Agile Is The New Black set out to ask a question of startups, advertising agencies and industry thought leaders: are brands and agencies mirroring the agility of startups in order to navigate the increasingly fragmented communications landscape?

It’s important to note that this is a never-ending conundrum of innovation, consumer behaviour, media and marketing communications- one that will never, ever stand still long enough to grasp the answer with two hands.

What has come to the surface however, is a series of key points, each shedding light on the conversation in order to comprehend the role of agility in the commercial marketing communications landscape.

Spotlight centre stage: The findings so far

I’ll keep it short and sweet.

The Communications Landscape Has Changed:

· Digital Technology and Mobility

· Consumer Media Consumption: Picking and choosing content

· Overwhelming importance of quality: Quality of design, quality of product, quality of engagement and quality of experience

· The story: quality stories that have meaning

Agencies and startups are working to engage an audience via authentic and transparent experiences. This also suggests the need to be very focused, very niche in a particular area in order to ensure both authentic engagement and high levels of quality.

Startup Perspective:

· Lean in action: agile is a way of life, a philosophy not just a practice

· Success is found in quality and niche, authentic experiences

· Move forward, hustle

Startups are now part of the communications landscape via their innovations in technology. They are a way that brands can more quickly be agile.

Agency Perspective:

· Rise of niche and nimble on behalf of the brand

You may be thinking- well that’s not new, trend forecasting and monitoring of the market category and their audiences is part of agency practice. True. However, now clients know to ask for it. And expect it.

· Digital focus

· Debate over Brand Loyalty

· Heightened awareness of integrated multi-platform engagement

· Increase in focus on turning clients into an experience, into an entire personality- While humanistic branding is a whole other story, it is definitely a theme colliding with the concept of the startup Lean model.

The Bridge: Where is agile at?

Startups like Newscred and Contently, Astronauts Wanted, and StoryTour are breaking down the communications process in order to become specialists. Offering education to brands to pursue a more adaptive and responsive practice while also offering an avenue for the brand to be agile in the interim.

At this point, brands are clearly recognising it’s importance but in my opinion, taking the most convenient road by contracting external bodies- agencies and startups alike- to facilitate.

The need to move fast and adapt is the new norm, the fragmented communications landscape has dictated this.

Yet there is still hesitation about the way in which to best go about handling such a moveable feast. As I found when meeting with the variety of contacts, everyone has their own take on what agile means in the media and communications industry. The common factor however, is that consumer-centricity is here to stay. Needing to innovate is here to stay.

“These trends are re-shaping the way that consumers acquire knowledge, share opinions and buy products. Brands are only just beginning to see the light in the form of innovation labs, or using startups as an extension of themselves to provide the brand with an element of agility” — Garth Holsinger, Pilot 44

The marketing communications landscape is a swirling mass of media, advertising, startups and brands.

Such a mass of players has brought together- wait let me rephrase- caused a complete collision, of many elements of communications that previously did not relate to one another.

Brands are looking to startups for technology innovation and education in reaching their audiences quickly and meaningfully- they are becoming the platform for brands to adopt elements of agility in order to cope with the increasingly fragmented landscape.

Hungry for more detail? Peruse the full narratives in the Agile Is The New Black collection- read now, or read later. Medium is agile like that.