agencies are very quick to say ‘OK, you’re a copywriter, you’ll fit in this box. Your entire involvement in this agency will be writing copy.

But this is the age of the multi-tasker and the polymath. We look to work with people who have a multitude of interests, and it’s not about being jack of all trades and master of none, it’s about having a wide frame of reference one can dip into and be able to take cultural insights out of.

Agency Future – But I guess there must be an advantage for the people in the Guided network having had some kind of conceptual and problem-solving background . . .

Joe – Yes, we value those skills immensely – and there is definitely a big number of people within our network who have come from traditional advertising backgrounds but at the same time there are a huge number of advertising creatives feeling stultified. I know people at massively successful agencies who feel like they’re production-line battery hens. We want to have happy free-range creatives by giving them the ability to pick from great briefs. Because then we know they’ll put their heart and soul into it.

Sam – Our USP is that we have such a wide range of awesome creative talent in our network, and we only want to grow that network to a certain size. If the people in our network get disillusioned or dissatisfied then we’ve failed – we may just as well work like any other agency with everybody siloed, saying you’re different but not really being that different.

For us, the exciting, groundbreaking stuff happens when our creative people work together across any number of disciplines horizontally to solve a common problem. The ideas and the strategy can change in real time. For example, we might have a fashion-related brief and a technologist might come forward with an idea for some cool tech but a clothing designer more immersed in the industry can help angle the user experience or fine-tune the content.

“So, again, it’s less about the precise technology workings but more about technology working precisely for a purpose.”

There’s a a fair bit of theory behind what we’re trying to do, but it’s not that complicated. We’re working in this way because we now can. The idea of socialising remotely is more or less normal now, so we’ve built a platform where we can work remotely too.

Joe – We are more nimble. We don’t have an aircraft hangar-sized warehouse to furnish and maintain. We don’t have layers and layers of account management. We don’t have the huge running costs of an agency so much more of the money we get can be directed into creating great communication in whatever shape or form.

Agency Future – What kinds of clients are coming to you?

Joe – Right now we have a brief from one of the UK’s biggest betting chains, one from a high-end fashion retailer, one for a sex toy product, and also with the Royal Opera House.

Agency Future – Sounds like fun!

Joe – Yes! We’re really pleased. While they sound diverse, what they share is an appetite for change, and despondency with what they’ve been getting. As to why they’ve come to us, I think it’s partly because of our model and partly because we’re prepared to give them loads and loads of love because we’re a start-up.

Sam – We recently sent emails to prospective clients and described ourselves as the UK’s most diverse creative department. And we can back that up. Our network stands up to close scrutiny. We have ex-creative directors from top agencies to top film directors to guys who create immersive installations.

Agency Future –  Do clients have a way to see who’s working on their briefs?

Joe – Yes, it’s a completely transparent process.

Agency Future – What’s in it for the creative?

Sam – I think the chance to work outside advertising conventions. Some of the people who signed up for us were offered the chance to be part of Wieden & Kennedy’s Platform but turned it down as it wasn’t the right way of working for them. With the more esoteric members of the network, the artists and so on, for them it’s a chance to earn some money but mainly to do something culturally interesting that they find inspiring.

Agency Future – Can any brand come to you and benefit from the guided model?

Joe – Of course some brands are a more natural fit – some brands are inherently ‘cooler’ and lend themselves to more meaningful engagement but having said that I think our model can hold up pretty well and we can work in multiple sectors and not just for the market leader. Where I do see potential for us is helping brands that have grown innovation-averse and are maybe losing market share. I can see us approaching those kinds of brands and helping them to reconnect with their customers.

Agency Future – What about a long-term aim?

Sam – I’d like to think that we can work a lot further upstream than regular agencies, helping brands tap into broader cultural movements by being able to bring in a wider array of people and perspectives. Agencies need to offer much more value to their clients than ever before but it’s precisely because they’re so big that they’re so slow to change. The genie is well and truly out the bottle now. You need to be able to adapt in real time, and you need to test your thinking as your producing it.

Clients already want to work in a more nimble way. People’s attention is so fragmented and clients need agencies staying on top of what’s happening in a much more effective way and which are able to create something that works throughout different attention spots.

Agency Future – Is this the end of the big idea and campaign cycles then?

Sam – No. There will always be a place for those and we’ll always need loud mouth advertising. People are quick to proclaim the end of something – there will be a million shades of grey as we move forward. Let’s take fashion, there will always be a place for print in the fashion industry.

People are too quick to proclaim revolution. This thing is an evolution.

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Guided Collective on Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve been following the progress of theIdeaLists for a few months but it wasn’t until I actually signed up and saw the quality of the briefs and assignments being posted that I realised the scale of what they’ve been able to achieve in a short space of time.

I sent founder Adam Glickman some questions to find out more about theIdeaLists and to get his take on where the industry’s heading. Just as a quick aside, we’ve called this an Agency Viewpoint but, as you’ll read, the IdeaLists is not an agency as we understand the term today. Which is exactly what drew us to them in the first place.

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Can you tell us about how The IdeaLists came into being?

It started with the idea that a bit of social media might help solve a problem we all have faced: what to do with all the great ideas that you haven’t been able to realize due to wrong timing, you didn’t know the right person or way to piece together a certain element and so on…

That got me thinking about eBay and how one person’s trash can be another person’s treasure. And that until an idea can be realized, even the best of them have zero value.

What did you set out to achieve?

Paraphrasing Josh Lerner: “We’re moving toward a world where IP holders won’t be islands anymore, but knowledge-sharing organizations.” I think that’s very relevant to antiquated media and marketing models. The problem with walls is they keep out as much as they keep in.

So with all this in mind, I envisioned what some form of open source agency might resemble. One where ideas, rather then being closely guarded in closed networks, are freely shared, and you pay for those you use.

At the same time I didn’t find the crowdsourcing models too appealing as they felt more like a contest than a collaboration. I wanted The ideaLists  to strike some kind of balance between crowd and company by filtering out the noise to hopefully creating a more efficient, more effective model.

Can you tell us a little more about you personally? Who else is part of the project?

I used to own a magazine and was lucky to get out at the right time. That said, towards the end of my publishing career, I had become increasingly frustrated by the fact that all publishers were having to provide creative services just to keep the clients booking ads. Our outputs were more or less the same as these client’s actual agencies, yet we were being paid a fraction of what agencies receive for, more or less, the same deliverables. That was sort of the point where people began to realize “wait a minute my little crew can do the work of an big agency,” while the clients began to realize, “wait a minute, why am I paying my big agency a hundred dollars for what this guy just delivered for five dollars?”

So I set out to learn a bit more about the inner workings of the ad world and the interactive space. I was lucky enough to be provided really interesting positions working with really smart people at both Wieden + Kennedy and very briefly at BBH. But at the end of the day, I didn’t fit in at those organizations. I was brought in to promote alternate approaches, but it doesnt make sense for agencies to explore approaches that basically contradict their overall business models.

What was happening in the industry that made you think you would succeed?

I only had a foot in the traditional ad world for a very short time so its hard for me to give a truly informed answer. In that sense, I feel uniquely qualified in that I learned the rules only enough to be able to break them.

This project is trying to gather perspectives on where our industry is heading. Do you see agencies changing fast enough to stay relevant?

Agencies can only change at the speed that their clients change so I think agencies tend to get a bad rap here–at the end of the day, they are providing a service so the industry as a whole will only evolve as fast or slow as their clients dictate.

That said, the space that’s going to get really, really interesting is where the aggregates– the googles and the facebooks–figure out ways to provide creative tools for individuals to make their own hyper-targeted advertising. In our own little way, that’s the space The IdeaLists is exploring as well.

What kind of clients are coming to The IdeaLists? What’s in it for them?

We are only six months old so its all still pretty new. But to date our clients range in size from multinational corporations to freelancers: in that sense the site offers a truly democratic and level playing field. So our “clients” include media companies, technology companies, lifestyle brands, and interestingly enough, we seem to be getting buzz within the luxury fashion industry.

What’s in it for both client and creative is that it allows both sides to work together in a way that requires very little upfront cost or commitment. It also allows the client to expand their creative networks, get fresh perspectives and most importantly find the best ideas for the specific job at hand.

Do you consider yourself an agency or a broker? How do you describe The IdeaLists?

At its simplest form, I consider the The IdeaLists a curator. So yes, in a sense we are closer to a talent agency than an ad agency in that we’ve created a space where a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of interesting talent can congregate. It’s then our job is to match the right needs with the right means.

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Thanks again to Adam for taking the time to talk to us. Be sure to spend some time looking at theIdeaLists’ site in more detail.

Rick Liebling (full bio below) was one of the earliest supporters of this project, kindly retweeting our links and inviting me to contribute to his excellent early summary of the crowdsourcing phenomenon. His blog is a major source of inspiration for us and he’s a top Tweeter. We’ve been keen to get his perspective from day one so we sent him some questions recently and he sent back some answers.

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This project is attempting to chronicle an industry in flux with a view towards establishing (very generally) where we might be headed. But right now it feels like things are changing at lightspeed and it’s hard to keep pace. What’s your take on the ways in which the industry is reinventing itself?

Over the last several years there has been a focus on technology, both in what it allows us to do and in its ubiquity. What isn’t discussed as much is how all this new technology has changed our thinking. Social Media has made things possible that previously weren’t, and that has allowed agencies to dream up new creative and tactical solutions for clients.

So I certainly see a change, if not a reinvention, in the way at least some agencies are thinking. Where I have seen something more akin to a reinvention is in the more diverse types of talents agencies are hiring. In just the last few weeks I’ve seen several friends in the industry not just change agencies, but change the type of agency they are working for. Strategic agencies are adding creatives, and vice versa; PR agencies are adding disciplines that were previously the domain of ad agencies.

This is a great, and interesting, time to be in the industry.

You’ve written a lot about crowdsourcing in the past but we’re starting to see some actual results now. What work has impressed you recently?

Most recently the 48 Hour Magazine project. This wasn’t tied directly to a brand, but it was a success because it was based on a powerful idea. It was simple, short and a good mix of “the crowd” working with curators to create an end product of high quality.

Other good quality efforts are The 3six5 project and Taped Together. What these all have in common is that they weren’t created on behalf of massive brands, they were more personal projects. I think that is significant. I think it’s very easy for quality to suffer when a project is open to too many people, or not curated with love. Not just skill, but love.

Social media has sent agencies into a bit of a blind panic. Have agencies earned the right to even be offering social media expertise to their clients?

That’s an interesting way of phrasing it. I’m a big believer that you have to be doing Social Media to really understand it. Simply reading articles on Mashable isn’t going to make you well-versed in the nuances of execution.

On the other hand, how does one become an “expert” in an area that is evolving so rapidly? I think agencies that put in the time and show a commitment to Social Media on behalf of their own brand are best positioned to have conversations about Social Media with their clients.

For a few years it looked like the next big thing was agencies chasing their own IPs. Is it a viable business model in its own right?

I think it’s an interesting idea with several benefits. First it demonstrates to clients that you understand brand building from their perspective, and I think that can be a vital experience for an agency. I also think it can be very energizing for an agency. But as a stand-alone business model I think it can eventually be more trouble than it is worth. To me, it’s a great incubator, but to be truly done right is a labor intensive exercise.

What other business models do you see emerging for agencies?

I’m not sure what the model will look like, but it will surely be more distributed. Talent can be sourced from just about anywhere, and the type of talent you need has changed greatly as well. It certainly wouldn’t be unfathomable to me for more agencies to start employing mash-up artists, guerrilla filmmakers or CCOs (see McCracken, Grant) on a part-time or contract basis.

I recently wrote about the notion of agencies pitching concepts to consumers first, rather than brands. Is that a viable model? Probably not, but I think it’s important that new methodologies, even crazy ones, be explored.

Many bloggers and thinkers are saying that the industry as a whole is moving toward a point where strategy is prioritised over creativity. Do you agree?

Hmm, I’m seeing a lot of pretty creative stuff out there, so I don’t know about that. Certainly a greater emphasis on metrics requires a smart(er) strategy, but great creative is what gets talked about, shared and ultimately becomes part of culture. Those are things that are tough to strategize.  I think we’re getting to a place where it’s no longer an either-or situation, you have to have both. At some point either a visionary individual or new technology will allow creative or strategy to take the lead for a while, then the other will catch up.

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Rick Liebling is a Senior Social Media Planner at dare. He’s the author of the Crowdsourcing eBook Everyone is Illuminated and will speak at the CLIOs on a panel on crowdsourcing on May 26. He writes at RickLiebling.com.

In their own words, Made by Many ‘create very social digital stuff’:

“We design and make new services and utilities for communities and we work in an integrated and Agile way.”

The agency also describes itself as a new type of digital consulting company, with their stated goal being ‘to go deeper into our clients’ business to make big changes led by design’.

Just two and a half years old, the agency has rapidly established a burgeoning reputation for its innovative and unconventional approach. I paid a visit to their HQ, nestled inside the BBH building in Soho, London, where I chatted with founders Tim Malbon and Stu Eccles.

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Agency Future – Can you start by telling me a bit more about what you do?

Stu – We build platforms for new user experiences, helping companies identify new revenue streams. We work for brands – people like British Airways and Skype, often helping them become media owners by building own-media platforms, saving them a lot of money in the process! And often with media owners – for example The Telegraph, we’re helping them develop social shopping platforms.

We also work a lot for charities and the Government. Right now we’re working on a project for UK Trade and Investments trying to help them build a service that will help the ICT sector expand abroad through a knowledge platform.

All these things are converging really rapidly, we’re getting experience in lots of different areas that we’ll be able to apply across industries, helping brands build new services.

We’re two and a half years old. We started with four people and our credit cards and now we’re 24 people and growing. We have been profitable from month one.

What we try and do is run a really lean agency.

Tim – Yep, we all share a computer. Five minutes each!

Stu – We don’t have dedicated account managers. We employ very experienced, professional people and we expect lots of our people to be client-facing.

Tim – We’re very picky about who joins. We’ve been able to create teams that are modelled on the agile start-up teams that we’ve worked with in the past. Entrepreneurial people who can self-organise and don’t need to be managed. They are responsible enough to talk to clients without needing anyone to hold their hands!

We have people who can do lots of things, rather than just one. Again, that’s modelled on a start-up culture. Our people can wear lots of different hats.

Stu – When people come to us and say ‘I don’t know how to pigeon-hole myself’ we immediately think that they’re our guy! We’ve got rid of job titles. What that means in practice is that it’s become completely natural to involve creative people in the development process, or planning, creative and account management functions can be handled by one person. So throughout the company we have a fluid structure with almost nobody who can’t talk to the client.

Tim – Clients love this model. In our experience they value being involved in a transparent and often collaborative process, and being able to talk directly to the person responsible rather than an account manager-type who might not really understand what’s going on.

Stu – In digital, because of the inherent complexity of a project that involves design, user experience, technology and creativity etc, it’s very hard for one person to hold everything in their head and give all the answers. So the client has to have a team that they can ask every conceivable question of.

Tim – The other thing to mention is that we’re not trying to manage the truth. We’re not trying to pretend we can do everything.

Agency Future – Presumably this means you work a lot closer with clients than might usually be the case – across all points of the organisation, and not just with the marketing director.

Stu – Very much. We are playing outside the traditional model so we absolutely have to talk to different people, and usually very senior people because our projects involve something completely new for the company, a new model, new revenue streams, big changes to business process.

We work with the client in a very iterative way. We don’t do the big reveal. Our ideas have been talked through and slowly developed, building up their fidelity of their understanding. When we do build things, it’s done in a very agile way. Software gets delivered every two weeks, we design in parallel, and this means we can build and release things a lot faster than practically any other agency.

Tim – It’s much more like the way a tech start-up works.

Stu – We’re not deploying 40 times a day – it’s a lot harder when you’re working with a client – but we’re not far away!

We don’t do fixed price, fixed scope builds. We think those are one of the great evils of digital because it means you have to agree in advance with the client how every part of it is going to work and look before you’ve even gotten round to delivering anything. You’ve got to accept that you or the client might have a better idea during the process than you had at the start of it and so our commercial model takes that into account.

Agency Future – What’s the conversation like when it comes to talking about remuneration with potential clients?

Stu – We don’t really pitch – only twice in two and a half years. Instead clients tend to come to us with questions about all this disruptive change that’s happening – social media etc – and so what usually happens is that we start off doing small pieces of work. With bigger projects, we break it down into a two-week build period or a four-week build period, but simultaneously we’ve planned maybe a three-month project scope. This means clients can call a halt, or change tack if necessary.

Agency Future – So you might start off doing some consulting and that might lead to a project?

Stu – Absolutely. We’re in there trying to provide value incrementally, though that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t want agency of record-type business at a later date.

Agency Future – But essentially you are selling time?

Tim – Yes. Certainly in this first phase of Made by Many. We had to do that. What mattered most in the first couple of years was cashflow.

Stu – We didn’t have vast amounts of capital. We had to earn enough to survive and now we’re starting to get some breathing room and we’re starting to think about other models.

Tim – Clients are asking us about different models and it’s quite exciting to see where it might lead – whether it’s owning things, or developing our own IP.

Stu – One thing we have specifically avoided is becoming a software company. Agency software is evil! When you have a piece of software that you re-sell to clients, you end up selling half-fitting solutions that clients are locked into. In terms of IPs, we’re interested in selling the by-products of the business. That’s the processes we use, the systems we introduce. Or it might be books, or even the inspirational by-products of our people’s ideas that maybe haven’t been used by clients. But never generic software solutions!

Tim – A good example is our Tagminster idea, which was inspired by Noah Brier’s Brand Tags. It was knocked together quite quickly but we expect it to get a lot of traction building up to the election.

Agency Future – What kind of clients are coming to you? Are they younger marketers, more experimental?

Tim – Digital success is very sexy. They want some of that.

Stu – There is a cultural connection to us. More and more marketers are digitally connected. They are tweeting, they are blog readers, they also want to develop new models.

Agency Future – Is there a sea change coming in that respect?

Tim – Yes. We’re building things that are designed to be around for years – rather than a campaign. Often, like everyone else, client businesses work on more traditional, campaign-based cycles, with people worrying about short-term KPIs rather than longer-term value. Increasingly, we’re finding that our clients are aware that they need to work differently, and they’re thinking longer-term.

Stu – We tend to work with entrepreneurial, innovative people within an organisation and we often need to help them with the internal sell-in.

Tim – I think people in agencies and clients are leading a double life. The reality of social networking and the ability to connect with people is irresistible. It is happening to the whole of our world, and it will happen regardless of what does or doesn’t happen in agencies. In that way our real lives are slightly ahead of our professional lives, especially in the way we consume media.

Stu – There is a sea change coming for a number of reasons. Clients are becoming digitally sophisticated faster than a lot of agencies, marketers who have been successful digitally are getting promoted upwards, and finally there are newly successful companies that were built from the ground up by people to whom this kind of digital life is completely natural.

For instance, I think it’s interesting that a company like Zappos got Mullen to do its TV advertising because they shared a cultural understanding of the influence and importance of digital and social media. And I think that more and more companies will look to connect with agencies that share those values.

Agency Future – One of the trends that I’ve been noticing while researching this project is that the bigger picture – the way we do business, and capitalism itself – is changing, with people demanding a lot more of companies and the trend towards transparency etc. I’m thinking of Umair Haque’s Manifesto for Smart Growth for example, and I’m intrigued by what role agencies might have to play.

Stu – Value is being destroyed at a rapid rate. You came in today and said you thought there was something exciting about how revenue streams were being destroyed, but what that means is that we’re not making much money! All these digital and disruptive influences are taking money away from traditional media and businesses that used to make a lot more money and employ a lot more people.

Now we’re in a situation where four guys in a garage can start replacing a media outfit that used to employ 40 to a 100 people. But ultimately this sea of digital innovators is also going to get replaced by a whole new disruptive force of innovators who are going to replace that value with the same value for even less money.

This Internet force is so flattening that we will begin to realise that the ability to make large amounts of money in the old-world way is gradually disappearing. What that means is that the ability to give people jobs is also going to disappear. I think it was Jeff Jarvis who said this wasn’t a great recession but a great restructuring. All these jobs that are disappearing are not coming back because we don’t need them anymore.

That means that one of the ideals of capitalism – to employ people and pay them for their work – might start being called into question. At the end of SXSW, Bruce Sterling made the point that our children and their children will turn round and ask us ‘Did you know what you were doing? Destroying these revenue models, did you ever think about the repercussions?! So yes, there is a bigger, more fundamental change at work.

Tim – OK, well, that’s interesting but our world couldn’t carry on in the same wasteful way!

Stu – Yes, it’s probably a longer way off than I’m describing!

Agency Future – OK, thanks so much!

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Made by Many on Twitter and Facebook.

Ben Kay is a multi-award winning copywriter and author of If This is a Blog Then What’s Christmas?, one of the UK’s leading ad blogs. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions for Agency Future. As you’ll see, Ben’s not afraid to put cats among pigeons:

Do you still see a distinction between digital and ‘traditional’ agencies?

To be honest, yes. If they were the same, there’d be a confluence of talent. As it is, all the best people still want to work ATL because that’s where the money and the glamour are. Higher budgets, better pay, seeing your stuff on TV and in cinemas…why would anyone prefer banner and SEO? Some digital is cooler than ATL but the odds are heavily stacked in the other direction.

Crowdsourcing is  the flavour of the month – what’s your take?

Cheaper and no reason why someone in the public couldn’t do a better job than a professional. Many professionals are substandard and/or lazy. If you have the time to go through lots of public suggestions, why not try?

Do you envisage any fundamental shifts in business models for agencies in the coming years?

I think agencies are marginalising creativity and promoting planning in its place. Strategy is where this business is heading, but strategy is just another word for arse covering (in many cases). Also digital and ATL will converge in agencies as it will in our lives. However ATL will get the lion’s share of both because they know how to do it. Most digital places will simply be absorbed into bigger ATL shops.

Are agencies doing a good enough job at helping clients understand changing patterns of media consumption?

I think agencies are doing a great job of convincing clients that there are new patterns of media consumption where few exist. This is so they can charge clients for it. Check out The Ad Contrarian. 99% of video footage is viewed on TV. Social media is a load of bullshit. The web still hasn’t built one new big brand. I think lots of people are chasing a big stream of bullshit.

Are agencies adjusting their offering fast enough in terms of helping clients utilise social media/online platforms etc?

See last answer.

What is your take on the increasing presence of creative technologists in ‘traditional’ creative teams?

My personal experience of it hasn’t been very significant but I have not been impressed so far. Their involvement has been superficial and not helpful. I think it might be another job that just ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

How does your agency/agency network share inspiration and foster innovation?

I freelance so the question doesn’t apply. But like all corporations, networks will do that which serves them to make more money.

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Thanks again to Ben. Let us know in the comments if you agree/disagree and get in touch if you’d like to give your viewpoint.