• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 20, 2012

Trying to explain the transformation of his agency’s portfolio of services, and the way they’re organized, Bob Greenberg likened what R/GA is doing to what Apple once did, dropping the word “computer” from its corporate brand name to imply that it is bigger than just a computer manufacturer. And he predicts the same thing will happen with R/GA.

“Just like Apple lost the ‘computer’ in its name, we’re going to lose the  ‘agency’ from our name,” he told attendees during R/GA’s and Nike’s presentation at the Cannes’ Festival of Creativity.

I never realized the word “agency” was in its name. According to the shop’s history on Wikipedia, the “A” in R/GA originally stood for “Associates.”

Whatever you call it, Greenberg says R/GA isn’t so much an agency as it is a functionally integrated company that creates products and services, just like the ones he sited during his presentation – Apple, Google, Amazon and Nike.