TIN first came to our attention when it published this year’s TIN100 a ranking of the top 100 New Zealand and Australian technology companies. We spoke to Greg Shanahan about the firm’s growth
I started the company in 1999 and it initially was running events for the tech sector – mainly around VC fund raising and information. I found a lack of business information in the business media about the tech sector generally which gave me the idea.
I decided to compile some data and start producing a report. Now it’s become a tool for the sector and the only publication that quantifies and monitors the technology sector. We research around 3 areas ICT, hi tech manufacturing and biotechnology.
How do people find out about TIN?
Not easily! Initially I did the report and it had 50 companies in 2005 and we expanded to 100 companies to get more of a representation. There are now 200 NZ and 50 Australian firms included… .it has got itself a profile within the Tech sector.
Last year for the first time we engaged a PR company just as the document was starting to be used more by Government – the Ministry of Economic Deveolopment and Science and Innovation and other agencies who work to stimulate the economy. In NZ word of mouth happens. And the PR and Government use has pushed the growth further
I’ve never understood PR well but since the launch on Monday we’ve been in 12 publicatios and 2 TV channels. And now a blog!
How do you find the companies?
Initially it wasn’t sceintific – just ones I knew. Now we have sponsors who put forward names, and we also the scan media for reports on the tech sector and also word of mouth. Companies now come to us and ask why they aren’t in the report. Which is what I dearly wanted to happen.
How to get your firm included
Typically people phone or send in contact information off the website.
The research takes the form of exhaustive contact with the companies – we start with 250 firms send them survey forms and ask to fill them in – after the cut off period we send them the information about their profile for verification and we also ask for CEO photos from leading companies.
Feedback - we try to take a step up every year – we try to keep polishing it for graphics and focus on the issues that are relevent and trying to distil what’s going on. Perhaps our biggest achievement in NZ has been to change the understanding of the impotance of the technology export sector.
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Interviews are always a nervous ordeal but more often than not a well prepared candidate will always rise above the rest of the pack and successfully take the job. That said, many candidates make the mistake of preparing for a video conference interview in the same way as a face to face interview which can leave an interviewer unimpressed. Here are my top 5 tips to help you beat a video conferencing interview:
1. Remove all distractions
If your video conferencing interview is taking place at your home then make sure you deal with any possible interruptions before the interview. If Fido has a tendency to barge into the room every now and again I am sure he wouldn’t mind playing in the garage for a while until the interview is over. Similarly if you have kids who tend to be quite loud, it will make you and your interviewer lose concentration as well as making you look much less professional. Get hold of a baby sitter or have them spend the day at your parents or friends. Whatever you do, just try to be home alone when the interview takes place.
2. Look at the camera
Just about every interview guru will tell you to make regular eye contact with your interview and a video conferencing interview is no different. This can catch out many interviewees since it is a common habit to look at the computer monitor instead of the actual camera. The camera is transmitting the picture and therefore if you don’t look at the camera it will look like you are looking away from the interviewer thus giving the impression that you are not interested in the interview. If you find this particularly difficult to do then try putting a picture behind your camera which will make it feel like you are talking to an actual person when you are looking at the camera.
3. Proper grooming
When doing a video conferencing interview it is easy to forget that you are being interviewed for a potential job offer. You may be at home but that does not mean that you can take part in the interview in your favourite carrot fit jeans with a T-shirt that has some a funny comment on it. Make sure you dress like you would if you were participating in a face to face interview as it will make you look more professional as well as making you feel more confident.
4. Set the scene
When carrying out a face to face interview, you go to the interviewer which means that the interviewer will make his decision based on you and you alone but on a video conferencing interview, the interviewer will be able to see you and your room therefore your room should also give a professional feel. I am not saying that you should completely redecorate but make sure all dirt has been cleaned and the room looks well organised. In addition to this, temporarily remove any posters which may embarrass you during the interview although sensible pictures and paintings can help create a more sophisticated atmosphere. This will help to give a positive first impression and will start the interview on a good note.
5. Practice makes perfect
Rehearsing your answers to popular interview questions as well as general interview techniques is essential for a successful interview but a video conferencing interview brings with it its own challenges and therefore more factors need to be added to the mix when rehearsing. You will need to get into the habit of talking out aloud when nobody else is in the room so set up your own video conference system prior to the interview and ask your friend to interview you. After the interview ask your friend to give you some feedback.
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- Image via CrunchBase
Michael is the man behind the wildly successful app for online video presentation sales, Kineticast. If you have never seen it working, watch this video presentation showing step one of a sales funnel, prospecting.
What’s special about KinetiCast?
We focus on helping B2B sales people be more effective. Our software helps people to put their message in the hand of the right people – to look at it on demand using a web link, no downloads and no attachments.
You can track your presentation; find out if they forwarded it, what they looked at and how many times they looked at it.
What gave you the idea?
I am the founder – I sometimes think that I have a defective gene because I am a 4th generation entrepreneur! I spent time in software companies implementing ERP, then doing 6 Sigma and lean enterprise and also spent time in sales management too.
I was looking at the sales process and trying to work out how to make this more efficient. When you look at the sales funnel – identify, contacted, qualified, propose and closed. There are different yields of prospects at each stage – the thing that gives the biggest improvement impact is the least efficient step.
Sales people are discouraged from sending more information to prospects because the sales team loses control. But buyers sometimes just want the information to do an analysis.
Kineticast can provide information and show who is using it and who is not – so now I can focus my sales effort on those who are looking.
You have just started using social media, what are your impressions?
In the 4th quarter 2008 we had to market KinetiCast ourselves and I started to focus on inbound marketing so we got a HubSpot CMS account and a new website; did Twitter half heartedly. But I realised when I go to buy something, I don’t look at advertising and when I want something I go look for it. We are a new concept – most people don’t know what an online presentation is. Most, who do know, think it’s a marketing tool.
We are a sales person’s tool.
We started blogging – I had a false start with a ghost writer and it wasn’t good. So we pulled the plug and then I had the software folks build a blog aggregator – SalesAce KinetiCast and it builds lists of sales experts. I screen 30 blogs a day and I approve 3 or 4 to generate fresh content which we aren’t writing.
I started using LinkedIn – I had an account and never invited people to it, I just accepted. I had a FB to use personally which I got from FOWA conference from a user interface design seminar – I was the only one without it!
I hired a VP of sales December 2009 – he is a fantastic blogger and we have started again. This has helped with our traffic. We keep hearing that Twitter is a great source of traffic. We are up to 1100 followers now and growing at a pretty good clip.
Majority of our traffic was coming from LinkedIn, but they have changed how they do things now and we are losing it. Customer Think, Naviga, and larger sites re-post our stuff.
What’s great about Twitter?
Well you found us there didn’t you? It was the third person who has gotten in touch with us using that medium. I believe it works for business to business sales.
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- Image via CrunchBase
Zemanta is a superb recommendation tool for blogs – we’ve bee using it here on Creative Agency Secrets for years after seeing it on David Cushman’s blog. Its easy to use, helps us create professional content in minutes and best of all enables our content to feed back to other blog sites.
What gave you the idea for Zemanta?
My co-founder and I were working on a project for national TV as journalists, we noticed that professional media journalists have a huge machinery of assistance and research, proofreaders and picture editors to ensure the article they write at the end is perfect.
An individual blogger has none of this. He is on his own.
At the time, blogging was becoming an important media channel online. By using smart technologies we could create a similar experience for a blogger as a professional jounalist.
We did a proof of concept and we raised angel funding. Version 1 got seed funding and launched.
From day one every blogger who tried it totally liked it. We got rave reviews calling Zemanta the “blogging god”.
In 3 years we have almost no complaints or people saying it is useless.
What does Zemanta do?
Zemanta is your friend that helps you tell a story on the internet in the most interesting way. By listening closely to your ideas you type in the blog post draft, Zemanta finds pictures and explanations to illustrate what you want to say. By looking at other ideas that are similar to yours Zemanta lets you know where they are and how they connect. You then click and drag them into the post draft as images, related content, links and so on.
What are the main features of Zemanta?
People are excited about how much time it saves and discovering content that they didn’t know about before. Every blogger who uses it has the right to share his blog content into our network to become recommended quotes for other bloggers creating cross-promotion that wasn’t possible before.
How many bloggers use Zemanta?
Tens of thousands.
How is it useful for business bloggers?
It is even more important that business blog posts look professional and are set out and featured as a professional article would be with references, illustrations and pictures. Creating a “rich” post is even more important.
At the same time business blogs have more interest in being promoted on other blogs as references and bringing in more traffic.
What is your business model to make money?
Two ways – we offer our core technology as an API,to clients like Flight Share and Lonely Planet, who want to categorise their content.
Promoted recommendations is the second method of monetization; some businesses who are not our users would still like to contribute content to us so we charge them based on the number of times we recommend their stuff.
Their stuff is of core value so it goes into the same recommendation engine but when it displays, the word ‘promoted’ is next to the link. Yahoo Finance is our largest client for this service.
Take the Zemanta demo yourself – post any text into the box and watch the images, tags and related content recommendations display for you. Suggestion – use one of your recent blog posts as the text!
So why did you decide to write a book?
It was by accident – part of my job is letter writing in a creative way for all our clients. The medium doesn’t matter, the creative idea behind it is the bit that’s important.
My idea was to write a book about writing letters, coming up with ideas and the process to do it.
I finished the book and sent it off to some publishers. Pearson Professional was interested to meet me. But an hour after the meeting, it was clear to them that the book was too niche and they didn’t want to publish it. However, they did want the “Brilliant Pitch” title as part of the “Brilliant…” series.
So what happened to the first book?
The analogy is with fly fishing – specimen hunting with the right fly for the right depth, speed of retrieval. All of these things work. Choice of fly, presentation, tackle. The first book hit the filing cabinet and hasn’t seen the light of day yet!
Do you use the book for your own business promotion?
I had a few speaking engagements with D&AD and the City Womens Network when I mentioned it. Sometimes, during a pitch, I brought the book out and showed it to prospective clients. But you have to be a bit careful because one of the agency owners to whom we were presenting our credentials (who we won) said “well you’ve got some fucking confidence giving me a book like that at the start of your pitch.”
What is the core of your message in the book?
The premise of the book is the “IEDA” process but that is not how people buy in a pitch environment.
What you need to do is change the model and the letters to IDEA
- interest,
- desire,
- evaluation,
- action.
The personal process creates the desire ahead of the decision process. You have to have created the desire before you walk through the idea.
The event pitch is an opportunity to close a decision that is already in the minds of the audience before you arrived. Because if you don’t do that then you can be sure someone else has done it ahead of you and then you have a really tough job on pitch day to turn round a lot of human and personal factors and that’s the hardest job.
Has pitching changed much in the past 5 years?
I think on the face of it yes, because everything has changed in the past 5 years. But the core principles of effective pitching have not changed at all.
Some things we have lost sight of during this period, e.g. the pure human side of the process.
What else has changed in the past 5 years?
In the world of creative agencies, the paraphernalia of digital has changed – doing pitches on iPads – so the tools of the trade have changed, using moving pictures more than PowerPoint slides which were mainly words. The quality of visual presentation is a lot better there’s a lot of visual content too. The key to success remains the personal side. The fact that “People buy people” is as true as it ever was.
In my experience, the prevalence of things like email make it harder to engage with people. Without email 20 years ago in order to communicate with a pitch prospect during the process you would talk on the phone and meet them face to face. It’s harder now to build personal chemistry.
This is important particularly for agencies. Because often the work entered at the pitch doesn’t actually run. The reason is the clients aren’t as focused on the creative work as the agencies are. Agencies tend to think that the pitch is about doing great work and if it is presented well they win. For clients, they are looking to buy a team of people they can work with next year, the year after and so for them the piece of creative work that you happen to have produced at that moment in time isn’t the most important thing. For clients the question “Do I think I can work with them long term and are they the kind of people who can figure out the right answer going forward?” is more important. This is the process, the workings out and the talent around the table. People, personality and chemistry are still a big deal.
Tell us more about your business
Ingenuity ABM stands for agency brand marketing. When we started we did one thing – we helped agencies find clients. We still do that but we also help sports rights holders find potential sponsors and partners, we run new business events and we also now help clients to find agencies in the digital and direct space.
These are all related and I think we are in the business of “joining up the dots” and trying to do that in a more intelligent and creative way in order to be more effective.
One thing that has changed dramatically over last 10 years is clients’ tolerance threshold for new business approaches – they are all too busy. Agencies have never been the biggest part of a marketing director’s job but there are too many agencies. Post recession there are lots of small start ups of people who have fallen out of bigger agencies.
They are trying to win huge amounts of new business – in a random, shotgun, undifferentiated way. Our approach is more audience-centric. Starting from the needs of particular target audiences and we work back from there which is how we construct intelligent processes based on either a known need of a prospect or a pretty good hypothesis to attract their attention.
In order to make a successful approach, you have to do that and be relevant, timely and preferably brief.
And so as the book says pitching is a process and winning new business is a process and Ingenuity ABM are at the front end of that. We open up conversations and build relationships and when the time is right for both parties we can put them together and they can engage in a meaningful discussion which will result in a client finding a new agency and the reverse.
Buy Brilliant Pitch: What to know, do and say to make the perfect pitch 
[affiliate link]
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We met Scott first through SXSW a couple of years ago and recently he was named number 73 on the Fast Company list of most creative people. he set up Behance, they “design products and ideas that empower the creative work to make ideas happen”. Now that’s quite a claim! Their creative network was the first reason we spoke, because they want to recruit UK designers to the site.
What first gave you the idea for Behance?
There are two things that really inspired me:
(1) The stuff that makes our lives interesting – the art, the design, and all of the original content – is all created by the creative professional community. But, unfortunately, creatives in particular face unique obstacles when it comes to actually making their ideas happen.
(2) There is SO MUCH discussion in the creative world about inspiration and creativity, but very little discussion about organization and execution. I found this VERY frustrating. It seemed that creative professionals would become more effective – and thus benefit society even more – with assistance on execution, efficient self-promotion, and organization.
We created Behance with a very specific mission: To organize the creative world. We are not trying to increase creativity. On the contrary, we are trying to help creative leaders harness their own creativity and actually make ideas happen.
How many designers are registered with you now?
The Behance Network receives over 5 million visitors per month. Most of these are creative enthusiasts and recruiters, a much smaller and elite subset is active creative professionals.
What do you find your users most value about the Behance site and its services?
Our goal with the Behance Network was to maximize exposure and help organize the creative world’s work. When we interview some of the world’s leading recruiters and agencies, they complain about typical “portfolio sites” and how difficult it is to organize and navigate creative talent. We developed Behance.net to be a neutral, powerful platform that organizes creative work based on location, field, and – to some degree – quality.
Behance.net is NOT designed to be a “social network.” We don’t use the word “friends” in Behance. Instead, the platform is designed to push careers forward. When you add a new project to your portfolio, it is automatically displayed in any other network you are a part of (such as AIGA or MTV) as well as other galleries, circles, and collections across the web. You maintain complete control and ownership of your work, you select privacy and copyright settings, and you are always associated with your content.
We have already received incredible success stories from members who report “career-changing opportunities” that resulted from the Behance.net platform. And, we have some incredible new features and partnerships in the pipeline that will bring Behance.net to a new level.
Have you had any surprisingly famous people join?
Many, but we focus less on “fame” and more on productivity…
What’s the idea that has come out of the 99% that you think has the most utility?
One very simple point: As creative people and teams, we need to spend less energy on coming up with ideas and more energy on execution.
Where next – what’s in the pipeline?
I would tell you but then I’d have to… 
All I can say is that we are very focused on adding value to the careers of creative professionals. We believe that the platform will thrive as long as we remain the leading source of new opportunities for the most talented creative people and teams on the planet.
If you want to join the Behance Network the sign up page is here. Please mention where you heard about it.
Antony Mayfield has written Me and My Web Shadow a book about online reputation management, we ask him why he did it and how readers can manage their own reputation online.
So what gave you the idea for the book?
The idea began with a video I did for the Institute of Chartered Accountants called “The 12 Golden Rules of Online Reputation Management”. I realised everyone was beginning to have to come to terms with the fact that their online reputation might affect them. It also seemed like a good way to introduce some of the amazing and easy-to-use tools and services on the web to a wider audience.
What was the tipping point for your realisation that online reputation management was going to be important in the future?
It was when I noticed I was ever more frequently giving the kind of PR advice I was used to giving to clients. Even with very experienced digital professionals, I would find myself saying things like “You’re never off the record online,” and “You should think about being the best, first source of information about yourself on Google”.
What is the number one reason for reading the book?
To get a clear idea of how you can manage your personal presence on the web and what it says about you. It is an “everyperson” guide to looking after your reputation on the web, but it has also been very useful for experienced internet users who haven’t necessarily thought about their own web shadow in a methodical way.
What questions does the book answer?
Me and My Web Shadow
- Why is the web changing the way reputation works?
- How do we go about living with the web and managing our reputations?
- How do we practically go about managing our online presence and personal reputation?
You have a full time job – how do you find the time to write a book?
Most of the work was done at weekends and in evenings, although towards the end I took a couple of weeks of holiday to finish it. It was only possible because I had a publisher’s deadline looming, otherwise it would have been really hard to do it like that.
If I read the book, will I have the tools to manage my own reputation online?
You should have a good understanding of why and how to manage your reputation on the web. We shouldn’t confuse “manage” with “control” however. No one, from the biggest brands to private individuals is able to control what is said about them on the web. But they can learn how to influence it, have a say in what the web says about them, if you like.
How can I find out what my online reputation is?
The simplest way is to log out of your search engines and social networks and research yourself as if you were an employer or business associate. Look in all the places you would expect to find information about you, ask what it says about you.
Buy a copy of Me and My Web Shadow
Ed founded Concep 7 years ago as an email marketing service and as B2B specialists. They won business from both law firms and accounting firms early on and so now just do work for professional services clients.
4 years ago we saw that the space was getting congested [with other supplier agencies] and so we brought on full service agency expertise hiring Dwain Thomas from CCHM:Ping. We also opened in NY and Sydney and this was to enable global reach with clients who are also located there.
The UK business is now 30 people and NY is 5 and Sydney is 5. We sent out our head of biz dev to the US and hired locally for Sydney, plus our Client Services Director went over there to get us set up.
What was your first big client win?
On email marketing it was a volume sized business. When we started consulting around it we realised we could turn the volume business into a real consulting business. Clifford Chance, DTZ and Cushman and Wakefield are our big clients now. They use us to do communication strategy digitally.
We have grown organically throughout – revenue has driven growth. We haven’t got rich yet!
Who is your most recent client win?
Smith and Williamson – it was our understanding how partner driven organisations actually work that gave us the edge to win this client. From a confidence point of view we add value and it wasn’t a tech or product sell advantage that won it. We could help them win and retain clients.
We have rolled out Hay Group’s website worldwide as well recently. We have done 3 big projects for them – Paynet site and a corporate site.
Our approach has been two pronged – delivering new services to traditional email marketing clients and acquiring new business too.
What are the biggest changes clients have had in 10 years?
Is the realisation that the web isn’t brochure-ware. The old boys network is falling away. Someone doesn’t pick up the phone as they used to – they get onto google and type it in. Many senior managers get a PA to research something for them and this bypasses the old boy network.
In last 3 years changes include the social media understanding on how they relinquish control and facilitate conversation. Legals are frightened that people are talking about them. Some still think that it doesn’t affect them.
68% of CEOs are online and do consume information online nowadays.
It’s also changed from a marketers point of view – digital channels are really accountable. I think accountancy firms shouldn’t hire any creative people.
I spend most of my time doing internal process then I shifted it to outward-facing business development recently and that has changed both me and the company a lot.
The traffic volume game isn’t that important now, it is about the 100 key people visiting your site.
Because it is B2B you should know who it was at HSBC you should be talking to I don’t think IP tracking works unless you have this knowledge. I know my clients and prospects – and that’s when they visit our site, I know who to follow up with.
I like the way we can enable personalisation for each user on an IP tracking software system. I find if biz dev have to sift out clients or others’ clients when reporting they won’t use the software.
What are the other new tricks?
One of the big ones is face time with people. If someone uses a blog or comments on an article – that’s the best time to engage with them. For example, say I am trying to talk to the CEO of KPMG so I comment at the bottom of the FT article he wrote. If I really have something to say, I bet he is checking it regularly and it puts me on their radar.
This is a great way to get by organisationally – we need to be involved in these conversations. If you don’t have an online policy it shows. For key senior people you’ll find them on their private blog and LinkedIn profile.
You need both a policy and a strategy behind it. As agencies we need to show the value you get for it [digital strategy] and how much time they [prospects] spend on it. A client’s marketing team may be playing with Facebook but if they don’t give commercial reasons for doing so it’s not part of the marketing plan.
Have you got any advice for other B2B organisations about biz dev?
In big firms procurement are the ‘firewall’ against new sales or prospects or contract negotiations. We found out recently that 60% of procurement people are targeted on cost savings. You should find out how they are rewarded – price or value. It affects your negotiating position.
Also get an understanding of RFIs – we are getting better at it now but ask “why is it being used?” Is it just to drive down the incumbent on price – or is this to change service? Ask the honest question early on.
I think there is a big thing of valuing your services and people – don’t drop your prices. Are you better off losing a client who wants to drop your fees or not? We are eloquent about our value. It isn’t that we cost £20k pa we save them £95k. There is a fear to ask what budgets are.
Are the intermediaries any use?
We usually go direct – we are not scared of picking up the phone. We used outsource biz dev but compared to the cost I have two internally trained graduates for the same price.
I prefer to run it myself. I use the IDM and RADAR. All we get from them is lots of RFIs and I prefer to win non-tendered business.
]]>Shay Boyd is Managing Director of Clay London. We first noticed Clay when they were featured in a recent Marketing magazine supplement on Experiential agencies. He stood out from the crowd. We introduced ourselves and got chatting… the result is below.
Did you get any business from the supplement?
No – we did a piece last year and for us it’s more about pitting ourselves against the big agencies in a format where you can give clients an insight into the way we do business. A general PR statement of intent about how we like to work.
A few incoming links came in from the micro-site.
Clients can either use these as tools to filter “what I need from agencies”, it provides insight and a benchmarking process. I think from a biz dev point of view it is an interesting reference. You pull people round that process. We can’t do that to the level and most agencies don’t.
I wanted to write something that people think “that’s quite interesting to read”. Marketing should be memorable and make people stop and think.
I went to the pre-gig before the experiential piece – they had the agencies meet over lunch. I think everyone wants to make marketing very complex and difficult. We think it is a very simple science and it needs to be approached in this way. We weren’t like the other agencies.
Marketing doesn’t start being complex and end up being simple.
It is hard to not get on a soapbox and namecheck clients and jobs you have done in a supplement like that without looking bad. You have to get people to stop and think about experiential.
How did the supplement work for Marketing magazine?
They probably feel they should be doing something as all-encompassing as total comunication. Because Marketing magazine is all about an industry that should be working like that.
Tell us a bit about Clay London
We started 2001 as a specialist sports marketing agency / consultancy and we did a lot of work with sports and TV companies on the advisory side. We grew from that into an agency format and we took on work in different sectors. Clients liked us and referred us to do other work.
Most was idea-generated new business wins followed by more creative campigns by former clients. This was driven more by market factors but we were around at the right time to take advantage of the opportunity.
We started to work with specialist agencies in sales promo – we struggled to get that end of the buisnes delivered how we would have liked it done. We now deliver that as well as the strategy end for clients – this works well from a control and evaluation point of view. Clients want to know what the get.
Unless you control all this it is hard to say what is achievable and measurable and what is worth finding out.
So how does your Biz Dev work now?
We have always had this philosophy – we do less running around and pitching and more talking to clients to establish whether they are interested in doing the work - was it a strategic part of their brand, were they committed to doing it before we even start to deliver creative ideas.
Running round chasing everything is a waste of time. If you leave your best ideas in the client’s boardroom they get picked up and used later without you.
I believe that at the outset you say to clients if you are prepared to do a competitive pitch.
If you pitch 5 good big agencies you’ll probably get what you want. If you want specialist insight into the areas where we focus we will probably win the pitch.
How do you think biz dev is changing?
Agencies are now having a more structured approach and are more streamlined. If biz dev gets caught in between pitching and looking to get agencies to pitch then I think some agencies are being more selective about where you put your time and energy. But unless the client has a latent intent to do something about their brand you will be wasting energy.
There has to be commitment from clients to match with your ability.
I think the involvement of senior marketeers in pitches is good that works for agencies that are good. They flush out those who are not. It enables agencies to present their area of specialism and to put their case forward. The experiential essays were part of this – someone can read them and if they are interested by your thinking they can check out your website.
People are now happy to look at things that can be delivered quickly and in interesting format like social media. And you can use these tools to talk about things that are topical, make them relevant and give your insights or appraisal of what’s been done. Just like you do on the CAS blog. Thanks for the compliment, Shay.
]]>I founded an agency called Agency Republic in 2001 for Omnicom during digital boom times when clients were spending a lot on digital. we were smarter than the average – we had both really good digital and really good creative strategists so we could talk business.
I left in 2007 with Andy Sandoz and Paddy Griffin to set up Work Club. The drivers were the lure of self employment and “doing it for myself” – I asked myself, if not now then when?
What were the key decisions when founding the agency?
Having some money to back yourself rather than borrowing and having the right business partners is cruically important. Also a good idea of what is going to be different from other agencies.
Quickly after setting up Ben and Lisa joined us from Mother and this developed into our proposition as a creative agency with a digital spine.
The proposition is for a new kind of client – many brands recognise that they need to make a lot more of digital as a way of thinking as well as a channel. Few clients know who to get the advice from to do this. If they get it from an ad agency it is not very insightful. If they go to an old style digital agency then they get digital technicians who aren’t always able to offer the same level of business, brand, strategy and creative advice that you get in a really good ad agency. We tried to put it all together for a kind of client for whom digital is increasingly the number 1 channel and the way they have to think about their brand in future.
What does this mean in practice for a client?
We are lead agency for 80% of our clients. Pizza Express hired us to do a website for them, we dug into their brand and helped them to define a proposition which was more fitting with the digital age “feeding great conversations since 1965″. People go there because they like the food but want to catch up with their friends and family therefore the reason for going is great conversation in the context of getting the delivery right.
A strategy based on consumer dialogue is fitting with the digital age of sociability powered by digital. We took this idea and exploded it into all channels, events, advertising, POS, direct, promotions and we are now lead agency for them. It makes more sense for them to have a lead agency whose heartland is in digital than a series of agencies.
It also requires a client mentality to take the leap to choose a digitally-centric agency as the lead for the brand. It is a bit bold and unusual. To do great work, clients we want to attract are someone maverick and prepared to take risks. We will probably never be BT’s lead agency as they are not likely to put digital first.
We recently started to work for Alfa Romeo – they don’t have an advertising agency because they realise 95% of all new car purchases are researched online and so they need to get digital right first. They may need to advertise on top of that but feel better to have a digital agency defining the brand.
So how are you getting the talent into Work Club?
We are trying to get all the skills required in-house. We are now working across nearly every channel, print, TV, outdoor.
A crucial difference about how we set up the agency is that we have no in house production. Most digital agencies have 20 – 30% of people having ideas at the front end and the rest in the back room coding micro-sites all day. We found this limiting – on an operational level you are limited by the people you have got and you also have a skills restrictions e.g. mobile apps, hardcore website, brilliant media sites. Clients recognise that and it limits you in skill sand capacity terms. Clients also realise that paying London agency rates for asset production when it can be offshored for a tenth of the price is not necessary.
Strategically agencies tend to recommend what they can make money out of best – and most agencies push banners and a microsite. We decided to take the strategic high ground as brand guardians, you can’t have a vested interst in producing stuff in a particular channel.
We work with a broad roster of production companies, film, event, mobile – probably 30 different suppliers and partners. It’s an old model but within digital it’s a new model. We see digital agencies as people who think and have ideas.
What was the most recent client you won and why?
Alpha Romeo we did a pitch through the AAR – it was a digital pitch. They loved our ideas the most – our creative concepts were great, our understanding of the brand was good and the blend of people was the same standard of creative and strategic in a great ad and digital agency. An holistic blend of skills.
Most of the work we have won has been through contacts and recommendation. Our proposition has started to shift - up to to now it has been hard to sell through intermediaries. They categorise the pitch as being ‘digital’ and we don’t fit.
The work we get is referrals. We started working with Plum Baby two years ago and we now do everything for them. Plum Baby met Pizza Express to get them to list the Plum Baby food and they mentioned us. Will Harris at Nokia I worked with years ago at O2 and I have worked with him before. He recommended us to Sony BMG and Oakley. Once you really deliver for a client and they know they can trust you the relationship is at that level.
It’s gold dust – when it happens it’s brilliant.
It doesn’t happen very often. We won 118 118 through Oystercatcher. Kraft came through ISBA and we are now on the European roster and across a range of categories.
One of the reasons we have done well is we have had strategists running accounts so far. We are starting to bring people in now in order to be able to scale on large pieces of business – raising the quality of conversations when representing the belief of digital at the heart of brand communications, you can be more persuasive and get invited up into senior meetings.
How can ‘production’ agencies get onto your roster?
Talk to Josh Tenser our Production manager – his job is to make sure we are working with the best production partners in whatever field. The whole white label thing is complete nonsense because the best people won’t want to work with you and we need the best executional partners in the world. We think this is the benefit of our collaboration model when talking to clients.
I think if we want to work with the best – we have to showcase their expertise and credit them if they want to work with us. We are experts in strategy and ideas and they are production experts.
Agencies hiding their production partners are usually also hiding their production margins. We are 100% transparent.
What other changes can you forsee in the marketing services industry?
I don’t think procurement people still have a clue about digital. Going in and trying to persuade them to pick us for roster reviews and RFIs – the questions are being asked are wrong on the whole. “How much will you charge us for a banner?”, rather than what is the role of digital in our business. This was still the case from 10 years ago. That is holding back the quality of agencies working for clients. They are hunting for cheap banner shops rather than how digital can make your business more profitable.
Most clients are savvy as to whether their ad agency is walking the walk as well as talking the talk. Some agencies have hired quality people and can think differently from a broadcast advertising model – but the people running , managing and owning them are all ad people and that makes it hard to change. If you are a smart strategist and 28 year old it is hard to change what’s above me.
Who are the emerging new agencies who get it?
Wieden and Kennedy, Fallon, Albion.
To get from the interesting promising hot young agency into the seriously good agency bracket you need to have some awesome badged creative work that people really get “the agency that did X”. The third year is make or break, culture solidifies, the big client accounts are developed into a platform from which good work can come. You have to get it right – and that propels you on. We have to get some landmark creative work in the next 6 months and we have some good opportunities.
Also effectiveness measurement. Most clients have been happy with the model of measurement through industry-understood benchmarks e.g. Millward Brown qual and quant. But in digital where the volumes aren’t as big yet and there’s a surfeit of data there is not yet a commonly understood approach to measurement.
e.g. Kraft are very excited about moving digital to the heart but at brand planning and working out what they should be measuring in a impact on brand health and sales there isn’t a templated one way to do it. We have hired a Director of Effectiveness andwe are trying to work with every client with time and money in the budget to bespoke a measurement approach for every bit of work we do. This means agreeing what success looks like up front, dynamically generated data into dynamically generated dashboards that clients can log into at any time to check on.