Progency
Even as AI transforms marketing and martech products become even more all-encompassing, the need for humans will not go away. Professionals will augment the power Martech 2.0 stacks bring to the table. This will require a new generation agency – what I have termed as “Progency” (product-led agency). As I wrote in Progency for Martech: The Missing Link:
This product-led agency will combine content and creative skill sets with number-crunching and software capabilities to build on top of a proprietary full-stack martech platform to deliver the outcomes marketers want with a performance (success-based) model. The progency will help marketing teams outsource the outcomes they want – just like is being done with adtech agencies that generate leads, app installs or new customers and are paid based on results.
The progency will be different because for the first time an agency will build solutions on top of its own product. In the past, agencies have not focused on having their own internal products. Adtech agencies have used products provided by Google and Facebook, and then overlaid their creative and analytical skills to deliver results. The progency will be tech-first, owning a martech platform. Ownership is important because only the developers will fully understand the power of what their platform is capable of. This is what will provide a sustainable competitive advantage to the progency.
… The progency can be seen as the services arm of the martech companies. But it is not a classical people-led services business. The progency is actually a very scalable tech powerhouse with the full stack martech platform as the machine. Brands can either buy the machine itself (in effect, rent a version of it, since it’s all delivered from the cloud) or hire the machine developer to deliver the outcomes.
… Its pitch is simple: we will deliver the outcomes you need, we will get the job done for you. We have the machine and the operators. No one knows the machine better than we do. We constantly make the machine better. You don’t need to worry how it works. (No marketer knows how the targeting machines of Google and Facebook work.) You can of course buy the drill, but we are here to give you the hole that you really desire. You pay based on the performance, so we are on the same side.
What TCS, Infosys, Wipro and other IT services companies did for global customers with their outsourcing people-led solutions, the progency can do in marketing – but with one big difference. The Indian IT services firms did not build their own products and IP (with some exceptions like Finacle from Infosys). The progency will be a product-first company – building on a modern Martech 2.0 stack to deliver performance outcomes in marketing by leveraging the skills of professionals who know how to make the best use of the machine (the tech stack and utilities). With an explosion of data and AI models, marketing will need expertise of a much higher level – with the prize being a 50% reduction in AdWaste and a path to sustainable profitable growth.
India can be the progency operator for the world. There are many India-domiciled martech companies, with Netcore being one of them. There are very few martech services companies – the focus is almost entirely on adtech given the huge spends. But as MSR (martech spend ratio) increases, this will start changing and the demand for services will rise. A progency with its own product can deliver efficiencies and margins like software product companies.
2023 will see the rise of the first progency entities. The complexity of martech will be absorbed in the combination of product and professional services to create a unique model that will transform marketing’s measurability and efficiency in the future by making it performance-based (like in adtech). The future of marketing is about one marketer, one stack and one progency.
