Clients and their old media agencies vs new media agencies seeking those clients

Sandor Panton, the search engine expert, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur behind top5jamaica.com tweeted a powerful question yesterday. RT@top5jamaica said “When will Jamaican companies, event organizers etc. understand that ‘media’ these days doesn’t only mean Gleaner, Observer, TVJ, RJR etc.” In short when will they finally recognise that media now includes the Internet and that the Internet is not some abstract concept that will dwindle into being irrelevant the longer they ignore or the more they downplay its value to a client.
There in lies a fantastic opportunity.
Without question there are many Jamaican companies whose executives are clueless and set in their traditional media ways and who have ad agencies who enjoy that status quo. Why? Well ad agencies make a bundle from fees for placements in the traditional media especially TV, Radio and Billboards and they’re unsure how the Internet can deliver for their clients and for them.
The ad/pr agencies haven’t realised yet that they can continue to make some of those same fees even when they include the Internet as a full media opportunity for their clients. The ad/pr agencies haven’t brought themselves up to speed with what’s happening in the Internet, locally, regionally and globally and have not been able to advise their clients who are not there yet either. They are unaware of the status of the Jamaica, Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora digital culture, the numbers and statistics attached to that.
By the way, I’ve checked with a few colleagues of mine who run digital marketing agencies in the United States, and they have similiar struggles with ad/pr agencies too but not on the scale as we have in Jamaica and the Caribbean, simply because their Internet culture is more advanced and the digital marketing industry is farther along that ours here in the Caribbean.
That said isn’t the opportunity then one of education. The one things I see alot of going on in the US…seminars, webinars, conferences,ebooks, white papers,blogs in which business executives, ad and pr agencies can have to be continuously informed.
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