First there was SaaS — software-as-a-service.
Then PaaS — platform-as-a-service.
Then IaaS — infrastructure-as-a-service.
These days it’s EaaS — everything-as-a-service. Development-as-a-serivce (DaaS). Testing-as-a-service (TaaS). Content-as-a-service (CaaS). Social-media-as-a-service (SMaaS). I’m not making these up.
Is it AaaS — anything-as-a-service? Is the right adjective for that AaaS-inine?
Which made we wonder…
Should agencies simply rebrand themselves as MaaS — marketing-as-a-service?
“We’re not mass marketing. We’re MaaS marketing.” (A homage to homonyms.)
They’d better hurry. One of their competitors, the digital agency space150, already has the jump on space-advertising-as-a-service (SAaaS).
There’s a serious question in here somewhere, but I’ll save that for another day.
Scott, this is an interesting question, and a big jump for agencies to make. The X-as-a-service offerings until recently have been about infrastructure components. The emergence of TaaS and DaaS that you reference, along with others, have changed that. Now companies expect to buy a la carte for one time needs, not just variable, but continuous, needs.
What does this look like for agencies?
First is productization, something many of the big agencies have not done well. If you are going to offer any marketing component as-a-service, it needs to be structured and repeatable. Sadly, this type of product discipline hasn’t found its way into most agencies, but it is starting to.
Second, it requires agencies to admit that elements of their work really are repeatable and can be driven by clients. The latter is likely the biggest challenge, as agencies recognize this internally, outsourcing or developing insourcing models for repeatable production tasks.
You ask a very interesting question, one project oriented shops should consider carefully to refine their offering, and agencies focused on “custom solutions” would be wise to consider to stave of new competitive models and improve their own service delivery.
A lot of food for thought here, thanks for sharing!
Good thoughts, Eric. Thanks for actually adding some meaningful ideas to what was a somewhat whimsical post — but indeed a serious question.