This week I had the pleasure of visiting with a newly hired colleague at Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) who, like me, studied journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. Go Terps!

Eventually, our conversation shifted to a shared lament about the spiraling and continued down cycle that plagues careers in news reporting. The rise of the enlightened buyer coupled with the shift in influence to online communities and social networks has led to a mass shedding of jobs in media rooms.

At Strategic, this sustained trend has birthed an exciting new service capability we refer to as Web2Sales. Yet, the dwindling community of quality journalists poses a myriad of adverse consequences for our society.

Are advertising, marketing services and public relations firms now on a similar death march?

This article published by Advertising Age makes a credible argument that…yes…indeed they are. Penned by management consultant Michael Farmer, the business model failure of these services companies will be attributed to the loss of agency of record status and the frothy profits it produced.

Customer needs change. Markets mature and evolve. The cliché “innovate or die” holds true.