Creative Agency Secrets

Kyle has spent two years trading objects - what he has he trades and each time he tries to trade up.  Over the years he started with one red paperclip and he just traded this (eventually) into a house!

Nice posting from Adriana about what you can and cannot control online….

Online you’d better control what you can, not what you wish you could.
Controlling others has always been a delusion, controlling your
identity and your own expression is where it is at.

It is becoming clear that the days of being able to get advertising alongside your blog content are numbered.  There is a new Firefox extension that allows you to block adverts. And like many it’s a free download - part of the brave new world of opensource.

Now that this business model is challenged, we need to find a new one that pays for our time online… and makes the investment viable for us and our readers. 
A new specialist newsletter that I read, has just appealed for donations….. So wrong…. so last century.  What they should be doing is:

1. Enable a RSS feed…
2. Build a mailing list of subscribers
3. Sell advertising (if they want) based on reader numbers and provable downloads
4. Migrate readers to paid-for content over time when the service is proven
5.  And as an aside, a 12 meg pdf format is a tyranny…. just publish online…..

I wrote an

I am doing some work for a business helping them raise finance through angel investors.  And along the way I came across this new service, Angels Den, which appears to be sponsored by the Telegraph and a couple of VC angel network groups.

I will register to do some research into the angel side…. anyone want to volunteer to post a business plan needing funding to the other side in order to get a view on the proposition?

PS I do think the name SUCKS big time….. and I loathe watching Dragons Den.  It’s a hyped version of reality made for TV, and I know that, but the whole programme puts my teeth on edge.

[update… here’s the spiel from the Telegraph.  Sounds like a money making scam for whoever owns the website….

Angels Den has proven to be a great hit with business angels. More than 2,200 angels have registered, looking to invest an average of £136,000 each. Almost 100 entrepreneurs (including many Business Club members) have put their summaries on the site and more than 1000 others have registered. A further 120 have finished their summaries but are hesitating before investing their £99 fee.

I suspect that their hesitation will be quickly erased by news of Angels Den success. Many of the summaries have prompted qualified angels to ask for a full business plan (which costs an extra one-off £400 fee) and two dozen have moved on to the stage where they’ve met angels face to face at least twice.

Reading more about the value of investments and innovation’s impact on your business.  Many marketers try hard to justify our work in financial terms and so may find this new article "What Happened to the Knowledge Economy" by Jonathan Haskel at Queen Mary College, University of London.

How do economies assess investment in intangible activities like R&D, Staff and management expertise and Advertising and market research.

The research found for every £1 spent on tangible assets another was spent on intangibles and that this has been growing faster than the rest of business output.  Advertising and market research has held steady at about 1% of total business output since 1995 and before then was between 0.5 and 1% (it’s hard to see on the published graph as it is a small, low proportion of the other categories).

So sadly, our work is dwarfed by computer software and "non-scientific R&D" who have grown hugely in the past 10 years as has Staff and Managerial expertise….. so those making money are businesses training managers, writing software and not really those doing Advertising and market research. 

But we probably knew that….. or did we?

(more…)

One of the most patronising things about our industry is the way we ‘categorise’ target audiences and then try to sell to them in their language.  So often this fails, dismally.

See the article below from the Economist…. it cites a JWT research into the 6m Muslims in USA who are

on average, richer and better educated than the general population…..

And you hounded them out after 9/11 like dogs…. see the book I just read by Marina Budhos "Ask Me No Questions" about one (fictional) family’s experiences at that time.  Grim reading from the home of the brave and the free.

Coke, cited in the article, seem to have the right idea…. it is NOT adapting its global brands to Muslim consumers. "We don’t segment out consumers based on religion".  Nicely put.

Reminded me of the Girl Geek Dinner Saatchi’s hosted back in May, where they were discussing how they thought they should advise brands on how to market technology to women.  Sooooo deeply mis-understood and patronising.  Sadly I signed an NDA and so can’t go into details…. but I wish, i wish…

(more…)

Since September is the traditional time for re-launches and new vigour in our working lives after the northern hemisphere summer break, I thought I’d run some quick checks by you.

1. Your company website.  www.yourname.com or .co.uk
It exists - does it capture all the worldwide interest in your product and service?  Does it really say what you do and how to see how good you are at it?  Consider buying similar domains to cope with mis-spellings and international interest e.g. biz or .co.nz as well as your main domain.

2.  Google.com; .co.uk; dot wherever you are located
Does it find YOU for the right search terms?  If not - get that SEO done.  You are about 5 years behind.  If you aren’t on the first page… get there.  Narrow your niche, find ways to cut above the competition or else you are wasting your online marketing spend.

3. Places where customers share information about you.  Sites you do not control.  Scary stuff for the traditional brand manager.  Find them, know who the major poster / protagonists are, read them regularly.  Do searches for podcasts, wikis as well as the more obvious forums, Facebook, Myspace and YouTube.   Find where customers and prospects are talking together.  If you have an active referrals programme, integrate this.

4.  Find where online analysts gather and do product comparisons.  Find the bloggers writing in your space.  Again the opportunity for consumers and key influencers to comment is key.  [I love being able to link to these for positive and negative feedback and putting it back onto the company news page.  It is perceived as being more honest than stuff the corporates write].  Reinforces strong product news and helps influence other consumers.

5.  Find out how you rank on the voting sites digg. del.icio.us and so on.  Does your brand get a mention?  Where do customers go to give you feedback?  Both on your site and off it.

6.  Start to plan how you are going to go mobile.  Mobile Web is coming up - is your site optimised to work on the web.  Can you do it with the same URL as your main site [drives me nuts that facebook’s mobile site is m.facebook.com….]  And Second LIfe and Gaming sites that include brands…. and Facebook.  There is a lot of good discussion on businesses using Facebook for stuff… flyers, business groups, common interests… see my profile and the groups I belong to for some ideas.

Thanks to Jeremiah

Personally I just don’t do pod casting.  I have an i-pod and i have i-tunes but haven’t downloaded the latest version of I-tunes… but there must be some people and businesses that are ready to do this as Nick seems to be building a business in this area. 

the check list of items he puts up is useful… but hardly rocket science.  This is a good check for ANY marketing activity.

• Will anyone listen?
• Is there a payoff?
• Can we engage?
• Do we know our audience?
• Is the audience podcast-savvy?
• Do you have clear objectives?

But who are the agencies he’s rushing round seeing… digital agencies that don’t yet do pod casting…. seems like VERY FAR behind the curve.

Or maybe it’s a follow-through on my work about web 2 when I found that they don’t do it for themselves….. only for clients.

It’s been a while that I have had some close collaborators for much of my business.  I love meeting great professionals who are great at their job and who I can trust to help out my clients when they need it.,

Two of these guys are Julian and Leo.

Julian’s a finance man.  Numbers, accounts, mergers and acquisitions, due diligence and EBITDA just about sums him up. Despite this he really DOES understand how creative companies work and how to make money from them…. He works as a freelance FD and runs a firm that does outsourced finance and HR, Redfin. 

We are cooking up an idea for some syndicated research into benchmarking for Agencies…. watch this space!

Leo is the contrast - he’s my trusted WordPress genius.  I first met him via Julian Guppy of IT Dudes when he was working on contract.  Now, outside and on his own, Leo does loads of my clients web and social media work.  He is at Guild Media
and runs a small blog there.  What I value most about him is total availability on Skype / email / phone (even when he’s in Berlin) and the fact that he accepts that it is just possible that I’ve found out about a new widget before he has…. and isn’t too proud to implement it just the same.

Trying to work out commercial applications for Facebook.  Mike Butcher sums it up nicely in his "Eight reasons why facebook rules your ass" post.  It isn’t designed for commercial applications - unless you write software that sells there.

Now what value does my content have, and why should I allow Facebook to use and distribute it.  Surely there is a neat contract of exchange here.  I provide content and use the social media clickability group and social media features to reach a wider audience than I otherwise would…?

Well, I took the decision a while back just to publish the rowing blog on Facebook under my Notes feed.  I think more of my sports mates read my stuff there than my professional clients…. but not sure whether this really is the case… let me know (!?)

Nice idea from Lloyd about creating a social media cafe in London.  Here’s the vision…

Ground floor is open to the public, a café style space with good coffee, tea, snacks, fussball, space invaders and the like - maybe the odd plate of eggs bacon chips and beans. Plasma screen shows a rolling twitter timeline from all our mates. An alternative to constantly having to find somewhere to meet up and have coffee and a place where people love you using the wifi.

First floor (don’t get hung up on the physical orientation, just a separate space) is for members & guests. Not a posh exclusive (male) type of private members club (you know where I mean), but something softer, gentler, more suited to creative & geeky types than just to the thrusting entrepreneur. Facilities are flexible meeting rooms, desks and co-working spaces and more exclusive lounging, chatting space with coffee & tea. It’s a bit quieter up here.

Second floor (again really just another separate space) is for media production - podcasting & video-blogging equipment for hire - soundproofed studios, maybe some helpful techies to guide the uninitiated.

Sounds nice.

My guess is the best bet it so buddy up with others already doing stuff in that general direction…. try the Hub in Torrens Street N1 - My client ONzo use this space and it’s great.

I was up there last week and they tell me that A new Hub will be opening somewhere near Waterloo with a slightly different focus - more meeting rooms….. but maybe Lloyd can use that as a launch base.