In Adobe’s 2015 the future of the agency report, the majority (94 percent) of survey respondents talked about increasing their investment in technology and technology partnerships. This is fueled by a need for agencies to move faster and more efficiently than ever before to meet the dynamic needs of their customers.
Moreover, it also points to the need for agencies to have a finger on the pulse of the ever-changing technology landscape as more clients look to them for guidance on how to navigate digital changes.
R/GA is a full-service, digital agency with close to 2,000 employees in 14 offices around the world. R/GA works with clients such as Samsung, Verizon, Nike, Google, McCormick, and more.
We talked to Isabel Kantor, Senior Technology Director at R/GA, about the evolution of the client-agency relationship, digital disruption, and the transformation of the agency model.
Velocitize: How has the client-agency relationship evolved in the past five 
years?
Kantor: From a technology perspective, in the past two to three years, there has been a major shift. Traditionally, we’ve worked with the Chief Marketing Officers on the client side, but, in the past few years, we’ve seen a shift, where now the Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers are coming to us for technology consulting help.
As such, we’re becoming a consulting partner on the technology side and we’re working more with the CTOs and CIOs in addition to the CMOs to help them navigate digital transformation and find solutions that fit their needs.
Velocitize: Have you found agility to be a priority internally?
Kantor: Working in an agile fashion is really part of our DNA at R/GA. The technology team works in close collaboration with the creative team throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. We prototype, test, and improve — and we couldn’t do that and be as successful and creative if we didn’t do it with agility. It helps us bring products to market faster and improve and iterate on our work quickly.
Velocitize: What advice would you give to agencies who are trying to incorporate more agile principles into their practices?
Kantor: What works for us at R/GA is making technology part of our core workflow. Everything we do incorporates technology. This means that, when you’re trying to be more agile, you can prototype more quickly and if it works then build it and if it doesn’t then that means failing fast and trying something else. We want to bring the best ideas to our clients in a fast and efficient way.
Velocitize: How can agencies position themselves best to navigate this digital transformation?
Kantor: Digital transformation is at the core of our clients’ businesses and at the core of their roadmaps.
There are many things agencies can do. One thing we’ve done at R/GA is to start by looking at a client’s technology ecosystem… The marketing technology landscape is growing. The offerings are becoming more diverse, and it’s becoming even more difficult to navigate who to partner with, which vendors to work with, and how to curate a client’s technology stack.
In order to navigate the digital shift, one challenge to overcome is to try to understand the landscape of marketing technology offerings — and to understand what works best for clients and how to make all of these tech partners work with each other to build the right technology stack for clients.
At R/GA, we have a group, the Software Platform Lab, which focuses on strategic technology partnerships, vendor relationships, and platform evaluations. As such, we are prepared to become a trusted advisor to our clients when it comes to selecting technologies that best suit the clients’ business needs and goals.
Velocitize: How do you think the agency model will shift in the next five years?
Kantor: From a technology perspective, for many years at R/GA we’ve been building websites, apps, wearables, products and software. More recently, in addition to building, we’re also partnering with our clients on the technology consulting side.
As I mentioned earlier, we partner with CTOs and CIOs to help them with their technology decisions, helping with anything from M & A tech due diligence, to evaluating products, and even with digital transformation projects. I see this trend growing a lot more in the next few years.
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