Wieden Loses Nike over Digital?

Nate Elliott | March 27, 2007, 05:17 AM

There was a good analysis in yesterday's WSJ about how Wieden + Kennedy's lack of digital experience is threatening its 25-year relationship with Nike. Quoting:

What really unnerved Madison Avenue was that one of the main reasons for Nike's move [putting its running shoe account up for review] was dissatisfaction with the agency's digital expertise, according to people close to the account. Despite its top-notch ability in every other department, Wieden has been slow to adapt to the Internet -- an important arena for a marketer as focused on the youth audience as Nike.

...Many traditional ad agencies, with roots in television and print, have been slow to grasp the impact of the Internet. In the past couple of years, as consumers and advertisers have begun shifting to the Internet, some agencies have responded by beefing up digital talent through both hiring and acquisition. But many firms don't have enough digital talent to meet client demand, and those that do often have kept the digital department separate from the rest of the firm.

That last point is a key. There's no reason that an agency as good as Wieden -- which has produced some of the world's best advertising in the last couple decades -- can't become great at digital. But you have to throw the teams together and get them collaborating. Barely half of the agencies we surveyed last year said that their online and offline teams develop strategy together, and the majority said their online and offline teams still don't work together to develop creative executions or media plans, or measure campaign effectiveness.

This is disappointing because we all have so much to learn here. While digital shops are much more likely than offline shops to do good work online, even the digital darlings miss the target more often than they hit it. Perhaps if the agency teams worked together, we'd all get better at learning what consistently works online -- and then producing campaigns to match that expectation.

Still, as the article points out, it seems to be easier for digital agencies to pick up offline expertise than the other way around. So perhaps it's not surprising that RunLondon, which is both Nike's best pure digital execution anywhere in the world -- and also its best use of cross-platform marketing -- is produced by digital specialist AKQA, rather than an offline firm. And perhaps it's not a coincidence that this amazing campaign is for Nike's UK running shoe business -- the same business that's now up for review in the US.

If Wieden could point some of their genius in this direction, I'm certain we wouldn't be talking about Nike shopping their account.

[Thanks to Kevin Savage for the pointer.]