IMM09: Shiny New Media Agency Model

During the first day of IMM09, the conference chair, Paul Bay, Jon Bains of Lateral and myself formed a group on stage to play part agent provocateur, part idiot savant and part management consultant as we pondered the question with the audience;

If we follow the logical extension of these three trends;

1. Brands are now forming direct relationships with their audiences like this and this and this
2. Audiences are now all over the place – niche social networks (careful), Flickr, Last.fm, wikipedia, niche blogs and forums as well as in niche traditional media
3. Brands are now forming direct relationships with media owners as attested to by the earlier speaker in the day Alan Fagan, Regional Director Europe BBC Worldwide

Then what is the future role for media agencies?

Let me acknowledge right upfront that I have ever worked in, although I’ve both worked with, media agencies so it’s largely an outsiders view. As a record of the session I’ve put up some notes from an  earlier session featuring media clients that inspired me here, I’ve posted the ideas from my notes from the actual session here and we’re hoping that we can continue the discussion on this blog.