Creative Agency Secrets

Following my meeting with Adriana a couple of weeks ago, I have started to see VRM coming up in others’ blogs.  JP has some fantastic points here.

and I wrote a comment to follow

Matteo, you are right that the advertising industry faces a huge challenge and will splinter off, in my view, so that this ‘new world’ of positive, permission-based communication runs parallel with the old world of mass advertising.

What is curious and doesn’t seem to have bene mentioned yet, is the fact that brands *should* only want to advertise to people with money.

This will be the main discriminating factor.  The old-style advertising and direct marketing will increasingly have money-less audiences and those with money will protect themselves digitally and start to strike the sort of ‘bargains’ that you and JP describe.

Roll on the new future!

PS I used to work for Don Peppers, the man who coined the phrase 1to1 marketing.  His first book was the 1tot Future.  I think it’s here.  Now.  Finally!

At a meeting yesterday, I was told about an exciting interview that in-house has done with Don.  It’ll be released as a series of 3 minute videos on their site shortly.  What I want to see is whether his views have moved on since 2000.  And whether he has actually *done* any of the smart things he talks about.  I note that he doesn’t seem to have joined in the blogging conversation, and surely, Cluetrain should have been part of the development of the 1to1 business model….. but I fear it hasn’t / isn’t.

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…)

Charlie Hoult points to a new Campaign conference called the Battle of Big Thinking.  Taking a lead from the NMK conference that let its platform to a clutch of new enterprise entrepreneurs for 10 minutes each, they have asked a load of big names to talk for 15 minutes about what is new in their space…

He asks if this is a true sign of paradigm shift or just the boys club having a few beers together…..
My view, posted onto his blog [which in true ad-land non-web2 way, is not available for non-subscribers to read….sigh] is below

Actually Charlie this is a thinly disguised attempt by Campaign to work out whether its readership actually wants to hear about this sort of stuff.

While trying to promote my research into whether agencies use Web 2.0 for their own businesses (as opposed to their clients’) I was turned down twice by Campaign journalists who said this was not something their readers wanted to hear about.
You were kind enough to review it.

Maybe, belatedly, they are realising that their world DOES need to know the relevance of Web 2 too?

Creating a viral advert is the holy grail for small brands who want traction but can’t afford to buy media space …… here’s a new tool that may help.  Zoopa

It enables collaboration from the community signed into the site.

Commentary from the Italian side is on Blognation

Zooppa is the first
Italian-American advertising start up that integrates the traditional
idea of advertising with an innovative web 2.0 twist.

Officially launched in beta this month, the start up is forming a
community of professional and amateur creatives and videomakers who
compete to produce the best and the most viral commercials.

The Zooppa model
Zooppa works with international brands to give users the chance to
create their own online commercials for the brands and get paid for
them.
There is a contest period in which Zooppa presents an agency brief from
an international brands. Based on the brief, the Zooppa community can
upload ideas or concepts for videos. They can also shoot their own ads
and upload them onto the site. After the production period ends, the
resulting videos are made available for online voting. The community
itself chooses the best ones which are rewarded with real money. Zoopp$
is the currency used and once a user has reached 1000 zoopp$, they are
paid in real money.

Web 2.0 collaboration concepts in production
Its an exciting concept for the advertising world and Zooppa’s aim is
to transform the traditional making of the advertising campaign itself
via online collaboration. In fact, it’s not just the winning videos
that are rewarded. The collaboration of ideas are also incentivised
through a bonus system.

Zooppa encourages different kinds cooperation between users. If a
winning video was based on a concept that another user suggested, both
the author of the concept and the winning video receive an additional
cash pay out.

How good are your questioning skills? 
When taking a brief, you need to be able to ask "open-ended" questions in order to get a deep understanding of the customer or prospective client’s decision making process when hiring.

I found a nice American sales trainer Barry Rhein’s promotional video tha you might like to try for yourself.
He sets a "sales challenge" which describes a classic sales skill set as:

• Information gathering
• Creating customised value
• Relationship building

Try the four steps on his video and see how your questioning skills match up….. it’s a good summary that works in our industry.

I am giggling quietly to myself as I read 6 June Campaign….article by Gareth Jones

"Facebook, the online social network, created for students…."

Says it all. Gavin….. it’s not for students (alone). 
Actually, seriously, I think UK Facebook has reached a tipping point….. When I first joined I was the first person to register my school and the first for "Cambridge University".  Which kinda disproves the ‘created for students’ myth….. or maybe they just didn’t bother promoting it in the UK on campus?

Anyway, the membership is at that rapid multiplier stage in the UK (but isn’t yet there in Australia and NZ as far as I can see from my friends there…..!)

Those clever planning guys at Red Spider have a days training booked for 24th July in London.
information attached. 

Charlie Robertson’s the man to contact if you want to go along….

Download RedSpiderTrainingOutlineJuly24th.pdf

reading the Sunday Times’ 100 biggest private companies list this morning, it is not surprising that no agencies are on the roster.  The smallest has sales of over £400m and most are companies that make and sell things not services.

One of the underlying issues with our industry is that fundamentally we are selling hours.  Hours of creative expertise and experience.  But we are trading our hours for dollars.  There’s a limit to how much you can grow on that business model.  WE know larger agencies are not necessarily more profitable or more creative and so the creative services industry risks remaining full of SMEs - unless the business model changes.

A while ago, Tina Fegent, sent me a copy of Beau Fraser’s article on "Compensation".  He claims that Gate Worldwide is trying to work its timesheets better such that the areas where true value is added get paid at higher levels than lower value work like revisions.

He has five stages to a project: Discovery; Strategy; Development; Production and Revision.  Pretty standard stuff. But if timesheets were aligned to stage not just overall project, agencies would have a better idea of where they were adding value, making highest margins / profits and be able to adjust their pricing for clients and for staff accordingly.

When you find one team moves more smoothly with a client through to the production stage but then spends too long on Revisions - you know you start losing money.  And so agency staff compensation and client pricing could be adjusted to reflect this. 

it is possible.

Maybe this is one change to the agency business model that can move someone into the large public companies list….
Download AdAge_BeauFraser.pdf

A topic I’ve been mulling for a while is whether it’s possible to do "opensource" as a business model for creative agencies.

As is my wont, I’ll try the ideas out on a couple of agency bosses as I meet them during my normal line of work.  I have just had the first positive response to the suggestion.

My thesis, is that every agency says they are "creatively led" and "innovative" and "ideas-led".  But in practice, each one is very like any other.  A very few lead the field in creativity and innovation and the broad mass are followers. 

The broad mass are still very good at what they do, don’t mistake me.  But if you work for or own one of those agencies whose creative reputation is not yet as high a star as you hope it will one day become, how do you show the world how great you are at creative ideas?

The normal showcase you use is your client work.  But what if your client won’t let you run the best things you devise?  They choose the ’safe’ campaign.  Well, you use pitches as another opportunity to show off your talents.  And if you win the pitch - all well and good [but frequently the client still won’t let you run the really creative campaign you favour].

So what if you lose the pitch?  Well, there’s a fabulous document detailing all your best ideas for this particular brief sitting on a shelf in the office.

Here’s what I say

PUBLISH IT.

Here’s why

• if you are creative, it will show through
• You can then allow others to compare your work to the campaign the client finally ran with the winning agency (does yours stack up?)
• Prospective clients can see your truly most creative stuff
• Competitors…ditto….

I now have a second stage to suggest.  Allow others to use your material - YES MAKE IT OPENSOURCE

• Use creative commons licenses
• Let anyone take your best stuff and use / adapt it for their own purposes
• Take the credit for originating
• Promote it as a point of difference for your agency
• Let prospective clients work out how good your stuff is by showing them and the public how great it really is

I expect a few side benefits

1. Improved recruitment
2. Some great B2B campaigns to promote your business
3. The industry newspapers will ignore it…. for a bit
4. Smaller agencies will declare their connection to your work and you will get exposure through their clients (who may grow and come and see you sometime)….

Roll up, roll up, read all about it. Stephen Waddington of tech PR company, Rainier PR, seems to think I may have something worthwhile to suggest.

Forrester surveyed US agencies and clients and found divergent views of influence and success.

1.  Agency executives 93 percent thought their efforts "drive their clients’ marketing success," while just 63 percent of the marketing executives contacted agreed
2. About 95 percent of agencies thought that they were well positioned to adapt to changes in Internet advertising while only 45 percent of clients agreed.
3. Of the survey participants, only 15 percent said their agency compensation was tied to business results. When those who did not have such an arrangement were asked why, 43 percent said they never considered it while 36 percent reported it would be too difficult to truly measure the results.

Yikes.  If we are hired because of the results we drive for our clients - this sort of perception mismatch has only one ending.  It would be interesting to know how long the agency:client relationship had been in existence at the point of the survey.  Do these things tire after a couple of years "familiarity breeding contempt"?