Creative Agency Secrets

Many thanks to Mireira Fontbernat from Qik who has uploaded video of the three speakers this morning (and a little bit of me doing introductions).

Bloggers reactions: FreshNetworks' Helen Trim 

Charlie Robertson of Red Spider 

Quentin Boyes of Honeycomb Software  

Sadly the one of Andrew Howells of Zype didn't come out…. darn phone reception. 

Thanks to Nico Macdonald for inviting me to chair two sessions at his Media Futures Conference next week.

I am going to be up there with Alex McKie and the guys from Plot…. Wicked! 

11.00:    Research in the real world – Alex McKie

11:30:      Meet the people formerly known as… users – Gill Wildman and Nick Durrant, Plot

He twittered it here 

Really looking forward to this. 

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:

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! 

Dick Stroud of consultancy 20Plus30

5 things all digital agencies should know about aging
1 - when working for a client consider whether their product is age- neutral or not.  Sites tend to get optimised for a younger age group.
2 - Age is not a good proxy for behaviour.  The default is we are all age-neutral until proven otherwise.
3 - Physiological aging really does matter.  Useability is only the beginning.  Consider navigation, complexity, handling this si more deifficult with age.  The heat maps for older people are very different.
4 - Lifestyle is important - education and background are very importa determinants of web usage
5 - Social Networking issues - if the only unifying feature of the website is age this is a problem.  Interest-driven is more mportant.  

Steve Morgan MD of SQuiz
They have written a publishing plaform which hosts the 50Connect site.
- if a majority of traffic comes from search, nobody searches on "over 50 travel / finance / insurance".  Brand loyalty and a core user base is the only way to build traffic
- Dividing the market by age groups is pointless.  Event-driven is much better e.g. kids leaving home, illness
- Useability research show s related offers and products mucst be very clear and direct.  The audience i easy to lead. - networking creates teh sense of ownership / community strength.  If you change anhythying there is a backlash- Cap[tcha is too small - gridded background, colours and no contrast lost 70-80% by having it- Text based advertising works better than image-based. Don't use banners and skyscrapers.  Nostalgic images don't work.
- calls to action must be strong, bold and well-placed.  Consistent standards in article structure metter e.g. all same colour / place.  Raises CTR.

David Noble MD Wanobe
- the size of the market is a trap
- most older people never think of themselves of being the age they are
- show me by dreams not my mirror image.  Dreams are not age, health and wealth.  Treat them according to their potential for dreaming

Sarah Robinson, Research and planning director Millennium
There are 30-40 years of life left after 50.  Experiences of technology and itnernet vary.  Some are users equivalenbt to a 30 year old
Comfort with technology is important.  They are used to long copy and written letters.  Brought up in a non-visula age.
People think of themselves as being 10 years younger than they are
Search is not a problem but buying is.  Many want to check you are really there and to be sure your call centre is not in INdia.  Phone number = reassurance.

"The problem is with the under30s"  Desire instant gratifiction; judge based on popularity not reputation, longer attenation span when you are older'; value longer relationships; lsess peripheral vision affect page layouts

Alex Champan - Campbell Hooper - most B2B decision makers are over 50.  consider corproate sties with heavy language and simple naviation - gives indication that the mind state is corporate not consumer.

Sites
50notOut - this appears to be a cricket site…?

50connect

Wanobe

mychumsclub

How to use your marketing budget effectively? users over 50 make 50% more errors on the site and take 50% longer to navigate.
Consider the USA car sites for Lexus and VW.  One is boringly efficient and the ohter designed for accolades but hard to take a decision based on the content.

This is not a niche market it is 1/3 of the population. 

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.  

• He briefed me with a document detailing the particular circumstances of his business and his vision for building it into something larger.
• I read the brief and we had a Skype conversation to discuss the issues and questions raised and to decide on a plan of action.
• Ben is now activating most of the work himself - but has benefitted from introductions I make to other organisations who may help him achieve his biz dev goals
• And he will come back for more advice when he has run out of things to do or encounters an issue or problem.

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 just found an interesting website which may be helpful for those times when you think you've done a fabulous piece of work and would like others to appreciate it as well.

It is called Dynamo London and it is a site promoted (and presumably funded) by the lovely NMK, London Development Agency and a couple of notable quangos and private businesses. 

it has three major areas: Projects , Discussions and Events .  Self-explanatory and handily colour co-ordinated for the hard of hearing. It claims to be "your online interactive media showcase".

Here's what Malcolm Garrett the Creative Director says in his welcome email

This is a site for its members, and for sharing knowledge, so I sincerely hope you'll participate and offer your comments and opinions. We'd like to hear about anything that you see on the site, that you like, or don't like, or have an opinion about.

It's very easy to upload more projects, or to post your own discussion topics. Project texts remain editable so this can be done quickly, and you can come back and add more detail at any time. You can also add extra information to other projects that are already uploaded.
 

in fact it prompted me to sign up for the Beers and Innovation party on 27 May… maybe see you there? 

Afterthought… if you want to get in touch with a particular agency or individual, the list of members is a pretty powerful grouping with people from Foster + Partners, Burston Marstellar, AIG

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 have been given sight of the Forrester report "The Connected Agency " Feb 8th 2008.  And it spells gloom and death for the current traditional agency business model.

Definition of a CA is

An agency with a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights. 

Key points and the impact on your biz dev methods are:-

• Data - if you aren't deeply into collecting it (audiences as well as prospective clients) start now.  Great databases, good data insight professionals and the means to interrogate with tools like DataCentre.
• Communities - get into the groups online who are talking about your brands, products, clients, marketplaces.  Lurk and read.  Then participate.  Prepare to lead the conversation.  Conversational (closed loop) marketing is the future.  Dialogue, listening, endless conversations not 'campaigns' will be your metrics.
• Analytics - The authors particularly berate the lack of 'left-brain' mathematical and statistical skills in the industry.  These are key to analytics, segmentation and customer insight.  Buy in and develop these skills for your team.
• Stop-Start Campaigns die and continuous customer conversations rule driven by account managers at the heart of the conversational community.  Be prepared to go to your prospective brand clients and demonstrate your connections into their target audiences, what matters to the audience will drive creative not what the agency thinks up.
• So start by knowing the target markets you work in, browse the blogs, forums, message boards and listen carefully.  [If you don't work in a niche, get one.  Fast]
• Use this online audience for research, find your early connectors, mavens, critics, UGC creatives and make friends with them.  Test campaign ideas on them.
• Have your own "private" marketing funnel that can generate early WOM adoption or buzz.  Not got one?  Give me a call.
• Start planning initiatives (not campaigns) to that audience group from a range of brands - who all want the same audience.  Force collaboration among brands but driven by customer needs.
• Beware auctions.  They will grow and the lowest price point will probably win.  If you are not yet offering a low cost solution to your clients, find a way to deliver it.  (ideas: use young staff as training, outsource to lower cost locations [USA? China, India, Australia, NZ] and find ways to use technology to streamline process and use fewer people)

[and they used the word 'nonfungible' that according to my Dictionary doesn't exist!  Now that's leading edge progress.]

 Media planning works on prices driven by the nonfungible metrics of audience, circulation, and page iews, complicating the decision about where marketers should allocate media budgets.

Thanks to Steve Moore I was invited to chair the Channel4 and Sport England seminar held at Horseferry Road [backstory here and here ].  I loved it.  A perfect opportunity for me to exercise my passion (rowing) and my profession (business development).

The brief was that Sport England wants to educate its members (sporting organisations) on how to join Sport to the communities that participate in it.  Social Media is the answer.

Panelists include Mark McGuinness ; Gi Fernando ; Ed Mitchell and Antony Mayfield .  Detail below about each of their pitches.

My job was to summarise and (self-appointed) make suggestions to the attendees about areas they might investigate further afterwards. These include:

• Collaboration - learning in groups and with co-operation rather than traditional teacher/pupil.
• Long tail - who are the long tail groups in your community and how to differentiate them
• Monologue versus dialogue - assess your current communications (paper, email, web) and see how many are one way and how many facilitate / enable two-way conversations
• Where are your audiences - which platforms, digital spaces, real spaces/places do they hang out in?  Can you 'be there' too?
• We are all guests in the new digital world - takeout from Mark McGuiness talk - act with social gestures that would be appropriate in a party setting.
• There are no strings attached to content and membership online - is registration really necessary?  Why should audiences pay to take part? Don't have member only parts of your website - these exclude rather than include browsers and lurkers
• Social media is now mainstream.  Use it to amplify the conversation you are having with your audiences.
• Conversations and campaigns have to be pushed - takeout from Gi Fernando's talk.  Push appropriately; allow others into YOUR space and let them make connections and manage that themselves without your intervention
• Create ande sustain long term local heroes.  Make them aspirational role models - and make lots of them.
• Data = database - takeout from Ed Mitchell's talk .  Collect email addresses, build profiles of your users, segment them, communicate and learn and customise the online experience to suit their needs.
• There is no online copyright worth having - takeout from Antony Mayfield's talk.  Anythingyou post online is public, its impact is measurable and it can drive revenues to your organisation.  Think about offering a matching service for coaches and athletes (this could be low level revenue generation).  If you can measure anything, you can prove its value and so fulfill funding requirements from your funders / Government.
• Consider the "user journey" for your audience.  What happens before an
  event, during and after and what about the absents - those who can't be
  there, can they also participate in the event experience?

(more…)

Thanks to the eagle eyed Mark McGuinness , I've been invited to chair a panel for Sport England and Channel 4 at their "All Together Now - sports, community and the web" event on 1 May.

Now this really gets me excited.  Many of you know that I write a rowing blog , I still compete and am involved on the committee of a big rowing race.  This is a perfect place for my passion and my business work in social media, digital and business development to intersect.

Here's what the event is about. 

Over the course of the past three years the emergence of blogging, social networking services and platforms which showcase and share user generated content have transformed the possibilities of how we connect, converse and collaborate with one another.
’In the 20th Century, we were defined by what we owned, in the 21st Century we will be defined by what we share and give away’ Charles Leadbeater, author of "We Think"

The potential for organisations and brands to harness these technologies and tools to engage with users, customers and their communities in radically new ways is becoming clear.

How can all those organisations working to promote active participation in sports and the brands that wish to sponsor their activates and campaigns work together to make the most of the unrivalled viral power and network effects of the web in the run up to 2012?

All Together Now will bring together leading social media developers and thinkers, sports governing bodies, communities’ sports organisations and some of our leading brands into a unique event to explore these opportunities.
 

Now, can you guys put your thinking caps on and tell me what questions you think I should be asking the panel members?

Here are some of my ideas….. 

What would be a 'perfect' social media outcome for London 2012?

How would you ideally like to engage online with the folk who run your sport?

Where do you go to talk about your sporting interests?  (online and offline).