Weiden+Kenndy Gets The Web 2.0's Blues

2 must read articles on the state of the industry. The first article, " On Madison Avenue, A Digital Wake-Up Call," speaks about how Weiden +Kennedy, Nike's agency of record since 1982 will lose part of Nike's business and the reason behind it is what has the industry's ears up and listening. The separation is being caused by Nike's dissatisfaction with the agency's digital expertise. "The message is clear: No matter how talented an agency's creative team or how well the client's management likes the firm's executives, the agency is of limited value unless it embraces digital media."

My first thought is doesn't W+K only handle their traditional media? The article states that as Nike's Core ad agency, W+K handled all of the print and t.v. but has also done some interactive initiatives. But the majority of their new media work has long been farmed out to digital specialty shops like R/GA. But what I find really interesting and what they fail to mention in the article is Nike's success in the digital world. I know this because of a stint I did at R/GA where I was fortunate enough to work on a cool Nike project which won a How Magazine's, "Best of Show." Along side that, R/GA in 2006 alone, won NIKE an additional ADDY, a Cannes Lion and Clio. But I think what Nike realizes is that winning awards for slick looking sites is great right now but they're only skin deep. To survive in the web 2.0 realm, sites need to have brains and beauty, or in other words have the ability to have a conversation with the consumer. The article continues with"Nike now believes digital thinking should be at the heart of ad strategy, according to people familiar with the marketer's thinking. To make digital more central, it needs its main ad agency to be better skilled at digital techniques because the agency is developing ad strategy at the very early stages of a marketing campaign."

The "digital thinking" Nike was asking from W+K and how this seismic shift in the industry can be best explained in this great article by Bruce Nussbaum titled, "Are Designers the Enemy of Design? Where he poses the question, "The Big Design Management Challenge is how do you switch gears from designing for to designing with? Maybe the object of design is not a finished product but a set of tools that allow people to design their experiences for themselves. Think iPod and iTunes. Think TiVo. Starbucks.