Creative Agency Secrets

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 

I met Tim at SXSW earlier this month.  He has written a seminal book called the Four Hour Work Week and it's being launched in London next week.

Tim has set up a pub sessio for any Uk blogger / social media types who fancy hooking up with him.  Wednesday 2nd April in the Chandos pub on St Martin's Lane, London WC2

Sign up here .

If you are a girl geek - keep checking the site as we may have organised an exclusive breakfast with Tim…… my brilliant idea [thanks Sarah for the support!]

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.  

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BL Ochman has a lot to say about oneline marketing, but picking up on my earlier threads on the Deathe of PR she ably demonstrates where sheer bloody-mindedness is hampering some in the trade from moving with the times.

My favorite comment of the night, from a woman who works for Biz Bash and who refused to give me her name (What are you going to do? Write about me?"):

"people who read blogs aren’t very educated."

The bottom line on the meeting - there is still
discussion going on at high levels about whether and how PR and
marketing can work together. And whether or not bloggers are
journalists, or idiots. And about whether corporations should blah blah
blog.

Dear New Media consultants: any time you start to think that new
media is making inroads into corporate settings, think about these
fossils …. er, folks.

Now maybe that’s a strong position to take.  And she is in US.  But it resonates closely with what Richard Stacey and I were discussing in the lobby after the London Social Media Cafe prototyping meeting…. Some PR company clients will continue to buy old world PR.  There is a role for it.  Many will move onto other forms of online and offline communication - some DIY and others using broad marketing communications specialists [who may be PR agencies or other more integrated agencies].  But we both agree that everyone needs to research and consider the new social media world before making a decision on whether or not to participate.

Reading Adriana’s post on "Thin Air PR", thanks for the hint, Leo.  I was struck by the strength of feeling about the possible end of the business model whereby brands pay an agency to lobby the media on their behalf in order to generate column inches of written material.

What is public relations anyway?  The means by which brands try to get themselves talked about in the media.  And extended into events (experiential), lobbying MPs (public affairs), print media (media or press relations), public speaking (public relations).

Now let me digress into a real dead end…. what is the real definition of Public Relations?

Barrons says Form of communication that is primarily directed toward gaining public understanding and acceptance. It tends to deal with issues rather than specifically with products or services. Public relations uses publicity that does not necessitate payment in a wide variety of media and is often placed as news or items of public interest. Because public relations communications are placed in this manner, they offer a legitimacy that advertising does not have, since advertising is publicity that is paid for.
Management Help says
Public relations includes ongoing activities to ensure the overall company
has a strong public image. Public relations activities include
helping the public to understand the company and its products.
Often, public relations are conducted through the media, that
is, newspapers, television, magazines, etc.
The PRCA trade body says Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you.  Public
relations aims to earn understanding and support, and influence opinion
and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and
maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and
its publics.
[although I prefer the other PRCA - Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association]

So lots to validate the service and professionalise the relationship that a brand has with its audiences.

Cut through the polite-speak and it’s clear that when brands can have direct conversations with audiences in a meaningful environment, maybe the middle man gets cut.

As I said in reply to Adriana’s post, there are times when a middle-man is a valid, rational response to a business situation and using a PR agency is a great resource and worth paying for.  I wrote

BUT there is a time and a place for a rational use of an outsider to, in your phrase, send a proxy to the party. 

And that is when you don’t have the manpower yourself. There is a
nice way to use outsiders to help you plan your public profile and help
execute it through ‘events’ where audiences can experience the brand
first hand and announcements to the printed media e.g. stock exchange
statements, annual reports, product recalls.

Where the questions remain are in the areas of ‘lobbying’ where
brands use PR agencies to sell in a story and try and get journalists
to try their product and write about it.

The honest way to deal with this practice is for the printed article [for the journalist] to include a reference sources list that includes the name of the PR
agency. It creates an honesty measure and also provides a clear link
back to the source of the information.

Nice piece on the BIMA Blog from Felix Velarde of Underwired on the 1to1 future predicted by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in 1997.  H rails against the fact that most campaigns driven out are email based and should be much wider.

But this is all based on the use of email as the channel that replaces
snail mail-enabled printed materials. And eCRM should be so much more
than that. A digitally-centred relationship marketing programme -
centred so because of the immediacy and cost efficiency - should not
mean email alone.

Yet again, few agencies are doing the whole picture for client brands.  (let alone for their own business).

I have started work with Honeycomb Software who provide just the centralising database and data management tools for enabling this detailed customer  understanding.  Take a look and let us come and show it off to you. 

But seriously, there are so few brands willing to start this detailed customer engagement which has been technically feasible for the past 3 years that it angers me.  Felix is right, email marketing is just the first step - broaden the customer conversation and deepen their brand engagement.  Then you’ll see if you can sell more stuff more profitably.

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"

Nice posting from Adriana about what you can and cannot control online….

Online you’d better control what you can, not what you wish you could.
Controlling others has always been a delusion, controlling your
identity and your own expression is where it is at.

It is becoming clear that the days of being able to get advertising alongside your blog content are numbered.  There is a new Firefox extension that allows you to block adverts. And like many it’s a free download - part of the brave new world of opensource.

Now that this business model is challenged, we need to find a new one that pays for our time online… and makes the investment viable for us and our readers. 
A new specialist newsletter that I read, has just appealed for donations….. So wrong…. so last century.  What they should be doing is:

1. Enable a RSS feed…
2. Build a mailing list of subscribers
3. Sell advertising (if they want) based on reader numbers and provable downloads
4. Migrate readers to paid-for content over time when the service is proven
5.  And as an aside, a 12 meg pdf format is a tyranny…. just publish online…..

I wrote an

I work as a non-executive for a couple of my clients.  I came across this article from the Telegraph in which the differences and similarities of a non-exec and an interim manager are detailed.

detail below.

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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