With the fundamental and relentless changes occurring in the marketing landscape, it is interesting to see how this plays out in "agency land". You may have seen some of the video portrayals - both insightful and amusing:

However, the agency world will no doubt prove to be resilient... it will be survival of the most relevant in any case.

Forrester have just released a report on "The Future of Agency Relationships" that makes for interesting reading. A key conclusion: "marketers must lead change".  

Forrester calls the current turmoil in the marketing landscape the "Adaptive Marketing era" (adaptive is re-assuring but an "era"?!). And to remain relevant, marketers need to "embrace Adaptive Brand Marketing — an approach encouraging rapid response to align consumer and brand needs and maximize return on brand equity. Core elements include: embracing an expanded role for consumer intelligence, focusing on strategic brand platforms, and empowering a federated organization. Over the next five years, Adaptive Brand Marketing will shift the discussion from the classic four P's — now table stakes rather than differentiators — to permission, proximity, perception, and participation."

The Adaptive Marketing era is one where interactive and digital technologies are beginning to replace mass media as the foundation of marketing and where marketers need to take a more flexible approach to marketing due to the two-way communication that is now visible between consumers and companies.

The Forrester report observes that "while most agencies are taking steps to reinvent themselves, they can only go as far their clients allow. And while many marketers are demanding agency change at one moment, they're still asking where their 30 second spot is the  next. Marketers won't see real change in the agency landscape until they begin to apply a new set of criteria to their agency partners."

Interesting isn't it? I wonder how many courageous client side marketers we have... or indeed whether the courage will come from other parts of the organisation.

According to Forrester, the new criteria should be applied to the three fundamental services that agencies provide (or have always provided): Ideas, Interaction and Intelligence:
 

From where we sit, the 'elephant in the room' is the internal capability (the 4th "I"?) - assisting the organisation itself - to respond to the ever expanding interactions with active customers.