New media not so new to IPA

Congratulations to Profero on becoming the second-ever new media agency to be elected into the IPA. As the first such agency, i-level was happy to approve the move.

I am, however, a bit concerned about comments made in last week’s news article (e-volve, MW March 30). The suggestion that “old and new agencies” are only now “beginning to talk to each other” belies a rather naive and out-of-date understanding of agency relations. From day one, i-level’s clients have included some of the UK’s biggest media agencies.

In addition, the Digital Marketing Group has been in existence for some years and includes “old” and “new” agencies. The DMG is now fully integrated into the IPA. Further to this, new media agencies are heavily populated with people from “old” media. This means that on an employee level too, the tribes are already very much assimilated. So please can we drop the new media “us” and IPA “them” – we’ve been working together for years.

Charles Dobres

Chief executive

i-level