It’s never been more important to have a thriving independent digital design sector
There has been nothing but talk of doom in the independent digital agency sector recently after some big names sold out to move in-house…
There has been nothing but talk of doom in the independent digital agency sector recently after some big names sold out to move in-house. But does this spell the end for the independent?
By Mark Wilson, Founder Partner, Wilson Fletcher
There has been nothing but talk of doom in the independent digital agency sector recently after some big names sold out to move in-house. But does this spell the end for the independent?
Quite the opposite: it makes great agencies more essential than ever.
The last couple of years have been turbulent ones for agencies specialising in digital design. We’ve seen — at last — major client organisations take digital design seriously and build big in-house teams. We’ve seen agencies and consultancies (Wilson Fletcher being one of them) build their own products and become the client. And finally, almost inevitably, we’ve seen big companies buy some of the longest-established independent studios to kickstart their own internal capability (Teehan and Lax joining Facebook being the latest, Adaptive Path selling to Capital One bank being perhaps the most sensational).
Matthew Milan wrote a great piece here on Medium a couple of weeks ago about the centre of this trend being a paucity of senior design leadership talent across the industry. It’s not hard to see why the Adaptive Paths of the world might sell out to a bank when you get that classic imbalance in supply and demand. And it’s true — there are very few people in this industry who’ve been doing it for long enough to be classed as genuinely senior. This is my 25th year in digital design, and I still feel like a novice.
Let’s leave that topic for now (I feel old enough as it is), and focus on why independent agencies, not just the individuals in them, are so important.
Matthew got it bang-on when he said that, unlike any other type of company in the world, the product of a design company is design. We’re not a bank whose product is banking, nor an automotive company whose product is cars. Sitting design at the board table does not make you a design company, and never will. The only truly design-led companies are design companies, because it’s the thing we exist to do. Even Apple — a totally unique organisation built upon the ethos of a totally unique individual — are not design-led. They’re product-led, and they care about design so much because they know that great design makes their products exceptional. That is far from the same thing.
The product of a design company is design. We’re not a bank whose product is banking, nor an automotive company whose product is cars.
I’m sorry, but no matter how you cut it, you simply cannot be a design-led bank (sorry banks, I’m not picking on your particularly). But — and here’s the critical part — you can use design as a powerful tool to improve how you deliver banking services to customers. In fact, I would argue, there are no tools more powerful in the modern business world — because we interface with an increasing number of critical services via digital platforms. The human layer of a service used to be, well, human. Today it’s typically a series of digital interfaces, on digital devices, driving digital business processes.
At Wilson Fletcher, we think about digital design every day and, crucially, how to practice it better than the day before. The work we do demands that we do that: if we can’t practice design better than our competitors, we won’t get hired. And most of us are here because we’re passionate (sometimes obsessed) with our subject area. It’s not a job, it’s what we want to do with our lives — and that means we care about it deeply. All of us could earn more money elsewhere (don’t tell our team) by working in-house or for a big consultancy but we all sacrifice that for the opportunity to design in the way we believe.
That belief in the underlying philosophy of how we approach our work is the root benefit of what our clients get when they work with us. But there is another; something that has never been more critical than in today’s world of ever-growing in-house teams.
We’re independent.
I know that’s obvious, but it rarely gets the value it deserves. No matter how good a team you hire, or buy, how much freedom you give them, or how much licence they are blessed with; from the first day they work in-house they become more a part of the organisation they are part of. That’s exactly why they’re there: to focus on the things that matter to that organisation. Give them a seat at the table and they can influence from the inside.
For the record, that’s great. Everyone should do it. Not considering digital design to be central to an organisation’s future is, in my opinion, an irresponsible and probably suicidal oversight on behalf of those business leaders that haven’t got there yet.
In-house design teams are important. They’re just not everything.
It often surprises people when we say that most of our best projects over the last 12 years have been conducted in collaboration with great in-house teams. But it’s true. We’ve worked on many landmark digital services over the years and very few have been in isolation of a strong partnership with an in-house team.
The independence that a good external agency brings to the table plays out in several ways. At any one time, the work going on in our studio spans multiple organisations, sectors and types of challenge. In an industry where things move this fast, and where new influences come from unexpected places, that live, real-time insight into the design challenges of multiple sectors and service types puts us in a unique position to solve problems in new ways and make connections that would otherwise be missed.
But more than anything else, more than any specific skill-set advantage, the fact that we’re independent means that we’re inherently vested in doing the right thing, for objective reasons — free from any day-to-day politics, organisational taboos or hierarchic pressures. We can say things internal teams can’t (or won’t), spot things that are simply missed, question things that are taken for granted, and challenge assumptions that have always been taken as gospel. All of which, when it’s done right (and boy can it be done wrong), consistently leads to better solutions.
Back in 2002, when we started WF, we were among a small group of independent studios who pioneered experience design as a discipline. Over time, we’ve changed shape, as has the industry, and it will continue to. Let’s not get over-excited about the recent trend towards building in-house teams, acquisitions or acqui-hires — and their portent of doom for the independent agency. Ask lawyers, or accountants, or architects, or graphic designers or a dozen other consulting practice areas about the changes their industries have been through over the last 50 years alone. One thing is for sure — many are more successful and influential than they ever were when they were external-only.
The development of in-house capability is typically a recognition of how critical the area that capability delivers against has become, and as such makes getting ‘it’ right even more important. The argument that agencies will get left with the scraps, for the non-sophisticated clients that ‘aren’t there yet’ is simply nonsense: in our experience, the more an organisation is sophisticated enough to hire in, the more they have the confidence and judgement to buy in the skills to help deliver to the highest standards. They are the least arrogant, most receptive of buyers, because they recognise that it is entirely in their interest to be so. As such, they get the most value from the work we do.
The world we live in — the digital industry — is barely even an infant. Our 12 years is a blink in the history of design and while some of our longest-standing peers have left the industry recently for corporate shores, we believe that there has never been a more important role and need for a strong, independent agency sector.
We can only see it getting stronger in the years ahead as digital services power more and more of daily life everywhere, and we’ve certainly never been more excited to be who we are, where we are, doing exactly what we do.