Cue the film clip.

Remember the scene in Jerry McGuire where Tom Cruise bursts in on Renee Zellweger, his former girlfriend, a wrenched look of anguish on his face (number three in Cruise’s repertoire of five)? Cruise rambles through all his ‘feelings’ until he crescendos into the well-known “you complete me” line. Of course, Zellweger melts into his arms, they get married, they live happily ever after, blah, blah, blah.

At Emerge Digital. We don’t complete you. We extend your reach.

The collective wisdom among interactive agencies is that there are developers who write the computer code upon which all internet applications run (websites, games, widgets, …) and designers who create the look and layout of everything you see in those applications (text, images, visual & organizational flow,…). Both of these roles are essential to any interactive campaign, yet because of the history of advertising, the assumption is that the two are completely independent and that if you can do one, you can contract out the other.

This assumption is just wrong. What’s worse, it creates dysfunction right from the start.

Think of it like a relationship. What you have is two people attracted to each other because each seems to fill a gap in the other. That’s how it starts anyway. But it rarely results in a Hollywood ending. Each partner winds up feeling that the part he/she brings to the table is undervalued and that what his/her partner brings is inflated out of all proportion. The same thing is true for interactive agencies. Design agencies who contract out for development and development agencies who contract out for design both bring unhealthy relationships to the table—dominance/submission, condescension/resentment, etc. It’s a lot of baggage that you as a marketer shouldn’t have to deal with.

Enter Emerge Digital, stage left. You probably saw that coming, huh? That’s okay. You don’t want any surprises coming from the agency you hire. You want creativity. You want expertise. You want …(drum roll SFX) results.

Emerge Digital is unique among interactive agencies because we place equal value on both the design and the development aspects of your work. We feel they’re really just two sides of the same coin, which becomes particularly important for marketers because it’s your coin.

(Relax, there will be no “Show me the money” references here.)

What we’re talking about is a constant, complete integration of design and development through every step of the process. It’s a vision that includes perceptions associated with both of these creative strands as well as a constant grasp of the ‘Big Picture’.

More than that, though, the close relationship between design and development at Emerge allows us to be more flexible than other agencies. And this allows us to be more innovative in adapting new technologies and design strategies to marketers’ needs. This agility translates into our clients sidestepping the competition and getting their messages out more quickly and to greater effect.

This amounts to a seamless stream of communication, between designers and developers, between Emerge and you, and between you and your audience. Furthermore because our focus is interactive, this communication doesn’t end when your message finds its audience on the other side of the screen. On the contrary, that’s the point at which the conversation between client and customer starts—a more honest and high value conversation than any scripted dialog you’ll find in a summer blockbuster.

Emerge Digital: Now playing on every screen your audience uses.

(Roll credits)

No animals were harmed in the production of this blog, unless you count the haircut we gave our cat. She now looks like a cross between a lion and a poodle. Looking good, Abby.