Everyone’s heard of Management Consultant Bingo - but since it’s Friday, have some fun and make up new corporate-talk phrases yourself with the “Web Economy Bullshit Generator “.
just type in some phrase from your latest strategy review document like ‘extend scalable supply-chains’ and hit the Make Bullshit button!
again
and again…it keeps finding new ways to say what you don’t mean!
I received a quesiton from a Business development Director of a well-known identity and branding agency who works with social enterprise and government organisations.
We don’t use outside consultants, but the ‘Enterprise 2.0’ is an area of interest. Most agencies seem to be setting up blogs as a way of presenting the agency culture and having open dialogue. What are your thoughts?
Ben
And so I wrote him this reply. What do you think?
Without writing “screeds” my view is that a blog is a good way to start if you want to present the ‘personality’ of the agency to the outside world. However, deciding to do it and doing it well and consistently are two different things. You need to be the type of organisation who has the desire to show off in public a bit in order to keep the momentum of a blog going – and you also have to be able to write interesting stuff. Many firms struggle to do both of these.
There are other simple social media tools that can be quicker than blogging and easier to maintain – but the same two rules I mention above apply.
Having said that, it is very hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace especially when the market for your services is changing. But the opportunities for working with ‘social conscience’ organisations are rising. Which should be good for you.
I note the Google page rank on your site is pretty low 3/10 for your home page. Adding a blog which is not built in flash, may help improve your SEO as well as enable you to promote appropriate search terms to capitalise on your strong brand heritage. Think of it as amplification for your corporate “voice” online.
So that’s my free advice for you. Sad you don’t work with outside consultants – but call me if you want to talk further.
In case any of you are interested in this genre, there's a one day seminar happening about my ancestor, WD Caroe.
We are celebrating the 100 years the Caroes have been at Vann this year. I do hope that this event may be of interest to you or yours friends and colleagues. Do pass this on within your respective networks.
The event is kindly being managed by the SPAB and the Worshipful Company of Plumbers . The SPAB are taking the bookings.
I am hosting my third breakfast event. "Should Brands be Broadcasters?" on Wednesday 18th June, 2008 at One Alfred Place
I run these breakfasts in order to showcase new ideas and innovative marketing thinking. Past speakers include Adriana Lukas on Social Media and Mark McGuinnes s on the Enneagram.
Three speakers will give their unique points of view on this issue:
Andrew Howells, Zype speaking about Honda TV
Quentin Boyes, Honeycomb Software speaking about Closed Loop Marketing and brand conversations
Charlie Robertson, Red Spider speaking on extending brand strategy to the online world
Sign up here to come along!
PS if anyone is willing to blog the gig for me, please get in touch!
Some ideas from a US group I belong to…. discussion thread What I learned from the Direct Marketing Revolution
[requires Facebook membership to read, sorry!)
Good points:
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.
I have decided to make it easier to buy my services for those on a budget.
Normally, my clients pay me a 'day rate' in order to work with me and I visit their offices and we work together on projects. Following the beginning of a project with a new client, Afia , I have decided to offer a new way of working using remote technologies.
If you have a biz dev project that can be briefed remotely, discussed using email and Skype, then this service may be of interest to you.
Ben Afia runs a "tone of voice" consultancy and has started working with me on this remote basis.
For this type of work, I require you to buy one half day (4 hours) of my time in advance. And the 'day rate' is substantially reduced to reflect remote access and the fact that you will be doing most of the activation work.
Ben has agreed to act as a reference for Rebecca Caroe remote services.
Do you have a service that can be offered remotely? Could this method work for you in order to widen the range of possible customers for your business? I am hoping that this will both bring my service into the price range of more organisations and also enable work with people not in my time zone.
Let me know what you think!
I have a copy of the Nov 2006 research published by Willott Kingston Smith publication.
Anyone want it, please get in touch.
Collect from me (meet up London, Cambridge)
It's a useful data source for key financial metrics for agencies e.g. Operating profit/Turnover; Directors pay as % of Profit; Gross income/employee etc
Here are images of the front cover and contents pages. Price new £440.
Plus, if you want it there's a copy of The Economist, Pocket World in Figures 2008 Edition. worth £10.99
I have been reading about the Australia Tourism pitch that's going on right now. It's a knotty one because there is one dominant, hugely successful campaign that lurks in the background (Paul Hogan's shrimp-on-the-barbie) which is now 25 years old but well-remembered.
The Economist quotes Geoff Buckley, MD of Tourism Australia "The Hogan ad was brilliant but it was never taken globally. Nowadays we need a unique and motivating message that resonates in 23 different markets." Tough.
The contrast with the 100% Pure New Zealand ads that are mostly photographic (one was so beautiful I cut it out) is stark. Which country would you rather visit.
But that's not the point of this post. Later in the article Christopher Brown of TTF Australia an industry lobby group, wants to form a brand council bringing together representatives from not just travel but wine, food, film, and fashion industries too. "We need some heavy-lifting from other sectors to add depth and richness to the Australian story. No country can afford to sell itself with a 30-=second tourism ad."
Too true. And for biz dev folk, the challenge is this:
Which other skills / companies / individuals can you bring onto your "brand council" in order to give a fuller view of your offering?
As an example, I host events for my clients and prospective clients with other professionals who have a message that creative biz dev folk might be interested in. See here and here The key is for both parties to invite their own contacts and (there will be overlap) you end up with a wider audience who can both network with each other and also get exposed to both organisations' skills.
PS am planning another event of this kind for mid-June. Watch this space….
Steve Moore has launched a new breakfast event, called One Morning, the launch was yesterday at the glamorous One Alfred Place business club.
Steve asked me to help out by chairing the three fabulous presentations - each one answering the question "What Happens Next?" for TV, book publishing and newspaper publishing. I love doing this stuff… and being in the front row for three articulate and very persuasive presenters was a blast.
I will summarise their arguments below - but for the New Biz Development readers of this blog, here are some short sharp actions
1 - Have you got any clients in publishing or broadcasting… send them here to read about what key organisations think will be happening in the future
2 - Do you ever put out campaigns on TV, newspaper or book publishing? Send your account teams and planners here to think about what you will do in the future when those campaign methods no longer work.
3 - come to the next event. They are due monthly. The sign up for this one is here … presume it will be updated.
Jeremy Ettinghausen is Head of
Digital Publishing at Penguin
The publishing world is polarising, books online and videos are leading the charge for technology versus traditional methods. The scientific/technical/academic press is further along than consumer fiction.
E-books started in 2001 and they still haven't really taken off 7 years later… but it may happen this year that they join the mainstream.
Books in print are not redundant yet. But paid for digital content is increasing - the question is how much people will pay. What is clear is that if your content is entertaining, valuable and drives a good user experience, there is an audience who will pay for it.
However, reading habits are changing and how we view web pages affects our reading habits. This is a non-linear process.
Looking forward, what is a publisher? Are they book makers and marketers and book distributors? No more they are disseminators of entertainment and ideas.
A quote from Chris Heuer of the Conversation Group (at SXSW) "the Best stories will win".
The vision is for the "integrated" book delivering image, sound, vision in multiple media. I read, I get into my car and continue the story in audio….
Kevin Anderson is the Blogs Editor
at The Guardian
We are taking the tools that are disrupting our business model and applying them to our business.
New media does not support the traditional business model for newspapers because the young do not read newspapers. We are not replacing old readers.
A news company needs a new vision and positioning and new audiences - not just for newspapers.
Industries need to identify their core market and focus on new markets in order to survive, Open source tools enable editorial experimentation. This is really important because at present it takes us 6 - 12 months for new product development. We need to lower the cost and time of innovation.
The business model is eroding advertising and uses outdated distribution and delivery methods. WE need to innovate frequently and fast and 'fail forward' when the innovation cost is £0.
Delivering into a community with connection is possible future for newspapers.
Matt Locke is a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4
Befreo the mobile phone device we had more divisions between our public and private spaces. Compare a phone box (private) with a mobile phone conversation (private or public?).
ATMs are the ultimate - a private transaction within a public space. We develop body language to communicate our intention to be private while outside at an ATM.
The personal and social have replaced the private and public. These are more fluid and the gestures and etiquette is different. We need to understand this in broadcasting.,
What young teens find hard to understand about the world in 1990 is not the paucity of channel choice, it is the fact that in order to speak out publicly in 1990 you needed permission. This is not needed today. Talking in public is easy now.
Key issues:
Data - being misused or mis-released.
Playfulness - find how technology can help your life and find play within it
Vernacular - what is the new language of who our relationships are with?
The goal for technologies that allow us to make the shift to personal and social. And do it simply.l
