• by Steve McClellan , October 4, 2011

Keeping up with technology is an ad industry obsession, given the pace of technological change and its impact on consumer touchpoints. But the obsession must be focused properly -- or agencies and marketers risk wasting a lot of time and effort, agency C-level types told a Tuesday morning Advertising Week crowd.

"We're a marketing services company, not a technology company," said Nick Brien, CEO of Interpublic Group's McCann WorldGroup. But technology, he said, plays a key role as an "enabler of ideation and creativity," with the primary goal of allowing clients and brands to better connect with their consumers.

Don Coleman, CEO, Global Hue, said he views technology and new media as "an opportunity to create engaging branded content for our clients."

John Partilla, chief operating officer Dentsu Network West, said the agency's Tokyo headquarters has "floors dedicated to experimenting with technology and media." In Japan, he noted, consumers use mobile routinely for tasks, ranging from purchase checkout to vending machines or checking for discounts and coupons.

Christine Fruechte, CEO, Colle + McVoy, said agencies must experiment with new technologies "to be ahead of the curve." Otherwise, once a technology becomes mainstream, they'll be behind.

Agency employees have to be immersed in technology in order to advise and help clients navigate media channels today, said Coleman.

But Mainardo De Nardis, global CEO, Omnicom's OMD, said that among the challenges that technology presents to the industry is "the balance between specialization and integration." It's a balance, he said, that can be "very hard" to achieve. No all clients embrace as much change as their agencies would like, noted Coleman. "Legacy clients want results but don't want to change the paradigm," he said.

Brien agreed, asserting that some clients are "living on the fumes of an old business model that is running out of steam." New technology and media channels must be embraced, he said, if brands are going to connect with consumers "in a sustainable way."

Technology forces agencies to take a more "entrepreneurial" approach to their work, said Coleman. "You can't have cookie-cutter management in this dynamic age."

Partilla said that as clients shift more of their ad budgets to new technologies, the buys may be less expensive, but the overall cost may be just the same or more because clients require greater help from agencies navigating the different media paths. "It's an opportunity to work in a more strategic way with clients," he said.

The pace of change brought on by technology alters the tenor of planning, said De Nardis. "Long-term planning is a direction," he said. "Everything else is real-time management."

One byproduct of technology is data -- endless streams of it. The good news, said Maria Luisa Francoli, global CEO, Havas' MPG, is that technology also enables the harnessing of data so that it can be used "in a good way."

But data potentially can be problematic if not used properly, said Brien. "It should be used for informing judgment, but it doesn't replace judgment," he said.

As for traditional versus new media, Partilla said that is no longer an issue now that print, for example, is embracing the tablet computer to retain readers. "Forget old versus new media," he said. "Just be relevant media."