• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 18, 2007

What's the answer for agencies in dire need of digital expertise? Wait, says Colleen DeCourcy, chief experience officer at JWT.

"We have 24 months before finding digital talent becomes really easy," DeCourcy explained during the American Association of Advertising Agencies' first-ever Digital Conference last week. "The talent battle is going to be over, because people coming into agencies will have grown up on the Internet."

DeCourcy--who shared the 4A's stage with some of the industry's top sages--described her mission as creating integrated, multi-platform programs, and in the spirit of experimentation, "making sure the [client's] brand is fairly unsafe."

David Blum, executive director, SFI Division, Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, challenged his peers to advocate for digital as the linchpin for brand campaigns.

"The net is not seen as a place where the core [brand] idea can live," said Blum. "We need to champion digital." Not long ago, Blum added, "They didn't think of [digital] as the idea, they thought of us as the deliverers of their idea."

But, for all the disrespect that digital creative and media people have had to stomach, their day in the sun is near, assured Tarik Sedky, chief digital officer, Y&R Advertising.

"They're sitting in the cat-bird seat right now," Sedky said.

The issue of accountability--an idea once considered foreign to most ad executives--was raised several times to distinguish the old order from the new.

"When I was working with Bud, no one ever said 'That ad's not working, let's switch it out; it's not getting the clicks,'" said Larry Harris, executive vice president and director of integrated marketing for Draftfcb.

Now, added Harris, the keys are "getting closer to the consumer," and "demonstrating ROI," which only digital can achieve.

Addressing the industry's future, DeCourcy continued to stress the four C's--content, communication, community and commerce--as the driving forces behind all agency initiatives.

What has changed, however, is the "hyper-collaboration" in which consumers are now participating. The new "x-factor," she said, is the liberation of consumers.

Bud.TV has been a failure, in DeCourcy's view, because its architects ignored the real value of video communities, which is the ability to engage in a collaborative view of the world.

Also of note, DeCourcy said she's actually "trying to stay away from YouTube and MySpace right now" to focus on other emerging online opportunities.