Agency or In-house? ‘Bothism’ provides the answer

In marketing, we seem to love to create dichotomies – pairs of concepts organised starkly in opposition to each other. But the more we delve into these dichotomies, the more we expose them to be false: brand v performance, long v short, traditional v digital.

We organise things in opposition to each other when we would be better off looking at them in combination. Any marketer worth their salt knows that you really need brand and performance, long and short, traditional and digital.

Mark Ritson wrote a brilliant article on this last year, entitled ‘‘Bothism’ is the cure for marketers’ fascination with pointless conflict‘. In it he highlighted our fascination with conflict and our infatuation with finding the one right answer, when in fact embracing both is almost always the best solution.

That article got me thinking about one of the false dichotomies that Ritson didn’t mention, one of the most popular and pernicious of the past decade of Marketing history, agency v in-house.

The latest thought piece by Jessica Hodgson Client Officer at TIPi Group explores a ‘Bothist’ Hybrid model for agency and brand relationships.

This article was originally published on The Drum, click here to read the full article.