The technological revolution has led to fundamental changes in consumer attitudes and behaviour. The speed with which these changes are taking place is quite extraordinary and many would conjecture, including Ray Kurzweil, head of Google and NASA sponsored furturology school , that we are just at the beginning of that curve.
 
These changes can be broadly grouped under two headings; consumer empowerment and content consumption.
 
Consumer empowerment is the ability for the individual not to simply rely on the veracity of a (marketing) message but instead to seek peer comment and recommendation, to compare price and service and ultimately to be able to feedback. The advent of social networks has meant an individual’s friends and peers  can now be brought together in a closed group, the impact of which is still unfolding; however, it would be fair to say that it has presented the consumer with another way of obtaining and giving brand comment.
 
Content consumption is  about the shifts taking place in the way consumers digest all forms of media. Recent research has indicated that many people no longer feel overwhelmed by the growth and fragmentation of media because they possess a greater number of  tools to tailor media content to their needs and preferences, whether it be  Internet Protocol Television, Sky+ and Tivo, or  Itunes and downloading. There are now also many screens on which people can view content, from your phone to your laptop, or the increasingly popular habit of ‘dual watching’ – laptop open whilst watching TV.

What has this meant for an advertising agency?

Although supposed shrines to the worship of ‘creativity’,  advertising agencies have paradoxically been conservative organisations, holding on to working practices, structures and methodology originated in the 1960’s. In the most part they have failed to recognise the sea change taking place around them and the need for a freethinking approach to the way brands need to develop their relationship with consumers and the way advertising agencies will have to be organised and structured. And although we have seen the arrival and growth of specialist digital agencies over the last ten years, many of which have been gobbled up by the large advertising groups in an attempt to bolt on expertise, they have largely failed to recognise that technology does not replace the need for consumer insight and understanding.
 
And that’s where Libertine comes in – an agency created two years ago with ‘Freethinking’ built in to its DNA and a recognition that we now have to earn attention and create value for consumers, not simply message at them, whether online or offline. A realisation that a creative agency cannot hope to employ all the expertise under one roof and that there is a need to partner with many new types of companies and people in order to build successful brands. And an understanding that creativity needs to be agnostic and not wedded to a specific channel.
 
For Libertine freethinking means embracing change and not clinging on to the past.