In the old days of advertising and marketing – the pre-digital age, if you will – it was all about the silos. The account team spoke with the clients; the planning team did the research; the creative team did the brainstorming and, well, creative work; the production team made sure that everything was done on time and to spec. You either had to be in one silo or another if you wanted to work within the industry.

Then, along came this little thing we like to call the internet, and we introduced a new group to the mix: the developers and digital teams. Some of the big traditional shops struggled adding the digital team to the mix, but they eventually figured it out, and the new process integrated the new silo into the mix. While digital mainly started as informational and promotional in nature, there was an inherent shift in time towards creating quality content – just as on any other medium. Some agencies kept it simple (“we create websites”) as a part of their model, which others went a little more specialized with their approach (“using interaction design and usability research, we create comprehensive web architecture and content strategies to engage consumers…” – you get the drift.) Some new media agencies acted upon many of the key learnings from video production shops, forming successful digital production houses, servicing other agencies and clients.

In the last couple of years, the art of the cross-functional team has become prevalent, where the silo walls have been lowered (if not removed), and more team members are now involved in the end-to-end project process, coming in and out to deliver key insights or feedback in order to make the project more successful. This process has resulted in more creative projects that better utilize the digital capabilities, and has expanded the mindset of the client and the agency alike in developing new programs; to this, there is no doubt. Team members that can function in a cross-functional environment and relate to their colleagues are better set up for success than those who stay in their own silos.

However, I believe the age of using digital – or most media – as an interruption tool – or as a tool that solely pushes aspirational values without participation – is over. There are many recent examples that demonstrate this – and if you’ve sought out our blog, you know many of these – and the value of participatory content has been shown over and over. Because digital serves as a tool for participation and interaction, and the most successful campaigns involve online experiences leading to offline interactions, I argue that we’ve entered the post-digital age. If you’re not integrating your digital work into your overall campaign strategy – and using it as a medium like you would anything else we do – you’re missing out on many valuable opportunities to take the engaged user online and convert them into an engaged customer offline – which is the whole point of marketing in the first place.

What is interesting to me is the mindset that this requires of people working in our industry. No longer is the ability for someone to work in a cross-functional environment an important evaluation tactic for me with any new hire; instead, I think we should be looking for cross-functional people. Cross-functional teams bring together people with different functional experience under a project manager to execute on a project. Cross-functional people have multiple experiences or key skill-sets to bring into a project, offering different viewpoint across the project spectra. While, from a tactical level, you still require all of your skills to execute on a project – creative, development, etc. – having cross-functional people as part of your organization really benefits the planning and strategic portions of the project, as utilizing these different skill sets up front allows for different types of ideas to be developed, in addition to building an added level of flexibility into the project. I want to work with a developer who is able to strategize, or a creative who is obsessed with research, or an account executive who happens to love analytics and analysis. The more people you have able to perform multiple skills, the easier it can become to adapt during a project if something isn’t at the level it needs to be.

As someone who has worked at smaller shops (and run my own agency previously), I’ve seen plenty of roles that are hybrids due to resource requirements and limited funds. I’ve heard lots of arguments again this, mainly because “people aren’t able to focus on specific tasks.” (Paraphrased.) I would argue that the hybrid is the way of the future in our business – and many other industries – and that we better get used to it.

See, here’s the deal: this isn’t anything new. Companies that have seen universal success in the social media space have done so thus far because they’ve done one of two things:

1. They’ve provided a platform for either brand evangelists to speak strongly for their brand without much intrusion (see Coke’s Facebook fan page and their efforts to have it run by the fans that started it, despite Facebook’s efforts as a key example, or Honda’s Love campaign) or provided a place for brand evangelists/brand critics to provide input on the brand (with MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s Ideastorm being the key examples – Ideastorm taking Dell from the bottom of the pack in customer service satisfaction surveys to the top). or;
2. They’ve activated a campaign that has nothing directly to do with selling products, or pushing brand messaging around product benefits, instead focusing on social or entertainment-related movements that speak to aspriational messaging around the brand. Pepsi’s campaign is an example of this, but so is the Greatest Job in the World campaign, Mad Men’s fake Twitter accounts, the Nissan Hypercube campaign, Coke’s CokeTag Facebook application, the Halo launch ARG, etc, etc… all not pushing product messaging (“Buy This,” “Watch This,” etc,) but creating this experience around the brand, and creating the connection in people’s heads. This is strongly based on traditional marketing efforts of association, but with the added complexity of user interactivity and the ability for consumers to influence the successes of these campaigns.

In fact, this label can likely be applied to the digital space in general – yes, you need a corporate website; yes, you need information online, but if you’re looking to actually produce results (and you’re not in the eCommerce business), you need to create something that I’ll remember offline – and pushing straight product/brand messaging isn’t the way to go with that. Pepsi isn’t doing anything revolutionary; they’re just the first to throw this much cash behind an idea online that isn’t seen as helping to sell product – when in reality, it likely will.

What do you think? Do you agree with my two types of social media successes? Are there organic social media examples that live outside of this?