Did Icrossing just declare war on their partners?
Icrossing has now crossed the bridge from working with Advertising Agencies to competing with them, until now, they had a similar business model as other firms such as Yooter InterActive which was ad agency assistance. Now it appears that Icrossing wants to be a full fledged Advertising Agency.
With this release, stealing Epson as ‘agency of record’. It’s a massive model change for them. We doubt they are going to have an easy time working with Advertising Agencies anymore for fear that Icrossing with start pitching the client the second they get introduced.
Generally speaking they used to get the call from the Ad Agency to help out with search marketing for the client, with this bold move all that business just got wiped from the floor.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ — iCrossing, a global digital marketing company, today
announced the company has been selected as interactive agency of record for Epson America, Inc.
It’s a very interesting move, a strategic decision like that could either bring the company to profitability or crash it entirely by wiping out one of their largest revenue streams.
What agency partners? This was probably a Proxicom deal that is now attributed to “icrossing” - all the creative types at icrossing were either laid off or resigned in the past year - there was no one left in house to work on this type of account - Proxicom people probably went in and brought in icrossing SEO folks as an add on.
iCrossing has wanted something like this forever. Only took them 7 years to have it happen. I would not read too much into this actually as I really doubt that this deal will grow anything for iCrossing - they are still not in the big leagues yet.
iCrossing’s business is over 98% direct so they were always competing with ad agencies…..and winning plenty…..I dont get why these ex-ic-ers always try to rain on a pretty impressive parade….I know for a fact they are extremely profitable in 2007…..and their services are likely to be in high demand in 08. I say they are pretty darn good for digital and you gotta respect them for keeping search at the core….
That’s the point — With this release, they are NOT keeping Search at their core… evidently they want to be an Advertising Agency.
You got it….An Advertising Agency that actually understand consumer’s intent…..also know as search - now thats a Winning Agency for Digital —- and its about time somebody put those hodling companies on their heels. I believe iCrossing is the leader in Search Engine Optimization……When you combine that with building websites……..actually making websites that can be found - how original : ) These guys seem to differentiate quite clearly from the pack. My money is on iCrossing.
Jeff, I see your point.. but I strongly disagree.
You are stating that Icrossing is ready to go out and compete head to head with agencies.
I am arguing that the Icrossing move is very pre-mature.
I own perhaps the only competitor that icrossing has in the industry.
We bid on the same projects. On virtually every RFP that you get we are bidding on it as well and we tend to hang out in the same circles.
http://www.google.com/search?q=search+marketing+agency
That being stated, it’s a very bold and could be foolish choice to go head to head with the agencies when Icrossing has only a fraction of the resources at their disposal that the agencies they are bidding against have, in my opinion.
Do as you wish, it’s not my company… I wouldn’t want to be there when agencies start viewing icrossing as a threat rather than a partner.
[…] that we have is with the ‘agency of record’ part. It’s the same strategy that Icrossing has been dabbling […]
TheFounder - what are you talking about? First of all, Yooter?? Is Yooter even on the radar for contention for the same accounts as iCrossing. You claim it is, but I’ve never heard of them? I started and sold my own traditional advertising agency and have been following that rise of digital marketing because it is both interesting and the future of advertising. I’ve been following iCrossing’s amazing accent and evolution to where they are today. There’s no denying that what they’re doing is working, because they keep adding the world’s top brands. Search is the nucleus of everything they do. Search inspired creative makes all the sense in the world. As far as ad agencies go. Working with traditional agencies is such a small part of their revenue dependence. It is the traditional advertising agencies, the ones with all the resources as you say, that are trying to catch-up to where iCrossing is in the digital sense. Did you happen to catch the Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago that announced that Bank of America was changing it’s long adopted strategy of working exclusively with one conglomerate, in this case OMD? Reason being that by doing that, it may cost them the opportunity of working with “best in class” agencies. It just so happens that BOA is one of iCrossing’s larger clients. In my opinion, it’s the large resourced traditional advertising conglomerates who are playing catch-up to specialty digital agency iCrossing. Who incidentally was named the top search marketing agency by Advertising Age Magazine. Yooter? C’Mon.
Caleb,
Yooter is well on the radar, in fact Icrossing shared the BOA account with Yooter for organic SEO for some time.
Icrossing is strong in the Pay Per Click area, however Yooter is strong in the SEO area, Both firms in my opinion are very good at both disciplines. Yooter however is stronger for Social Media Marketing.
This might help you a bit, Yooter was on the that BOA RFP, issued a one time report guideline for BOA for SEO best practices. Though Icrossings did win the main account, some of that money was diverted to special projects that Yooter handled.
They bid and are on the same projects.
I agree with you that the traditional agencies are playing catchup. Look just Google it, and it will let you know if they are in the same league for Organic SEO.
For SEO firms, like Yooter and Icrossing, their rankings are golden for examples of how good they are… out of millions of results, you will notice Yooter and Icrossing #1 and #2 .. both firms are strong players in the industry.
So you know.. this might help… Yooter SEO’ed this blog as well.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ad+agency
As you can tell.. we are discussing Ad Agencies… it looks like Yooter got that one :)
TheFounder - do you have it out for iCrossing? It seems like you do as you’re playing Jimmy Olsen (for those not familiar with J.O., he was the crack reporter on the Superman series), announcing that iCrossing is up for deletion on Wikipedia by 100%. To do so on a day like Christmas, shame, shame! By the way, when announcing “In a 100% vote… next time you may want to wait until more than three people respond. Im still looking to see where Yooter is rated for anything? I checked Advertising Age’s 2007 search marketing report and saw iCrossing the #1 agency, didn’t see Yooter in the top 20, and they didn’t bother going further. I checked Forrester Research’s Wave Report and they had iCrossing as the top SEO agency, didn’t see Yooter anywhere?
And you claim that Yooter tops iCrossing for Social Media Marketing, I can’t seem to locate any accolades for Yooter to support that statement. But I’m not surprised to hear you say that considering I found out that you’re the President of the Yooter Agency. Happy Holiday’s!