Have you ever looked at the work of an agency and wondered why their television commercials and print ads are so great and why all their interactive work is so weak? Here are five reasons why that dynamic exists (each of these could be a blog post in and of itself).

1. Masters of the Brand – The concept that ad agencies hold the keys to their clients’ brands. Any control that agencies had over the brand is now in the hands of the consumers, who have a collective voice far more powerful than any agency’s, one that is amplified by the current generation of web technologies. Brand broadcasts have been drowned out in favour of brand interactions. Designing these interactions requires a change in mind-set from that of the tastemaker to that of the proactive listener, an adjustment that many agencies are having trouble making.
2. Hierarchy of Media – The belief that the importance of a medium or channel is proportional to what clients are willing to spend on it instead of what the value will be on it for their clients, essentially prioritizing cost over return. Rather than taking the time to educate their clients on the importance of the digital space, many agencies would prefer to take the path of least resistance and continue to push the services that both they and their clients are comfortable with. As a result, the interactive component often ends up being a poorly conceived, underfunded afterthought.
3. Creative as a Department – In order to do great interactive work, creative cannot be a department, it needs to be an adjective, one used to describe everybody involved in a project. Each team member needs to be able to innovate in his or her function in order for a project to reach its potential. In addition, the central idea driving a project should not be the exclusive domain of a single individual or department. It needs to be free to come from a strategist, a developer, a designer, a project manager, a usability engineer or even the client (heaven forbid) depending on the needs and nature of the project.
4. No Technology – Many agencies do not have their own in house technologists, which limits their ability to fully understand the medium. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to innovate. It is akin to someone offering marble sculptures without being a marble sculptor themselves. An artist can have flawless concept sketches, but in order to realize those concepts, the artist needs to understand the stone all the way to its core. Otherwise, the true potential of that marble block will never be realized. Similarly, an organization that does not have a deep, functional understanding of a technology will never be in a position to fully exploit it, much less direct someone else to do it.
5. Allocation of Talent – This stems from the Hierarchy of Media. The highest paid and most influential positions in many agencies still belong to those who work in television and print, reinforcing to employees that those are the desirable areas to work. As a result, you will often see someone leading or playing an influential but dispassionate role in an agency’s interactive department in the hopes of using it as a stepping-stone to one of the traditional forms of media (sadly, this happens on the client side as well for much the same reasons).

Side note: I stopped including the songs at the end of each post because I didn’t like the aesthetic of the player and they don’t show up in the RSS feed.