Creative Agency Secrets

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…)

BIMA do the BEST dinner debates.  I’ve attended a couple in the past. 

I am going to this event, and it promises to be a fantastic debate to add to the discussions that I started here and here.

Jamie
Galloway, Director of Digital Media, Central Office of Information. The
subject of the conversation for the evening is: ‘The future for PR in a
digital world’

[Nice use of English.. the future FOR not, you notice, the future OF….!]  Pedants of the world unite.

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.

I recently met the InHouse team and they told me that they’d secured an interview with my old boss, Don Peppers for their InHouse Village site.

Well, Don is a key man in my life for having jumped onto cluetrain very early and added the dimension that explained the future of direct marketing was integrated…. and that it needed to be supported by a new principle treat different customers differently.
His methodology for CRM was 4-steps: Identify your customers, Differentiate them by value and need; Interact with them and learn; and Customise your offering to their needs.

in his interview (published in short chapters…. two are up right now), he has developed his theme somewhat.

Key quotes

You can’t un-Google yourself
If your dialogues with customers don’t result in spontaneous replies from the customers - they are not authentic [he fails to add that this is PR not dialogue and that you might examine whether your offering is hitting the ’spot’ with customer needs
The key brand trait today is TRUST.  A company should always act in the interest of its customers and not just in pursuit of profit. [nicely put - and a key part of WOM online]
When considering which brands your agency wants to work with, think carefully how many brands actually do hire an agency to work on their marketing.  Most don’t.  Target your approach.
When he was doing biz dev - Don kept a ring binder with one page of notes for each target brand he wanted to work with.  [A great low-tech means of keeping data to hand, up to date and focused.]

So far in the interview, it seems Don is just saying the same stuff about 1to1 marketing but realising that today’s digital world actually enables a lot of his past-10-years-theorising.  That’s fine.  What I want to know is what are leading companies actually DOING?  Now?

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.

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

Brain dump following the event this morning.

BTW Thanks to everyone who came, particularly Adriana who doesn’t do early mornings (see photo!)

1. Digital Agencies are toolboxes not communicators
2. Internet = Customer Power
3. Americans are more willing to pay for ideas than Brits.
4. Two business modes for the new world 1 - Opensource.  2 - The Long Tail.  these are organisational structures not business models.
5. Employment and autonomy means no ‘boss’ but you need an infrastructure - a project manager / PA in one.
6. Communicators relay messages to audiences who supposedly have demand for the product.  But when the demand bypasses the communicators……:-)
7. The internet is permanent space, not fleeting.

I was reading a magazine last week with a pull out advertorial from Accenture "Outlook: the journal of high-performance business".  I suppose they are trying to be like McKinsey Quarterly or BCG.

Anyway, it has some useful insights…

Changing ahead of the curve - many companies wait too long to attempt transformations, doing so only when the signs of trouble have become obvious. High performers change before they must, knowing that the best way to transform is from a position of strength.

They identify four critical goals to enable corporate change ahead of the curve

1.  Increase the company’s capacity for early change by deliberately fostering continuous renewal as part of its everyday operations.

2.  Generate confidence in early change by sharpening the company’s business acuity

Key here - ability to embrace data sources beyond traditional enterprise systems e.g. frontline staff as sources for ideas or listening to critics.  Pattern recognition - see through the data to the patterns and analyse them to create insights.  Catalysing change and acting on the insights - possibly using internal sponsors to accelerate change.

This is where the techniques I find most helpful work best.  I have always been an advocate of frontline staff - I was trained as a Geographer and an holistic approach including bottom-up research was key to the success of projects I worked on at that time.  Spending time in Scottish Power’s call centre gave huge insights to a customer touchmap [ask me about the ‘gay’ corner!].  Read Church of the Customer’s blog about listening to critics as a way of building sales.

3.  Overcome management resistance to early change by carefully and continuously evolving top mangement teams.

Using external resource to boost the team for key skills and at key times is often a useful way of injecting energy and perspective into a transformation project.  Even getting someone in just for the kick-off meeting as a facilitator can be a great start. Accenture reckon 10-30% of the skills usually need to be sourced from outside the company.  "High performers are open to leadership shake-ups, which contribute to education and growth."

4.  Accelerate the behaviour changes needed to start and sustain transformation by using leading-edge tools and techniques for sensing and responding to organisational change barriers and opportunities.

Todays newest methods and tools recognise organisations as complex, adaptive systems.  We are seeking leading companies applying new methods and tools to actively measure and manage aspects of corporate culture, an underexploited area of change intervention and management.

Here’s where the key theme of the web 2.0 tools comes in.  AFAIK they are the widest suite of new ‘toys’ available to managers and business owners that are new to the management theory marketplace today.  What’s the joy is that they really break down barriers and enable individual activity under the radar as well as through formal programmes allowing change to begin at a pace that the organisation is ready for.  Those people who ‘get it’ will charge ahead and get going on things they can quickly influence within their area of work - those that are slower to see opportunity will then get dragged along later.

I hope that this is the sort of insight Adriana will give us on 30th May.