• by Raphael Rivilla , Op-Ed Contributor, February 1, 2016

The agency of record (AOR) relationship appears to be dead — or at least dying — and agencies are scrambling to be the right size to remain profitable within the new project-driven reality.

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal late last year, Mondelez CMO Dana Anderson wrote, “It’s time to accept that the agency of record model is no longer the pathway to Oz for clients or agencies … digital just didn’t make one new channel — it created thousands of new mediums. It is just not possible for one agency to be expert in all these areas.”

The growth of project-driven, best-of-breed specialist work can also be attributed to brands building their in-house agencies and no longer needing an AOR. These in-house agencies are replacing the AOR for brand control and are seeking out the best specialists to execute their ideas. The question is: How can we thrive and grow when clients appear to be growing more obsessed with specialization and project engagements?

Our suggestion:Expand your project assignments by infusing your project solutions with cross-channel thinking.

A project is just the beginning. Say you're bidding on a digital project to revamp a brand website.You pull together your digital team — front-end, back-end, creative and digital strategy for the pitch. You answer the brief and your solution looks great. But what about driving traffic? What about maintaining traffic and organic rankings?

It’s a perfect opportunity to bring new ideas and expose your expertise. SEO should be roped in to inform site architecture and to mitigate organic traffic loss. With SEO comes additional connected touchpoints to drive and safeguard traffic.

Paid search is a targeted, very efficient channel that can be used to augment organic traffic while SEO signals grow. Review site-tracking tools to inform your paid-search approach; analyze keywords that drive high-quality traffic that could protect your client's business during a site redesign.

What about content? Re-purpose it into bite-sized, cross-platform pieces distributed natively and through other social touchpoints to drive traffic, while increasing social signals (another strong factor for SEO). Now, your agency's role includes search, social and paid media.

Triage with the right people.The big idea is usually communicated by using TV as the initial touchpoint, but the concepts should never be conceived in a vacuum. When ideas are being developed, it makes sense to have media and social teams present, even in a creative brainstorm. You'll be surprised at how easy it is to weed out a big idea that doesn't translate to multiple touchpoints. Plus, it's much easier to sell in a big idea when it does.

Think: Is there more content than can be created around the big idea? Is there social chatter surrounding related topics? If you're creating content, is there search volume around this content? How can you sequentially shepherd your brand's consumers across all touchpoints in their journey? 

Predict outcomes. How do you know the idea will work? Involve your analytics team to project performance against your KPI and make these predictions part of the sell. Now, you've got accountability and your analytics team involved. Bringing more to the table starts with the right talent in place, especially if you're faced with unpredictable revenues due to the ebb and flow of project-centric work.

Expect more on the table when hiring. When hiring subject-matter experts, look for T-shaped skills: the vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own. 

We are living in challenging and ever-changing times as brand marketers and agencies — a time where it isn’t enough to be a specialist to win, but where specialists are being sought after more and more. They say everything is cyclical so maybe the AOR model will resurge. However, until that time, we have to bring more to the table. Sounds daunting, but isn't that what being an AOR was like anyways?