Great post by Noelle Weaver over on Small Agency Diary today called Coming to Grips With a Web 2.0 Advertising World. Go read it. The gist of the article is you need to get past the medium and get to know your customer as intimately as possible. Here’s a quick quote from Noelle’s post:

As advertisers, we must now recognize old, new and developing medias, technologies, economics and consumer relationships and engagement. We must recognize that in today’s landscape, each of these directly impacts the other.

We must now help our clients know and understand what types of conversations consumers are having about their brands. Where? When? And to who?

And we must understand that greater value and efficiencies may come from a smaller segment of the audience. These days it seems that if you get a few influencers on board, the whole world will listen.

Gone are the days when we called on our media companies at the 11th hour to put together a traditional media plan for us to sell to the client. Expected media no longer works and we must now understand that what you say is just as important as where you say it.

Noelle goes on to point out that this shift in thinking requires change in the way agencies think about the customer:

So when Greg sent out an email titled, “What if our advertising is wrong?” I couldn’t help but think to myself “What if our advertising is still right? But the way many agencies still choose to [or not as the case may be] approach understanding the consumer and building the media mix is actually the bigger problem?”

Noelle’s post comes hot on the heels of a Blue Flavor post entitled The Agency Model is Dead. Blue Flavor’s Director of Strategy, Brian Fling, says there are five nails in the agency model coffin:

1. Segmentation (Too many choices, pervasive media weakened)
2. Big Ideas: They don’t always reap big rewards
3. The Cost of Trial and Error
4. The Growth of In-House Resources
5. The Talent Pool

As a bonus coffine nail, Brian states that “creativity is not a cornered market”. Of course, he’s right… no one, agency or in-house teams, owns a great idea or great creative.

What’s your take on this? Mass advertising is dead… the agency model is dead… does this map to what you’re seeing on the ground?

Spell with flickr props.