It struck me the other day after watching another what seemed like stream of pointless adverts, what could or should the future be for brands and agencies in the future, maybe this has become more topical in these strained economic times, where it seems budgets are drying up, adverts re-run and marketeers under direction to reduce spending in advertising.

How can brands achieve a level of awareness or communicate a message in this fast moving digital age ? With everything on demand, we can choose what we watch, when we watch it and at the speed we want to, adverts are skipped over, occasionally stopped at something brilliant maybe, but maybe im looking for that brilliance.

We have SKY+, Freeview, V-Box, and DVDs in our homes, online we have YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, Grooveshark, Jumpcut, applications installed on your laptops / computers ( Still playing with Boxee ). It’s with this that I believe that spending huge amounts on expensive advertsing campaigns will soon become a thing of the past in the traditional sense. I believe brands and agencies will soon start moving toward a more lo-fi approach using online and other digital comms to allow interaction at a level that ATL just cannot. Using saturation and riskier ideas as a structure that would resonate better ( see the Black Swan theory ), allowing the agency to act more contextually with broader social dynamics, engaging on immediate issues that they may be facing rather than the possible abstract.

I do believe that what I am talking about here is a bigger shift in terms of where do agencies spend their clients money, I believe that digital can truly make huge strides in these next few years and will help shape of what surely will become a new advertising agency model.