Change your Agency business model
When I worked with Americans during the dot.com boom they were over-fond of the phrase ‘business model’ The discussion usually focused on how an online business could destroy your offline company.
Well, since then, most of us set up websites and those selling physical goods set up online shops.
The new threat comes from a different area: consumers bypassing traditional brand communication channels to market. When a consumer and a brand can speak directly to each other - who needs an advertising agency, a PR agency, a direct marketing agency?
The IPA has published a report recognising this issue and making some rather broad-brush and namby pamby suggestions about how agencies can counter this threat. Re-inventing the Agency
Here are some of the recommendations:
The report proposes a move away from historic definitions such as
‘above the line’ and ‘direct’ to newer, broader definitions. These
include ‘named’ (or ‘personalised’ for example DM) versus ‘not-named’
(for example TV), ‘screen’ (for example TV, mobile) versus
‘non-screen’, (press, radio etc) ‘two-way’ (interactive) versus
‘one-way’ (passive).
Why start your recommendations with Names??? THIS WON’T CHANGE HOW CONSUMERS ARE BEHAVING!
Coo ee are you listening?
The moves agencies need to be making are getting into the consumer:brand conversation at all levels - participate in youtube; myspace; blog dialogues; online forums. Initiate the conversations with customers and respond to others who are talking about your client’s brand.
What if you can no longer influence the key consumer groups by your traditional skill (whether it’s PR, DM, advertising…)? Where will your business derive its revenues?
Can you find new ways to communicate with customers in places where the consumer hangs out? Online, offline, in the car, over their mobile, iTV…. Does communication have to equal interruption? What role for coupons in the new world? Can we change consumer behaviours by driving honest dialogue without parent company interference, spin, message massage? What journalist behaviours are already changing? How does youth marketing work and how will it work when today’s youth are the 25-40 age bracket?
Scenario Planning was used by Shell in 1971 to plan its reaction to a shock oil price rise. When it happened, in 1973, as OPEC first flexed its pricing muscle, Shell was alone in knowing IN ADVANCE what the business was going to do to respond to this threat.
Get a facilitator in. Gather your best creative minds. Run some skunk works programmes with willing test clients. Learn. Repeat.
DO IT or the IPA’s prediction of the Death of Advertising will come to you and, too late, you will know you can’t fight back.