Agencies have always operated in a competitive market, but now, they must contend with brand clients bringing marketing tasks in-house and consultancies encroaching on their turf. 2021 saw significant changes to New Zealand Adland – from senior staff moves and the introduction of new market players, to the way marketers interact with their agency partners.
Digital consultancies – the likes of Accenture, Deloitte and PWC – are becoming bigger than ever and representing expertise in the digital marketing and data-driven sides of the field. In the past, companies that fell under this banner usually focused on the technical side of marketing, leaving the creative side of the field to traditional advertising agencies. Recently, though – and a trend we have seen play out in other markets like the UK and Australia over the past five or so years – there has been a shift as digital consultancies have begun to purchase creative agencies in order to incorporate creative development into the services they offer.
Last year this trend hit the local market in a big way with The Monkeys (Accenture) and Deloitte Digital Creative NZ marking their arrivals to Adland.
Traditionally, digital consultancies have the infrastructure, expertise and data to allow start-up companies to quickly get a larger market share than they would have without assistance. These consultancies are now more so also helping larger brands keep up with the constantly changing aesthetic desires of consumers in the digital, mobile and data spaces, often with a clear advantage over traditional advertising agencies in gathering, analysing and inperpreting data. Their extensive infrastructure is designed to capture as much data as possible and to organise it in ways that assist digital marketing. Building extensive profiles of consumers using this data coupled with these new creative extensions will, for all intensive purposes, allow these consultancies to
