Close-Up: Live Issue - Are full-service agencies set to return?(Industry overview)

Is the IPA right to warn agencies to offer more disciplines under one roof, Pippa Considine asks.

The IPA's new report, The Future of Advertising and Agencies, warns that agencies must reinvent themselves or die. Within the next few years, they must redefine and offer a new mix of services. Is a return to the full-service model the answer?

Full service's proponents - and there are lots of them - say brands are yearning for all disciplines to be brought under one roof, alongside media. Bingo! The growing need to include communications channels with brand strategy and execution is addressed, plus the client gets to work with just one core team.

While some clients might like the idea of a one-stop shop, and agencies might want to be seen to be offering it, is full service practical?

It's not all that long - barely two decades - since there was nothing but full-service agencies. Now, in 2007, there is a raft of talented specialists in separate, competing disciplines, with the media behemoths an established part of the communications landscape.

There are those who argue that what we now have is a full-service model, it's just a bit bigger than it used to be. Jim Marshall, the chairman of Starcom UK, says: 'I feel that full-service agencies have re-emerged in the form of group offerings ... individual agencies are unlikely to offer the whole range of services, whereas the groups can. It reflects what clients are actually looking for.'

Others believe that mixing things up a bit, bringing different disciplines together in just one agency again, is a positive. Especially when you're looking for big brand ideas. Anything to avoid the old-fashioned, linear approach to communications, which has dictated the norm of television first, followed by everything else.