Alfie Lagos founded Lexlab, a member of the IMAA, in 2018 and they have provided quality work for a range of different clients and brands over the years.
And in his 15 years of experience in the industry, Lagos told Mediaweek that in the ever-evolving, automated world of digital advertising, humans are still machines best friend.
He explained that the purpose of Lexlab is to simplify emerging technologies and advancements that big platforms – like Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Google – are promoting for clients to get a simple outcome that is favourable to them.
“For us, it comes down to the human that cares about what all the jargon means, what all the platforms are trying to achieve, and then making sense of that in a simplistic way for clients who ultimately are the masters of other domains,” he said.
“It’s on us as humans, as the implementers, to skill up and, on the part of brands and agencies, and to focus on the human training and development part of digital advertising as much as the technology side. Tech is buzzwords, but if no one knows how to run it and get meaningful outcomes, then it’s irrelevant,” he said.
Lagos noted that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Google constantly try to out-innovate each other with new features and updates.
“Benchmarking them against each other and making sense of all that noise is on still on the human. There isn’t some platform that sits in the middle that understands the latest feature of Facebook,” he said.
“Compatibility and centralised control of these platforms is not a realistic outcome anytime soon,” he said, noting that “humans who implement are and will be increasingly relevant to keeping digital advertising meaningful.”
Lagos also discussed how measuring to define success across all the different range platforms that constantly change will be difficult and that standardised metrics and humanising the results are critical.
The Lexlab founder noted that the agency takes a cynical approach to it, saying: “If you let Facebook or Google measure themselves, they’ll always say they’re the best.”
Meaningful measurement can be done through a third-party ad-serving with database attribution modelling, comparing baseline revenue from before to after as well as examining the fundamental impact of doing paid advertising on a client’s daily income.
Lagos also spoke about how many agencies are currently experiencing a staffing shortage and noted two distinct solutions: training up current staff in different areas and hiring university graduates.
He shared that other professionals in the industry are looking to hire “unicorns” – account executives with one to two years of digital experience and who care about a business and its outcomes. While they may be hard to come by, Lagos said: “The way we get around this is by training ourselves.”
“As a business owner myself, that should be happening at all levels – bottom, middle, and higher levels. I’m the owner, but I also get my hands very dirty because I don’t know how I’d be able to speak strategically about digital if I didn’t know how the platform’s work.”
“I think that no matter how senior you are, the solution is to roll up your sleeves and get in there,” the Lexlab founder said.
Lagos revealed that some independent agencies are hiring university graduates and training them from the ground up.
“I’ve heard the analogy, the best way to start golf is by never playing golf. You’ve got no bad habits if you’ve never played golf before, and you can be taught the perfect swing. I think agencies are starting to do now, just hiring them right out of uni, someone with good grades and then develops from that.
He added: “People with two years’ experience are asking for six-figure salaries, we’re running a business, and it’s not sustainable.”
While hiring a fresh graduate does have its risks, Lagos emphasised the importance of hiring someone who is “genuinely excited about digital.”
“It takes a certain individual that’s going to get excited by digital, but they’re out there, and often the best ones are the ones that are hungry to learn. I don’t think you necessarily need to be academically amazing to do this job, but you need to be patient, diligent and have high attention to detail, and, fundamentally, care.”