Back in January, associate professor of marketing, brand expert, and Marketing Week columnist, Mark Ritson, published a piece on the ‘death of digital’ job titles.
It went a little something like this:
If you’re familiar with Ritson’s column, you can pretty much imagine the rest. I’m not one to bite when bait is so blatantly waggled in one’s direction but this is something that I’ve been niggling on for a while and, the other day, said niggle floated to the surface…
Via what some of you might refer to as ‘a mini Tweetstorm’:
Thinking about @markritson‘s piece on the ‘death of ‘digital’ job titles (see: https://t.co/ha8qe4ULmH)
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
Oh wait, a bit of background first. In case you missed it, Ritson’s piece came in response to another huge piece of industry news (January’s a slow news month) and that was [ad agency] Adam & Eve DDB’s move to ‘axe’ said D word from all job titles.
Ritson said:
The news that adam&eveDDB has dropped the digital designation from all its job titles came as no surprise last week. Despite the prevalence of the D word and the omnipresence of digital planners, digital strategists and digital marketers under every lamp post, nobody in the know ever doubted that the prefix would eventually become an anachronism.
And, unsurprisingly, the article (and the ‘news’ it referenced) became the talk of the town (which, when you think about it, is a&eDDB’s raison d’être).
And now everybody’s talking about it.
It came up on yesterday’s #BreakfastPredictions panel over @TheDrum as well.
Why is this even a question?
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
What I actually meant was #PredictionsBreakfast (hey, I was grumpy – I got it wrong). You know the event I’m talking about, right? It’s the one where I said this:
Here’s what to do if your client is asking you to get them 1M likes on Facebook. @Whatleydude #PredictionsBreakfast pic.twitter.com/q9mY5MyS3s
— The Drum (@TheDrum) January 26, 2016
Someone in the audience (I think – it might’ve been Andy Oakes challenging us) asked the question ‘Are digital job titles dead?’ – I think my response was something along the lines of a big sigh, laughter, and then ‘no’.
Which is kinda how I got to the next bit – Â
Will digital in job titles become an anachronism? Probably.
Will it happen in 2016? Don’t be daft.
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
And I’d say that’s a fair enough comment. The term ‘digital’ means so many different things to so many different brands, agencies, publishers, partners, vendors – the list goes on – to simply ‘do away with it’ because it seems on trend is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
That said, I mean what I say: it could become redundant one day, maybe a generation from now – when the entire marketing job suite fully understands and gets what it means (and to whom). But that’s not going to happen this year and I very much doubt it’ll happen in the next.
And…
Yes, of course I say this will FULL SELF AWARENESS that I am ‘Digital Director’ at O&M but I wouldn’t defend it if it didn’t need to exist.
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
Which means that for the brands, campaigns, and projects that we work on, digital is a core component to nearly all of them. Do our partners need a experts? Undoubtedly. Do they feel more comfortable knowing they have a specialist on the case? Definitely. Would they give two hoots if we dropped it completely? Probably not.
But in the same way that products are designed to meet a consumer need, so are jobs created to meet client demand.
Is @markritson right that replacing digital with ‘interactive’ (lol) is a mistake? Yes.
Is he right that the ‘digital’ should go away? No.
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
A small correction on this point. If you only read the headlines, you’d be forgiven* for thinking that a&eDDB had killed ‘digital’ only to replace it with the word ‘interactive’. The truth, as always, is slightly different. What a&eDDB have actually done is recategorised media into three areas: film, display, and interactive (more on that later).
So yes, replacing digital with interactive is a mistake – but let’s be clear: that is not what has happened here.
What has happened is that someone’s kick-started an intelligent debate about how we move the industry forward – and that a great thing (and should be commended).
Mark Ritson loves a rant (and I love him – sincerely, if you ever get a chance to see him lecture, GO), but on this there is a simple response: the industry just isn’t there yet.
Alas, the marketing utopia where all brands, clients, agencies, publishers, and platforms all GET digital is yet to arrive.
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
Until that day comes, Digital job titles are here to stay.
Put that in your interactive pipe and smoke it.
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
…which means we’ll continue to have digital strategists, creatives, directors, etc… whatever’s required to get the job done.
Because ultimately, isn’t that the most important thing?
Thanks for reading.
JW.
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APPENDIX
– aka, related Tweets that I could find commentary for but are still worth your time.
That said, I quite like Alex Hesz’ response piece – https://t.co/72PTtwCjXx
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) January 27, 2016
Also
But obviously all digital job titles are dead, right?
— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) February 10, 2016
And my personal favourite…
Yawn. https://t.co/gpHAjCVxdF
— David (@DaveParkinson) February 5, 2016
*By ‘forgiven’, I mean ‘not forgiven at all’ – you should work harder at knowing more.