By Thom Kennon

Full disclosure: I work for an agency. One of those big networks, one that rolls up in great layers and folds into one of those really big holding companies. 

In my 25 years in the marketing racket I have formed some fairly specific views on how, where, when and to what degree agencies ? of any size ? can matter. Matter when it comes to driving the brand and business for our clients.

Reasonable people can disagree, but I hold that one of the potential big-time values of large agencies is their network. 

When you need a very particular type of plumber (um, I mean channel strategist),  or painter (check, make that app developer), or lawn guy (OK, creative director) and they are not currently sitting in the shop serving the client, you can tap your network instead of hiring a contractor.  

Sometimes this works better and sometimes it does not, but when that sweet sword of Damoclean deadlines is swiping closer to your neck, it sure is nice to have options, right?

Still, when it comes to really specific specialties and skills ? such as search or social or mobile ? the challenge of having quality peeps locked, loaded and integrated into your service offering is a nettlesome one. One not a lot of agencies, big or small, seem to be answering with any degree of measurable success.

Yet.

So, during this annual season of industry prognostication, join me today in peering into our shared futures. Let us step gingerly forward on a stroll with our special end-of-year guest: the Ghost of Agency Future.

You with me?

Now, I know this is a little disorienting, so let us focus on specifics. Let us ask a very specific business question of our guide: Do any of these ghosts of agency future have a separate, standalone or integrated mobile offering?

It looks like the first one we have stumbled into is a midsized digital shop, maybe 50 peeps, offices in Seattle and maybe Chicago. One of those, you can just tell, which built its book on technical chops but is getting known for strategy and creative.

Still, I bet, the agency?s clients keep looking at its plans and saying things such as, ?So, where?s the mobile??

Tiny Thom walks
Hold that thought, as now we are walking the halls of one those lumbering multi-floor Madison Avenue shops, where the suits look newer, the shoes a little more leather-like.

Hang on, though, let us check one more out. One of those early search agencies that saw the handwriting on the wall in the mid-2000s and started adding other capabilities such as creative, social and mobile.

Hey, is that a Danny Sullivan acolyte teaching new dogs old search tricks?

I am dead curious, Ghost of Agency Future: Have any of these shops ?got mobile??

Voicelessly gesturing forward, our spectral guide seems to say, look, observe, listen, let us see what the future holds.

There is the planning group in the first shop, seems to be working on some sort of channel plan for an integrated campaign for a retail clothing chain.

Oh, look a digital strategist sketching out on the board how the WAP site and gateway will work, feeding the short codes and QR codes back to the response database.

Oh, here we are in the sunny corner of the Mad Men joint, where the creative group (creatively, attractively!) work on a brief for an out-of-home program that looks like it is about local search  and bus shelters and, wow?! Some sort of Bluetooth-thing hooking up the message, offer and call-to-action. Sweet!

Next, let us stroll back and inward from the light, yes, this is the ex-search shop.

Still, as always, the interior office warrens: we find the developers and coders, the Flash and HTML jocks, maybe some IAs, at least three of them are working on connecting the mobile, Web and email pipes for a new digital CRM program that the team seems to be building for a financial services brand.

Finally, there in the far corner of one of our visions, behind the Coke Zero bottles and game theory posters, we come upon the data planners, reporting analysts, tagging geeks. 

Aw, isn?t that cute, look ?  they are arguing politely about the smartest way to tag and track a local mobile search engine marketing campaign separately from its Web-based campaign cousins using geo-tagging and IP sniffing.

But who is that smiling, well-fed guy in the pressed jeans and suit jacket deftly adjusting his $200 bed-head cut? Right, that is the VP of account man, and now he seems to be fiddling idly with a Purell dispenser.

Back to the future
Anyway, let us ask him for some insight into what is going on here in the agency of the future:

?It?s simple. We were getting left behind with our planning, creative and tech chops, started losing business to a bunch of upstart digital shops ? mainly ones showboating some sexy all-digital campaign cases with all a ton of mobile stuff, everywhere.

?We spent two years trying to sub out these bits but then realized, why don?t we build out these capabilities in-house?  

?We didn?t set up a standalone mobile practice group. Couldn?t afford it, and couldn?t have kept them all working all the time, in the beginning anyway.

?But we baked a little here and little there into each of our teams ? planning, creative, tech, metrics. Eventually, all our account guys, project managers and producers started to get it too.

?Now, mobile is in every pitch and, if it makes sense, it has a place in every campaign and program for our clients. And frankly, we?re getting more business and I?ve got better margins now that I?m not buying all my mobile dear and selling it cheap. 

?So now we?re known as ?the mobile integration guys? and our margins, across all media, are stronger and better than ever because we?re getting the whole campaign, the whole program, the whole brand?s business now. It?s weird, but ?having mobile? opened all that up for us.?

Well, I do not know about you, but I always find it a little discombobulating spending so much time in the future, so let us pull back our lens a bit, back to the present. That is better. OK, so, where were we?

Oh, yeah. It is 2010. Take a long walk and a hard look through the halls and offices of your shop. Ghosts aside, do you know where your mobile offering is?

Thom Kennon is vice president of strategy at relationship marketing agency Wunderman New York. Reach him at .