Creative Agency Secrets

These are things I enjoy and so do well.  I’ve done most of them many times and can give you references, if you need.

In no particular order….

1 - Mentoring and coaching anyone with business development responsibility or who has to collaborate with biz dev to do their job better and get results

2 - Moving the whole company to an Enterprise 2.0 operation.  This is a more open relationship with its customers and prospects though using web 2.0 techniques (for yourselves not clients) and creating the open culture internally that enables outsiders to recognise the ‘personality’ of the agency - bypassing traditional outbound communication methods

3 - Facilitating an away day for a client or your senior team

4 - Improving your new business methods and, particularly, pitching

5 - Running a training session on "New business for non-new biz people"

An interesting report from Immediate Future on brand profiles online and particularly in the social media space.

Most of the stats do little for me except to prove that online and offline brands are ranked differently…. yes, you do have to work the online space to get the profile there (doh!).

some nice insights.

LG, Kraft, Amazon and Reuters, who performed well across all social
media, have done poorly in the selected social networks. These brands
are currently not inspiring the creation of groups and therefore
conversations are minimal.

I like this…. the idea that you need to do your own promotion (I can’t really call it online PR becase the methods and media are so different) and that you brand presence needs to be driven.

Companies wanting to understand the conversation around their own brand
must go further than measure share of voice and sentiment. They must
delve deeper and isolate the buzz compared to influence. Influence not
only plays an important role as a way of converting buzz to impact, it
is also crucial to get a correct impression of the sentiment
surrounding a topic or brand.

Social media conversation is not only about the numbers. Social media in itself has influence.

not sure what this last sentence means…. it isn’t amplified in the report.

Agency.com’s recent research   (June 2007) shows that while only 8% of internet users in the UK (approximately 2.3 million people) actively upload content and reviews regularly, these 8% are hugely important for brands. This
is because their ability to influence other internet users is immense.
In essence, they are affecting the behaviour of millions and changing
how audiences inform opinions about brands, products and services.

It is this group that brands need to identify and influence. Brands
will need to charm advocates and inspire positive debate. Companies
that put strategies in place to rebut negative comment will need to
consider not just relevant communications, but customer service,
product value and business performance.

The influence of social media on a brand is relative to topic. In each
subject area for each brand, there will be different influencers,
different detractors and advocates. Determining the most influential blogger, forum member or network takes time and can, and does, frequently change.

Brands must pay attention because audiences instinctively turn to the
web for information. Search engines drive people straight to comment
and conversation, often bypassing a brand’s website and its marketing.
The influence of social media is crucial if brands are to survive their
ownership by audiences.

Great summary, Katy and you team have done us proud.  What was sad for me was that I have corresponded with you in the past and yet you didnt’ send me a link to this great work.

I got it from another blogger… Joined up marketing is still needed online as well as offline!

Dan is the Head of Business Development for FHD, a design agency and part of AMV/Omnicom.

He’s done a fabulous job taking the company slowly online as part of a suite of things he has implemented for his business development role.

1.  Salesforce.  Good move.  First thing he did when he joined.
2.  C level reporting line.  Great planning by FHD.  He reports to Adrian and Robert - MD and Creative Director.  As it should be.  Biz Dev is so important that you can’t afford to let it go below this level of radar.
3.  "e-presence".  His word.  Driving a new brand (launched the rebrand 11.06) with a brief to make it known as a design business with personality, improve FT listing of top 20 places to work and a fun place.  He has launched an internal blog (censored!!!) and a public ‘forum’, explicitly not a blog!.  They are using LInked in, Facebook and pay per click….newsletters still to come.

Good practice.  Copy what he’s done and you will be fine for starters if you are in Biz Dev for an agency.

We had some ideas for collaboration…. more to come on that.

And I got onto my soapbox about publishing creative work that clients don’t buy.  Whether it’s a pitch you lost or a design that isn’t chosen.  Why not use it to show off your creativity?

Every agency describes itself as creatively led or an ideas agency.  So show off what you have got.  Use creative commons licensing to get credit for the source.  Let others see how good you are en route to the end design not just "da darrr - here it is the new logo for xyz co". 

We nearly agreed…. on some points.

Here we are …. thanks Joanna and Alex for passing by with the camera!

Dan’s own blog What’s the Beef just for the private ‘angle’!

PS nice link-up with Alex Pearmain who commented on my rowing blog and found me online…. thought he’d introduce me to Dan, his boss, and found Dan already knew my work! Neat.  That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Having made my snide remarks about PRs trying to track blogs for their clients, I think it’s time to focus on the law as it applies to us writing online for a wide audience.

Thanks to Creative Match for setting up the interview with Amali de Silva, senior litigation solicitor at Wiggins and Tahir Basheer, Partner at Media specialist law firm Sheridans.

Blogging offers us all an opportunity to have our say – but how far can we go without ending up in the soup?

When writing a blog, it is important to remember that the law does apply to the internet,

I have pushed the boat out and booked Adriana Cronin-Lukas to come and speak at a private breakfast for my clients and contacts on 30th May.

Social Media and Corporates: can they work together or is this just for consumers?

This will be an opportunity for you to hear one of the foremost social media commentators on her soap box!

We will discuss:

• how agencies conduct relationships in the digital world
• how to build a reputation online
• can social media be made to work for agencies own business development
• what are the possible pitfalls of business blogging?

If you haven’t received your invitation, please drop me a line and the venue is Piccolino in Heddon Street, London W1.

And a follow-up link to the Cass Creatives Event from an article written by Nick Carr In Praise of the parasitic blogger

 

Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review, recently decried
what he sees as a tendency among journalists to characterize blogs as
"a ‘parasitic’ medium that wouldn’t be able to exist without the
reporting done at newspapers." He calls the charge "a poorly informed
insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh,
informative and original work."

I am working for two clients now on setting up a blog for their business.  One has one - but it’s not really hitting the spot and the other has just re-vamped its website and I have persuaded them to add a blog to the whole picture.

So starting from two different standpoints I have a tough job of work.  I want to prove to my clients in a very short space of time that I can effect changes that they will see in the day to day profile of their business.  One, I’ve stuck my neck out and am going to be in there weekly doing the stuff (plus additional hours when I am in my own office) and the other, I’m collaborating with someone else who will be working the content as I don’t know the subject area very well [they are in consumer PR and I am just a lousy, useless non-publicity-savvy consumer when it comes to celebrity and FMCG products.  It just isn’t my bag].

So, I need some help from you guys….
1 - I will be working on structure, links, content.  I am reasonably confident thta I can get this going BUT
2 - I need resources to explain to my client team, as the project continues, what it is that I am doing and get them to understand how blogging works, what it is not (e.g. PR) and what it will do for them.

I have found one great resource from Guy Kawasaki "How to Evangelise a Blog" But sadly he recommends 120 days to do this…. I should have read it before scoping the project!

Any other suggestions?

Did you read it? 

It quoted Adriana Lukas [note spelling] with her pretty normal message about how corporate organisations have to transform their attitude to external communications to allow transparency before social media will help them build brand profile.  She’s been speaking and writing on this subject for about three years…. so she knows the area.

BUT they got parts of it badly wrong…. read Jackie Danicki on the subject.  A classic work of fisking.

And I have previously posted on the potentially fatal combination of PR and social media so this will be a theme I anticipate growing over time. 
 

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