Q&A: Adobe and Leading Digital Agencies Launch SoDA
An interview with Jay Wolff of Odopod
In partnership with 18 digital design agencies worldwide, Adobe has introduced the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA). The society’s stated mission is to advance the interactive industry worldwide through knowledge sharing, education, and advocacy, and to drive much-needed standards. Adobe, which provides much of the software used by digital agencies around the world, is supporting the group as the organization’s official launch sponsor.
The increasing demand for interactive experiences presents both opportunities and challenges for digital design agencies. The SoDA plans to bring them together to address the issues they face and to develop standards and best practices that will move the entire industry forward.
SoDA members are planning to address issues such as technical complexity, rapid changes in content distribution, scaling issues, timelines, and technology’s impact on budgets—all of which affect the quality, innovation, and accessibility of digital media.
To find out a little more about how SoDA is going to affect the industry, Layers magazine spent a few minutes with Jay Wolff of Odopod, one of the 18 digital agencies involved with the new organization.
Layers: How often and when will SoDA meet?
Wolff: The founding members met casually three times in 2007 before the organization was entirely formalized, first in Miami, then in New York and San Francisco. We knew we had something valuable when these CEOs kept making time to travel and get together. SoDA’s next meeting—and the first since the establishment of their official status as a non-profit organization and the announcement of their sponsorship from Adobe—will be in May.
Layers: Who will benefit the most from this new organization?
Wolff: This is a critical time in the formation of the digital advertising business when everyone involved needs clarification, stability, and direction. The membership of SoDA is committed to focusing on those issues that are most critical to the success of all parties involved in this business. In addition to all of the other digital agencies out there, many groups should benefit, like the educators who train our staff, tool developers who enable our craft, and even the traditional agencies that are increasingly depending on our medium.
Layers: What are some of the common issues that digital agencies face?
Wolff: There are issues common to any creative business that slow progress and get in the way of cooperation. Budgets are often set before the project scope is determined.
Concepts are illconceived by nondigital players or don’t take full advantage of the technology being employed. Agencies tend at first to “hide” their digital partners and improperly assume credit for their work, creating divisiveness.
But these issues are prominent in any new creative arena, particularly where market prominence and position are being decided. And, while this has been especially true in our space where digital media has now become central to all brand strategy and critical to the success of more and more campaigns, digital teams these days are already getting more of the respect they deserve.
Traditional agencies are recognizing the value of “partnering,” instead of dominating, and progressive brands understand how to go direct. So a lot of that is changing.
Layers: What are some of the specific examples of the issues SoDA will be covering?
Wolff: SoDA will be focusing on the issues that are truly unique to the digital space, that need to be addressed for everyone to prosper, and that threaten—if unchecked—to take the whole system down. These uniquely digital issues are: Ever-increasing technical complexity. Most of our clients want us to produce in a few weeks what it took YouTube, Facebook or Google to do over many months. Flattering, but unrealistic.
Scaling challenges: Whether broadcast to online, we now all touch millions in our campaigns. But have you ever seen a TV commercial that slows down the more people who watch it?
The competing demands of innovation and reliability: Our software clients know that a cut in budget requires a reduction in scope, that you can’t rush software development without driving up rounds of testing and revision, and that “innovation” involves significant risk and must include alternative plans. But traditional agencies have never operated this way.
Distorted commercial expectations: Expectations from traditional agencies are often distorted by their experience with nondigital, commercial production (TV) vendors. Marketing clients of digital agencies naturally want something new. But they want it all without risk, at budgets that disregard scope, with dependencies on copywriting, content, and other vendors, while deadlines are immovable. It’s a system designed for failure. Increasingly, they want to launch something highly technical, that “has never been done before,” and they set up increasingly prominent launch dates with millions in media spending to drive traffic to that unproven, untested and yet unfinished website.
Layers: What are some of the areas where the industry needs standards?
Wolff: One way SoDA could be of great service is to bridge the two worlds described above: The unrealistic commercial expectations of the increasingly digital advertising and marketing industry and the much more rigorous, and often inflexible, technology dependent business of software development. This reconciliation might start with the way digital projects are described in RFPs and proposals. Then, we’d all benefit by contract terms that take the needs of both worlds into consideration. While SoDA will not declare itself a standard-setting body, we plan to be very open and public with our findings. We are hoping the work we develop together is good enough to share, and we’ll hope that some of that will lead to industry standards in these areas.
Layers: How will the information gathered at these meetings be shared?
Wolff: SoDA expects to maintain both an informational website (societyofdigitalagencies.org) as well as an active blog, with contributions from the full breadth of its membership. SoDA will also organize and participate in panel discussions all year long at most major industry events.
Layers: How do these issues affect graphic design professionals?
Wolff: All areas of commercial design are becoming more digitally driven and, thus, more technology dependent. Improvements in commercial expectations as well as contractual obligations should benefit everyone in digital arts of any kind. Visual or graphic design is often on the path towards interactive media. Many of the same tools are shared across that spectrum, and the workflows are interconnected. A better relationship between toolmakers and the digital media industry, which we hope to provide leaders in the software business like Adobe, will improve those tools and workflows for everyone, and thus increase their commercial success.
Most importantly, any number of standards in this fast-evolving field will provide the educators in this business with more defined targets on which to base their educational goals and course curriculums. Designers across the spectrum will have a more defined spectrum from which to choose and better opportunities on which to establish their early careers.
Layers: How did Adobe become involved and what will be the extent of their involvement?
Wolff: Many of the individual digital agencies within SoDA have had a long-standing, two-way relationship with Adobe. Their purchase of Macromedia only multiplied that dynamic. By bringing this group together, we provide Adobe with a single, consolidated source of input and communication with the industry. They were quick to recognize the value within this combined group. We have great hopes for this relationship. We hope to provide Adobe with unique insight and support from leaders in the profession, and affect everything from early tool development to curriculum through Adobe’s active support of educators worldwide. We already act as torchbearers for Adobe’s products, showing what can be done by pushing the tools to their limits. And we are more a developer group than a set of customers. By contributing our time and sharing our best work with the many groups at Adobe, we’d hope to boost the productivity and value of digital work being created by all of their customers.
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