BIMA is the national industry association for digital and tech in Britain, with a membership comprising a broad cross-section of the consultancies and agencies listed in this report. We represent more than 300 corporate members with a combined annual turnover in excess of £1.3 billion and a workforce of 15,000 people.
Our members give us a unique perspective on the changing face of the digital landscape. They determine the events we host next. They influence the evolution of the BIMA awards categories. They inform our BIMA Councils and Think Tanks and tell us where the focus of these Councils should be.
Over the past 12 months, for example, our AI, Immersive Technology and Blockchain events and publications have been among those generating the greatest levels of interest. Why? In a particularly wide and in many cases misunderstood landscape, these events and publications have enabled more of our members to understand the big picture, develop points of view, share case studies and create shared definitions. Crucially, our Think Tanks are helping members determine how and when to build these emerging technologies into their own businesses.
This section addresses the key movements and trends we have seen develop in the industry over the last 12 months. It looks at the ways our member companies are responding and adapting to the new landscape, and the new client/agency relationships being driven by those changes. It also explores the future, because one of the things our membership demonstrates most clearly is that standing still and offering a generic proposition simply is not an option.
In the past 12 months, many of our members have established (or are establishing) niche practices alongside their overall offering, or have developed partnerships with technology providers. Others are now taking the bolder move of placing some emerging technologies at the core of their business, transforming their propositions wholesale.
This is where the breadth and depth of our membership gets really interesting. We are seeing the larger consultancies quickly integrating the ‘mature’ end of emerging tech into their enterprise solutions. In addition, we are seeing some really interesting offerings coming out of startups and niche consultancies such as Us Ai and Rewind; these businesses are building reputations for offering collaboration and sharp creative thinking to support brands in learning about and applying emerging technologies such as RPA, CUI and Interactive VR.
We see the same speed of change and diversity of technology in the shortlist for the 2018 BIMA Awards. Entries to the Awards were received from global brands such as Google, client-side teams like Cancer Research UK and Sony Music, startups like Hero and The Bot Platform and hundred-year-old(ish) brands like the BBC. The list of organisations that have entered has never been more diverse.
Why such diversity? Emerging tech is no longer at the fringe of organisations and in siloed business areas. It has grown to become a de facto organisation-wide issue commanding a great deal of Board attention.
As emerging tech and digital becomes more integral to business, brands are considering it too important to outsource and are instead building in-house capabilities en masse.
As Jon Davie, Chief Customer Officer at Zone, puts it: “Clients want and need digital capabilities and culture at the heart of their organisation. That is driving an increase in brand-side digital practitioners. Increasingly, it will be unthinkable to outsource entirely to agencies.”
With digital skill sets bleeding into brands at lightning pace, determining the needs of brand-side practitioners within the digital community has become a key focus for BIMA.
BIMA established a new Brand Council because we understand that, whilst there are clear similarities across brand and agency-side practitioners, some brand-side challenges will be unique to driving digital transformation from the inside.
The relationship between brands and agencies will change fundamentally, from a transactional and customer/supplier relationship to one of much greater collaboration, working with a mix of internal and external expertise, in a multi-location, multi-size and multi-agency composition.
Consultancies and System Integrators (SIs), already the home for large brands and governments to spend their digital dollars, will continue to use their strategic advantage and focus on providing end-to-end digital experiences. Whereas £500K-£2m Customer Experience, CMS and App projects may well be the core income for some agencies, for consultancies and SIs, they may well simply be a small part of a much bigger enterprise technology play. For agencies in general, that makes commercial life considerably more challenging.
Yet more than one type of agency/company can enjoy success. Not every brand will bring everything in house. Not every agency or consultancy will be required to deliver enterprise grade services. Many clients will want something different from the external partners they procure, both commercially and in relation to the specialist skills, working approaches and, importantly, personalities they bring. We have noted the growing trend towards additional collaboration with small, nimble, complementary specialists. ‘Micro’ consultancies, as they are sometimes referred to, often have expertise or points of view that brand-side practitioners want.
Nadya Powell, BIMA’s Head of Diversity and Inclusivity and co-founder of creativity and change consultancy Utopia is a firm believer in this emergent model:
“Many brands are looking for something new: smaller, more agile partners, who can work together in a nested way to solve some very specific problems. This is a great opportunity for individuals who want to work in the digital industry but don’t want to go down the agency path. By working together and using networks and peers to try different things, people can work in beta, learn and play.”
Tarek Nseir, Founding Partner of digital transformation agency Think believes that collaborative networks are essential for delivering something unique and different to their clients.
“What is different today about small independents is the network effect these specialists are having. At Think we talk about ‘fierce collaboration’ and believe that working together in a meaningful way is a fundamental driver for the digital economy.”
The convergence within the digital community – agencies, consultancies, SIs, tech providers, start-ups and brands – no doubt heralds the most challenging and competitive landscape our industry has seen. Yet from BIMA’s perspective, we also see this as a wonderful opportunity to learn together.
As Pete Trainor, founder of Ai consultancy Us Ai, says: “We are all battling on the same field for the first time in quite a while because of the technology changes that are happening. Coming together – to learn, collaborate and build connections – is fundamental to the continued and accelerated growth of the digital community in Britain.”
Seeing collaboration as the future is something that applies just as much to BIMA as to the members we serve. In the last 12 months we launched a strategic partnership with Microsoft, which has quickly developed into a reciprocally rewarding relationship. BIMA members across England and Scotland have been engaged in roadshows and have had opportunities to connect with senior stakeholders and access emerging tech and R&D funds – opportunities that they would not ordinarily have access to.
From Microsoft’s perspective the company has a genuine desire to partner with a broad cross-section of skills and seeks to influence client brands by scaling new products in front of a digital community.
Big tech companies like this, after all, are not just looking to place their products and relationships in the hands of a select few, but rather they wish to engage with the broadest range of organisations and businesses that are flowing with ideas for technology adoption. We expect more of these partnerships to emerge within the wider digital community in future.
Operating in this incredibly competitive and fast-changing environment will not benefit everybody, however. The landscape for digital and integrated communications agencies is a tough place to be, particularly for those that have failed to establish an effective point of difference in their brand proposition.
Offering a point of differentiation is not a new concept, but the demand for high value skills has masked the fact that some agencies have not got it together enough propositionally. Now though, as digital skills have scaled and the market has become more discerning, a generic proposition will no longer be enough.
Marrying business needs to an agency’s clearly differentiated proposition will become increasingly important when it comes to clients selecting their agency partnerships. Over the last 12 months we have seen many of our members sharpen their propositions. AKQA is a wonderful example of this with their acquisition of Universal Design Studio and Map Project Office; a clear case of a brand marrying its track record and pedigree for innovation with products to move the brand forward.
A lot has been made of the rise of the consultancies, but one thing that BIMA knows for sure is that the evolving structure of the digital landscape is unpredictable.
With that in mind, the dominance of one type of agency over another risks stifling creativity. It drives over investment in too narrow a type and size of business and limits the number of entrants desiring a career in digital.
That is why we see BIMA as playing a crucial role. At the heart of BIMA is an ambition to create a total community that is brimming with new perspectives and a desire to take our industry forward. The breadth of our membership increasingly shows that we are a home for, and are representative of, this full spectrum of business.
This new playing field of big and small, full services and specialist, full ownership or collaborative independents, in-house versus externally sourced expertise, is a fascinating composition.
As our industry evolves, our ambition remains to be an effective voice for all.