I've been working in the marketing agency sector for a couple of years now, and the differences between it and the media industries where I've spent more time over the years are becoming clearer.
Although on the face of it companies in the two industries do similar things (running projects to allow 'creatives' to be creative in producing 'creative'), the drivers behind why those are happening are very different. The media sector is producing product; marketing agencies are producing content almost as a byproduct of providing professional services to their clients.
I'm sure that this in turn has a knock on effect in different ways, but it seems to have a big impact on the ability to create sustainable processes for producing the stuff in the first place. Up front, you haver a problem that is common across both industries: people who regard themselves as 'creative' will often feel that any form of process will constrain their creativity in some way. This is possibly 'golden goose' syndrome… unpicking ways of working will in some way destroy the magic. More than anything, though, this then comes down to the ways in which any such processes are marketed into a creative firm (and not using the word process is probably a good start).
However, beyond that point the two worlds diverge. The media industries have (with the possible exception of news) made much of their money from their back catalogues. One of the reasons the music industry has had so much turmoil in the last decade is because mp3 had killed the compilation album.
This intrinsic value in the creative content begin created has in turn led to the software and hardware tools provided into the sector being to some extent focused with archive in mind, but more importantly the price points on the products and services have been high because they have been linked to assets with long term value (or at least perceived long term value) to the consuming organisation.
Compare this to the marketing sector, however, and there's a problem. The archive for a marketing agency has little financial value. If you want evidence of this, watch one of those '50 Greatest…' programmes about adverts. Anything but the most recent will probably be of appalling quality because it will have been apparently dubbed from VHS. Agencies don't appear to keep archives.
Actually, Imagination appears to be an exception to that. But the costs of our archive are increasing at a pace, because we are trying to do something that, for most who are also doing it, should be a revenue generator.
mmitII 