“Success is dependent on creative agencies embracing a world without borders and beginning to work closer with lateral leaders across multiple disciplines. This is where AGENCY 2030 comes in.”
Guest contributor, Duane Holland, founder and creative strategy director at DH READY takes a hop into the future to bring us news of ‘AGENCY 2030’ – an academic study dedicated to forecasting the changing dynamic of creative agencies and takes a look at some of the embryonic ideas that could well become commonplace in creative agencies in the not too distant future.
In recent years the UK has faced the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, but the outlook is positive with the creative industries being one of the fastest growing sectors. Further exponential growth is expected with The Arts Council predicting the UK will become the global ‘creative services hub’ by 2025.
Advertising and Marketing had the largest Gross Value Added (GVA), with brands and creative agencies going through a new golden era, looking to technology, data and science to unearth new growth opportunities. This dependence on innovation is only set to continue with rising consumer expectation and sophistication levels.
Success is dependent on creative agencies embracing a world without borders and beginning to work closer with lateral leaders across multiple disciplines. This is where AGENCY 2030 comes in.
AGENCY 2030 is an academic study in collaboration between UCL, one of the world’s leading universities, and DH READY, a cross-discipline communications consultancy. Working together, the project is a ‘meeting of minds’ as academic thought-leaders across science, technology, culture come together with pioneering industry brand thinkers to forecast the changing dynamic of creative agencies across the full spectrum – advertising, media, PR, social, digital, live, design, innovation, sponsorship, content, tech, mobile and UX.
Our contributors will offer an alternative perspective by predicting big trends and applying them back into what new services, skills and structures could become commonplace in creative agencies in 15 years time.
Early study topics have started to explore how ‘Behaviour Enhanced Technologies’ could help brands to intervene with changing people’s perceptions, to how ‘Crowd Influence’ lab studies today will open up future avenues to spread messages through more distributed and complex peer-to-peer networks.
AGENCY 2030 is a wholly-unique project that has never been conducted before, but with a global powerhouse research institution like UCL behind it, the rigour and insight that will be untapped will not only enable creative agencies to break new creative ground, but also nurture a new breed of “creative” with a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving.
The end output is an academic white paper, but the journey to get there will be through a series of intimate, invite-only events. Last night saw the launch at The Hospital Club with thanks to Dr. Parashkev Nachev (Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Neurology at UCL) and Brian Millar (Head of Strategy at Sense Worldwide, and guest contributor to Forbes, Fast Company and The Economist) discuss the parallels between neuroscience and brand creativity. Our speakers were joined by a lively crowd from Google, Contagious, Satalia, The Dandy Lab and Proximity.
We’ve just started our quest to find clues to what the creative agency in 2030 might look like, but with a solid team and widespread support behind it already, the future is looking bright.
For more information about the report, attending or speaking at future events, and partnership enquiries please contact Duane Holland on duane@dhready.com.
Hold Tight.