Since 1980, the advisory role of Madison Avenue has declined. The advertising industry in general has failed miserably at responding to the challenges of the digital world. There’s been a decline in advertising as an overall portion of marketing spend.

The digital world has introduced a new set of nomenclature that has confused the landscape. Google has been an innovator, but the industry as a whole has not. The whole industry is looking down the battle of a gun. However, the financial crisis is putting new pressure on our industry. There are a finite number of possible futures or outcomes.

“There is a quiet revolution underway, led by the world’s most rapidly developing economies…The internet is driving that progress.” – CEO, Sun Microsystems.

Web 2.0 is in its early stages. But there are some significant macro-trends happening that will fundamentally change the world we live in. Digital technologies are disrupting the way we communicate. The world is interconnected, interdependent, and needs to be transparent.

More and more companies will look for alternative sources of income. Advertising will play a key role. There is a rise in “Free.” The platform wars are about control of the future of the world economies. Advertising agencies are under resources and under capitalized.

Transparency and consumer control means that “now the deer have guns.”

The consumer controlled world that we’ve created has provided too many choices for all of them to be sustainable. The media environment is constantly moving, constantly in flux. Its like a pinball. The ball is constantly moving around, bouncing off person to person. People are constantly talking, and want and need the brand when they want it, not when we want to talk about it.

Brands need to look at themselves as a service, not a product. One way to do that is through digital media. What you do as a brand is more important that what you say. Brand band business behavior is becoming key. And doing what you say you do is critical. The brands that will win will be the ones who’s consumers tell the best story, not the brands that tell the best story. You need to create communication that people want to spend time with.

We need to get away from campaign based thinking into continuous communication. Outputs need to be outcomes. Controlled communication needs to become organic communication. To accomplish this, we need to re-engineer our agencies. People need to think about how to integrate on a vertical basis, not horizontally. And this terrifies most agencies. But that is the challenge. They need to become much more efficient, and need to invest in the brainpower in our industry. Consider the idea of an “Open Source Agency.”