Creative Agency Secrets

Got a reply from Robert Frost at adstorm.

 We don’t disclose details of our own marketing and advertising activities and their performance to strangers however it is probably clear to you that being specialists in online advertising,

AdStorm closely track performance and conversion of all our media, and if it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be doing it!  The general demographics of Facebook users are not ideal for business to business marketing and the targeting is not as good on Facebook as other media but nevertheless with careful set up it does bring us a certain amount of useful traffic. 

For more information about online advertising with AdStorm, visit www.adstorm.co.uk

Fair enough, not wanting to spill the beans to outsiders like me…. but I did notice the following day that their ad was no longer rendering to my profile.

Hope the readers here are all classified as 'useful'! 

Update on yesterday's post about using Facebook to promote your agency …..

I got an immediate auto reply from ClickyMedia …

Dear Rebecca,

Many thanks for your enquiry! 

A member of our internet marketing consultancy team will be in touch with you
shortly to see how we can help you.

In the mean time we have attached a Case Study for you to read.

We look forward to speaking with you shortly.

Kind Regards,

Sending a case study was a nice touch!

And then 40 minutes later, a reply from the Managing Director - Oliver Yeates

 Thanks for your email.

We do indeed generate business from Facebook advertising and it is entirely down to the levels of targeting we use.  We have specifically selected individuals whose job title includes the keywords "marketing" - this is why you will have seen our ad.

Here at Clicky Media we like to practise what we preach and our ads have certainly introduced our services to a number of Marketing professionals.

As with many on-line marketing opportunities which are arising after the huge success of Google Ads, click prices are relatively cheap and as such a very attractive return on investment is available.  Afterall we only pay for clicks ad the brand awareness and association is something we cannot afford to miss.Feel free to use this email on your blog.

Doubly nice.  And permission given without being asked! (well it is in my email signature….).

And so there's a really simple brief if you want to use FB - target job titles.  And from the logos on their site, FB is clearly one of the target areas they specialise in.

Well done. 

I have returned to facebook recently (to organise our annual Fest and Geeknbury).  It works well.

I forget how many people use it still very intensively.  But, what struck me as interesting was the number of creative agencies advertisign their services there.  They must really believe that businesses with purchasing power employ individuals who use FB….

here's who I found:

ClickyMedia - geo-social marketing (whatever that is!) 

Adstorm - online marketing specialist 

Data2Doormat.com - direct marketing (whose site is offline from the link)

And yesterday I saw Creation Agency (well I think it was them, but the ad's not serving today) 

Well - does it work?

I emailed each agency and will let you know the answers. 

Doing ongoing research into less well-known places where agencies can go for help finding leads for new business pitches

Creative Brief - £300 bare minimum and £2,500 for the 2 Case Study package up to £4,500 for 10 case studies …. and when I searched on copywriters in London and South East there were none listed!  [but over 30 for the UK listed and so some work needed on sub-categorisation, IMO]

Skillfair - free to clients to advertise briefs and £200 for everyone else …. I have used this twice to post projects and got great responses and placed one job with an agency that applied.  A good service with excellent customer service back-up.

Agency Finder -a 'new' service.  Well it's Reardon Smith Whittaker getting the license to be the European arm of an already-successful US business.  Pay £295 per year and then up this to £3,000 p.a. if you accept the offer to go to a pitch… whether you win or lose.  One of my clients is testing it right now.  Will let you know if they turn up anything useful.

The marvelous British Olympic Association has launched its Beijing website….. and boy oh boy, it has ALL the features that were cool in 2006 and NONE of the community uptake.

A list of handy functionality and features:

    * Home page with latest news - very up to date but every 'news' item is published by the BOA's press office
    * Podcasts - 10 uploaded.  THe most recent being 30th April (Taekwondo).  Also present - beach volleyball, diving, BMX, modern pentathlon, hockey, sailing, cycling.  Three uploaded from 29 - 30 April and then the previous ones all date from 2007
    * Videos - Leon Taylor form the synchronised diving team is pretty active having uploaded 6 videos since 29th April and Barry Middleton (hockey) has done one.
    * Athlete Diaries - grand list of 3 athletes: Euan Burton, Amy Terriere, and Denise Johns.  Who manage 4 entries between them.
    * Messages of support (5 displayed - but probably huge numbers in archive!)

Then there's the background info: racing schedule, qualification, currently selected athletes, stuff about the Games, about the sports (accurate, short and scraped from another website I've previously seen), a Gallery of photos by Getty Images from past Olympiads - there are five rowing photos displayed.

And so what is the opportunity that has been lost / missed?
Well, there could be

    * A link to a twitter feed (if No10 manages it, surely the BOA can???)
    * Upload your own photos from flickr while at the Games
    * links to athletes' own sites
    * Share travel plans with others
    * Desktop viewer for instant updates customised to your sporting interests
    * News feeds from other sources for your sports
    * Plan your viewing schedule tool linking to the TV guides for the UK terrestrial and satellite broadcasters
    * Live video streaming athlete interviews
    * Forum for real discussions

And what are they doing to promote the site?  I got an email about the 'launch' because I'm on a journalist list.  Has anyone else seen it advertised, linked to from ANYWHERE?  e.g. ARA website or FISA or your local newspaper….

How on earth do they expect the general public to build the excitement behind the team (and of course get taxpayers ready to buy lottery tickets to fund the next Olympics) if they can't promote the HELL out of this event.  We want to become a world showcase in four years time.

Who is advising these monkeys and can they please get an informed digital strategist/planner onto the team, fast.

Oh, did I forget to mention the handy "countdown" tool on the header bar which says how long we have to wait until the Games open?  Neat, but old technology!

Peter Eckert, projekt202

Chris Bernard, Microsoft

Kevin Flatt – Tribal DBB [agency of the year]
Brooke Nonberg – Pixel
Garrick Schmitt -Avenue A Razorfish
[I came because this session is supposed to be about the intersection of the traditional agency and the new online agency and how they and clients transition].

PE - if you are nimble it’ll be easy to move to this new paradigm.  The culture is changing and the internet is becoming mainstream and so this is the key for agencies with specialisations that fill a niche but others will find it hard to move out to this space.

CB – Any creative route or client if you don’t understand it you will risk falling behind and your voice stops being heard.  Step out and learn – recipe for continued evolutionary success.  

PE -it is going to be very hard to stay up with all the new social media outlets / trends…
BN – it comes down to ideas, she has seen powerful things from unexpected agencies.  There are wonderful things out there.  Either you have the client relationships and ideas or you let politics get in the way.   The team works hard together.
KF – Tribal was born out of DBB and the changing environment.  Because it is part of an organisation with a long history there was a lot of learning, transferred over.  Our medium is digital but we aren’t ignorant of the wider world of advertising.  Across all our offices we can see digital and all forms of communication.    The most interesting are the agencies that forget about the medium but focus on the communication and the engagement you seek.
GS – Creative ideas – you need a mastery of the data and the understanding of a user interacts with touchpoints and the influence of each.  How to change message and campaign structure to adapt to each one, and what people are saying online and on Facebook etc.  This medium is still evolving, data and how to make the judgements against it is native to the net and this platform and it will be harder for traditional agencies to apply their skills over to it.

BN – the net is just one channel not ALL the digital channels – there is so much.  The blood will be where people think it’s just about email or a website…. the consumer is moving through all these things all the time, they don’t stop.  There won’t be one single answer.  Authentic conversations within social media channels?  It is a dangerous space to push inappropriately into these channels – social media is something that you need to have a reason to be in… Insights come also from watching what they do as well as data and conversations with real people.   Take the tone and attitude and recognise it’s about sharing freedom of speech not pushing adverts.  

(more…)

Reading the holiday edition Economist, they add in a load of great "wider reading" articles including this one on Beauty and Success entitled "To those that have, shall be given".  Sub titled, ‘The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate.  Unfortunately for them, there are good reasons why beauty and success go hand in hand.’

They surveyed salaries for men and women in a range of countries and found that beauty has a premium and ugliness is penalised around the salary norm. 

China:
men -25% and +3%
women - 31% and + 10%

Britain:
men - 18% and +1%
Women - 11% and +1%

USA / Canada:

men - 9% and +5%
women -6% and +4%

Quite telling!  But what made me laugh was that Dr Daniel Hamermesh of the university of Texas studied Dutch advertising firms and showed that those with the most beautiful executives had the largest size-adjusted revenues - a difference that exceeded the salary differentials of the firms in question. 

And so the lesson for 2008 is that if you want to grow your revenues, hire beautiful folk to work for you!

I met Simon Gill from LBi earlier in the week.  Great conversation.

He has a new theory about digital marketing.  THere are two parallel universes happening online:

1. The "marketing" web
2. The "real" web

the former is just stuff done for the purpose of marketing.  A brand site, a cunning support microsite for a campaign.  Nice but no reason to return or bookmark.

THe latter is where the future of one to one and "conversational" marketing is going.  It is warm, compelling and creates a reason for the customer to return and to possibly ‘get involved’.

And it seems Dave Birss is onto the same track.

Ever since working for Peppers and Rogers Group in the mid 90s, I have been waiting for the day when brands can have individual relationships with their customers.  And the technology to enable it.

MySpace’s Jay Stevens spoke at the Forrester Conference in Barcelona [thanks Jeremiah] here is his slide

Social networking creates influence which is strongest amongst friends.  Therefore social media must be in your media mix using ‘friending’ [ghastly phrase] to promote and recommend thus enabling the brand to start an ongoing relationship with the customer.

Bingo!

A recurring theme in my blog posts.  This time the criminal is Haymarket, the principal publications owner for our industry.

For some reason, trying to read Charlie Hoult and Rory Sutherland’s blogs on the Brand Republic Site this morning… Apparently my login is no longer valid.
Curious.
My print subscription still arrives.

Then it says send a password reminder…. not working either my email is not recognised.

Recognising there’s an issue coming up the site suggests

This email address is not currently registered with Brand Republic.  Please check you have typed it correctly

This is bollocks as I’ve been online on BR for years.  Same email address, same password.
No link to an email for the mythical administrator, no link to a contacts page, no apparent means of contacting.  GRRR

on Contacts page I get a long list of people (mostly in ad sales) NONE of which are administrators for everything.

I am tempted to email Rufus Olins, the Managing director of Haymarket Brand Media