Models For Real Agency Integration

Pete Lerma – Click Here/The Richards Group

Over the past 10 years we have seen  a bit change in digital. 

Integration = leveraging a variety of marketing communications platforms and using each to their maximum potential.  Digital doesn't have to follow the traditional creative lead.  

When you do it right the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

How are agencies addressing integration?  They use 'brand vision' as the highest calling for the brand and is a workshop with clients.  e.g. Disney – in the business of keeping alive the magic of childhood.  Around this core they add brand positioning, brand personality and brand affiliation. 

Models of integration

1. Generalist model – the agency says they can handle whatever is needed.  consistent strategy / excecution and convenicne but may not be best in class in both digital and traditional platforms
2. one agency but 2 groups – separate teams of digital and trad who work together seamlessly
3. Goodbey farms out 90% of the production of their digital projects.  The client sees one agency but it is hard to ensure consistency and who is responsible for what
4. multiple agencies – there is a 'holding company' model of having to work with others – geography issues and territoriality – a battle for control.  The agency doesn't want to lose the strategy but if you give up some control it benefits the client.  

Goodbey has mandated from the top that every employee needs to know interactive.  Creative people embrace the fact that digital is where their ideas come to life… "they are done with starting from the 30 sec TV spot – now they start with interactive".  It's about a mindset.

Brands are more open to finding efficiencies than finding best in class work from their agencies.  This is a concern.

We do want to get good revenues and how do you balance doing the right thing and making money for your company becuase digital earns less than traditional advertising.  We start with a principal and a creative head who run a client's business – we work hard to educate and convince the advertising team and it's their obligation to the client to put forward the most well-rounded ideas. 

Client side models

1. some one person in charge of everything
2. advertising group and online markeitng group – separate

How do you determin which portion of the fee splits between each team.  Lead principle on the business decides.  We do a lot of cross-training e.g. PR and social media platforms.  We try to be as co-operative as possible.  Their media group is still split between digital and traditional teams.  Online media buying and planning is so sophisticated nowadays and someone from the traditional side couldn't keep up with that.  So we have trained them on where to recognise that digital is an appropriate part of a campaign.  Weekly media directors meeting. 

Training – we've done creative, media and account handling.  It is a 12 week programme meeting for 2 hours each week and explained every aspect of digital – strategy, creative for websites and advertising, media, production, multimedia, back / front end production, QC.  This was mandatory – backing of CEO key. We also join other team meetings to show off recent work to keep them up to date.  We also started a shadowing programme for a couple of weeks so they can see the day to day reality.  Doing each team separately was important because they want to know different things.  Production was the team that caused us the most problems.

Integrated success stories at brand level – a client who manages their agency roster actively.  Whoever comes up with the idea we get the digital execution. The client sets the boundaries.

"creative hoarding" creates static and friction as one part of the agency grows faster than the other.  2007 Weiden + Kennedy lost part of Nike because they hadn't got interactive.  That year we let a lot of staff go while still growing the interactive hiring.  

The agency is built in layers – is this person a star, do they have potential to be a star or will they never be a star.  We assessed the whole agency.  By discipline, how do we get better – what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, what systems do we have in place already (e.g. status meetings).  Now we know our gaps what do we have to do to close the gaps.  We did it first by discipline and then company wide.  Continuous improvement.  Using a lot of freelancers hits a cultural change project like this hard.

The future agency model – everyone will be a generalist and able to talk intereactive to some extent.  You will always need a specialist if you want to do best in class work.  

Digital integration spectrum - 

Big idea ———————————————————————–digital manifestation of the big idea

digital idea comes out / tech platform decided / visual design / technical development

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