Interactive Marketing's Isolation Must End

This report of the interactive marketing agency and organization playbook examines the landscape of organizational structures and agency relationships. Three common organizational models have emerged, but they have merely appended interactive capabilities onto existing organizational models. All struggle to create marketing programs that meet consumers' expectation of a seamless experience across all touchpoints. And in all three models, interactive agencies play second fiddle to brand and creative agencies. As they face these problems, a majority of interactive marketers envision a different organizational structure that puts interactive skills closer to the business' needs — where they can be more adaptive to the need for ongoing, customized conversations. Marketers must engage in a sustained effort to chart a course from today's siloed interactive marketing organizations to what Forrester calls an adaptive marketing confederation.