The creative revolution of the 60s was built on a foundation of craft and the explosion of media after WWII. It took an army of writers, art directors, comp artists, mechanical artists, illustrators, photographers, producers and so on to produce all the work businesses needed.  There were print ads (for magazines, newspapers, trade publications), TV (national and local and direct) and brochures (handouts, leave behinds, direct mail). The combined cost of media and production relative to returns was a bargain, and advertising was at the heart of how companies got customers. But in the 1980s, the costs of media went up and the marketing crafts started to shrink.

Now there is a new expansion based on digital marketing. The Web is a very inexpensive medium (banner ads on a few big sites aside). And it is a medium that offers the same kind of huge new business opportunities TV advertising did. The returns on Web sites and applications are game-changing. But the costs are in infrastructure (hosting, security, software, data integration and back end systems) and creative (information architecture, content strategy, design, art direction, development, Flash animation, strategy).  There are lots of moving parts — customization, signed-in/non-signed in areas, social media, landing pages, sites, micro-sites, blogs, video, banners and email. 

For example, Fidelity has a really cool retirement income calculator. Having written simpler versions of similar things, I can only imagine the IA, design, copy, database and Flash time that went into making it work. And it’s just one small part of a Web site that has hundreds of pages and dozens of tools. Which in turn is just a part of a digital strategy involving email, enewsletters, digital advertising, sponsored articles and blogs, micro-sites, landing pages and social media. You can see how much work goes into good digital experiences everywhere, from the wsj mobile platform for iPhone to the index of programming on Hulu.

Digital marketing efforts, succeed or fail based on great execution as much as on great ideas. In fact, you can’t really have one without the other. Agencies, and their clients, can’t succeed without both.