Time to kill the digital department

December 13, 2011 | Author: Tim Williams

Is there really an agency leader alive who doesn’t know that it’s time to disband the idea of a “digital department?” 

Back in the days of Mad Men, agencies had a “television department,” because TV was a new technology that the print/outdoor/radio-centric agency executive of the 1950’s didn’t really understand.  So agencies were staffed with “television specialists” whose job it was to understand and recommend the new medium.

Over time, it became clear that a “television department” was no longer needed.  Television became mainstream and assumed its place as the most “mass” of all mass media.

In 2011, the internet officially became the world’s largest advertising medium.  It already was the planet’s leading communications medium.  To have the most popular medium on earth “departmentalized” doesn’t make a lot of sense.  We killed the “television department” when TV became part of the culture; it’s time to kill the “digital department.”

Not separate, but equal

Of course an equally important reason we need to de-departmentalize digital is so that it will no longer be viewed as something “special” or “different” within the agency.  This only serves to give the “non-digital” types an excuse to postpone their immersion into digital marketing and continue to lean on the “interactive group” to come and speak intelligently about digital at client meetings.

I actually believe the digital cognoscenti in agencies perpetuated for many years the notion that digital is indeed a separate, mysterious thing that only certain types of people can understand.  True, some aspects of digital are indeed complex (programming, coding, software development) but some aspects of television production are complex as well (producing animation, lighting sets, running edit bays, etc.)  The point is that every medium has its areas that are the domain of specialist experts.  Digital is no different.

Disbanding the digital department isn’t difficult.  There’s already a natural home for most of the functions that exist in a typical interactive group:

See how easy that was?