IQ News: What's In A Name?

Many firms make interactive ads. But don't call them agencies. When is an interactive agency not an interactive agency? When it's a "digital solutions provider" or an "interactive relationship management" company, of course. Which, in the current rush by interactive agencies to devise a distinctive description for what they do, would seem to indicate that practically no one is in the "interactive agency" business. Forget the fact that a few years into Internet advertising, there are dozens of companies who are making millions of dollars from being the online counterparts to traditional agencies. To officials at some of these largest, um, interactive agencies, their business is decidedly unlike that of agencies. "What we are not is an agency. We've never been an agency," insists Tim Smith, CEO of Red Sky Interactive, San Francisco. Smith says the company's "best clients" call Red Sky a consultancy. To those in the industry, the main aversion to the term "agency" is that it associates them with the staid, traditional ad world, rather than the technology-driven, futuristic (read, sexier) Internet industry. They see the new medium as requiring the ability to not just reapply offline formulas online, but to think of new ways of doing business. To a certain extent, interactive executives have a point. For example, the mandate for San Francisco-based Organic concerning its client, Starbucks, is to build an online coffee store, therefore participating in what may become an integral part of the chain's retailing mix. Similarly, Agency.com's site for MetLife goes far beyond the warm and fuzzy Peanuts characters that give the brand much of its profile. The site includes such features as a Life Advice section that focuses on family, money and health. Such examples only bolster the contentions of interactive advertising executives that they are in a fundamentally different business, even if it could be argued that what's really necessary is a redefinition of what terms such as marketing and advertising will come to mean in an interactive world. Case in point: G.M. O'Connell, chairman and CEO of "digital marketing communications company" Modem Media.Poppe Tyson. "In the classic advertising agency sense, it's an inaccurate description to call us an interactive agenc," he says. He calls the Westport, Conn.-based company's vision "Web-wide customer management ... What we're trying to provide is not necessarily advertising, but advertising that can be [accepted] by the customer as a service." (Never mind whether or not the chief of a traditional agency sees his company's advertising as providing a service to customers.) Admits Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Organic, "We've been struggling to define [what we are] for a while." As the firm focuses more on building online retail stores, Nelson says, it is considering the motto "full-service e-commerce management company." Even those in the hunt admit that all that has happened so far is that one broad-based term, "interactive agency," has been traded in for others. "There's no clarity between this term and that term," says Chan Suh, CEO of New York-based Agency.com. "That's because we're still just amoebas. It would be difficult to try to define an industry before it's fully grown." But the hunt continues. At iXL, the Atlanta-based interactive conglomerate, it's the branding aspect of traditional advertising that steers the company away from deeming itself an interactive agency. Lara Stein, president of iXL New York, says, "We're trying to get away from the 'agency' word ... 'Agency' to me implies something very marketing driven that's about branding." According to the company's press materials, iXL's mission is to be "a digital solution provider for Fortune 1000 companies." Even Chicago-based Giant Step, which has lived most of its life as a subsidiary of Leo Burnett, is trying, on a semantic level anyway, to distance itself from its traditional-minded parent. The firm describes itself on its site as an "interactive marketing and digital communication" company making "user-sensitive, business-building digital solutions." But, surely Agency.com, which last week absorbed Eagle River Interactive to become the largest company in whatever-industry-this-is, must be unconflicted about being an interactive advertising agency? Not so. Agency.com doesn't mind the 'agency' term; it's the other a-word, 'advertising' that's the problem. "I like being an agency, but we're not an advertising agency," explains Suh. "We are an agency because we're a group of agents acting on behalf of our clients." Though that definition does little to distinguish Agency.com from what traditional agencies do, Suh uses the moniker "interactive relationship management" to describe the shop's modus operandi. Public relations agencies which handle a lot of these companies are all too aware--and, a bit skeptical--of the search for the right positioning. "They're looking for a new term because they feel it does not adequately explain what they do," explains Mark Pasetsky, an account supervisor at New York-based Middleberg and Associates. However, he feels that concentrating on terminology is a waste of time. "We believe that the agency should not be focusing on the category [of interactive agencies]," he says. "They should be focusing on branding themselves." Except for some in niche markets, he says, the term "interactive agency" applies. Refreshingly, there is at least one company that has decided not to pursue the semantic Holy Grail. Scott Heiferman, CEO of i-traffic, jokes that he has come to the "stark realization" that "we are an ad agency." The New York-based firm focuses on media buying and placement of online ads. It is also one of the few firms in interactive advertising that has a tagline: "the Internet traffic-driving agency." There are signs other companies may decide that it is client satisfaction, not company image, that counts. "We don't care what you call us," Organic's Nelson concedes. "Just call us."

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IQ News: What's In A Name?

Adrienne Mand

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Adrienne Mand