Agencies Thrive on Technology

You won’t stand tall in a flat world doing things that everyone else can. Instead, you’ll stand out by finding your area of expertise and honing your skills to perfection. But, as Thomas Friedman explains in his best-selling book “The World is Flat,” digital communications have led to a world awash in vanilla, me-too marketing. Universal access to computers has made true expertise a seemingly rare commodity, or at least harder to find.

Equipped with amazing computing tools, individuals can accomplish tasks that once took the effort of entire specialized companies, and in a fraction of the time. The truth is, however, that not every individual with a computer is a creative giant or groundbreaking innovator. Though your PC or iMac enables you to do research, create new images, and much more, it alone cannot make the quality of your work remarkable or innovative.

Friedman explains that companies can cope with change if they embrace it, not build walls. Advertising agencies in particular have ridden the crest of a wave of technology, but at the same time found themselves threatened by “kids with computers.” The answer for many agencies has to simply get better at what they do best, ramping up their strategic insight, creative instinct, and artistic flair.

At Persuadable Research we too have found that the very technology that makes our company possible also threatens to flatten us. That’s why we choose to make an art of online surveys. Perfecting this approach comes with a combination of hard work, industry experience, and marketing savvy…all earned the old fashioned way.

On the surface, online surveys might look like something anyone with time and a PC might be able to do, but this just is not the case. During the past decade we have developed the skills that make it look easy. We’ve earned how to best structure questionnaires and write questions that drill down to the right information. The magic is due to hard work and experience, not off-the-shelf software.

Yes, we believe that in a flattened world, experts of all kinds can still stand tall and proud. The key to standing out is not to settle for doing commodity work. Instead, it’s developing true expertise.

Agencies that use every available channel to engage consumers and gather intelligence for their clients will continue to be the leaders.