An Econsultancy survey this week revealed that 75% of the top UK digital agencies don’t have Twitter accounts. Oops. Gotta love the irony, since these agencies usually boast that marketers prefer their agencies to practise what they preach, and should use the social tools they offer advice on, compared to what George Parker calls the BDAs (almost none* of which are on Twitter). It’s opened up the well-travelled discussion about why agencies don’t advertise themselves, or tweet, or have official Facebook pages and so on.
The full list of shame is available here. It’s a bit bloody, as there are plenty of comments from agencies cross that they were left off the list, but as in any assessment of the agency scene, there are many small agencies with energetic attention to any way of promoting themselves, and perhaps more cumbersome agencies that, arguably, have become a bit relaxed or paranoid behind their brand names. Mind you, the list surveyed isn’t exhaustive or representative of the entire agency community, but raises interesting parallels between the blurring of the corporate and the personal opinion.
It’s good to see so many agencies allowing their staff to tweet (and blog) freely, and people do step up with personal accounts and regular opinion. Would it be possible to stop them, though? There are notable instances where the tweeting and blogging individuals garner greater reputations and following than the agency brands they represent. I suppose it’s like having the columnists people bought papers for and not untypical for a business sector which is so personality driven. On the other hand, neatly put by one tweet “I asked if I could tweet about what I’m doing and got told nobody’s ever asked that before, can I get back to you”. They never did, and said twitterer left that agency shortly after.
* in Campaign's top ten anyway - comments welcome
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Alastair Duncan
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
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