Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

The Engine team added some strategic muscle with new hire Lewis Zimmerman who brings to the agency a solid yet diverse skill set covering design, development, and start ups. As he puts it “I’m curious about Art, Technology and Economics. Politically, you’ll find me postmodern.”

Lewis will be filling a new hybrid role, covering both Strategic Planning and Development of interaction and functional applications, both web and mobile, including client work as well as internal platforms that the agency is currently developing for internal use and public release.

Lewis holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance with an elective concentration in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, where he graduated on the Dean’s List with Honours and a 4.15 GPA. Beyond technical planning and development, Lewis also has a long history with user interface design and user interaction.

Over at i [love] marketing, Ana Andjelic makes some valid and interesting points on the comparison of digital and traditional agencies in her post titled Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead. It’s an interesting issue to consider. With integration and convergence now more or less a no-brainer, you really can’t have a campaign span both traditional and non-traditional channels without providing a consistent experience (can you?).

Ana defines digital agencies as “focusing on experimentation”, spinning their wheels trying to out-create competing agencies by making bigger and more complex digital experiences, while traditional shops “thrive on exploitation”, leveraging their bag of marketing tricks. This equates to more of a typical business model – make it once and sell it over and over again. It’s true, digital shops are terrible at this.

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