Creative Agency Secrets

Indirect and oblique marketing opportunities.
One fantastic marketing tool that is often used by technology companies (but is available to most types of business) is to write a case study about your business. This details a particular product or service that you use and why you chose a particular supplier and the net outcomes of using the product.
This is a great marketing tool because it talks about YOU, but the hard work of promotion and message delivery is being done by someone else!
At an Earl’s Court show for marketing and technology, I picked up a case study one page flier written by Concrete (never heard of them before….) because it featured the logo of a company that I do know, Loewy the design and advertising group headed by Charlie Hoult. I read the case study – it is about them installing an advertising management system that delivers print artwork for clients to the media owners in a trackable, real-time web environment.
The benefits to Loewy are of course being picked as a case study that the software company is promoting (presumably to Loewy’s clients and competitors!) and also the fact that they are probably an early adopter of the software. The risk that Loewy took in buying from Concrete is being rewarded by the case study positioning them as a leading edge, innovative agency.
Neat.
On a smaller scale, I have been working with a web agency, Howard/Baines who are building a name for themselves as the ‘designers of choice’ for both large enterprises and web 2.0 start-ups. A broad church of customers. Their offering is also quirky – they take paid-for software and open source and use the best tool for the job, frequently combining and integrating both in order to produce the solution that is right for the client.
Howard/Baines needed to get a stronger presence in a highly crowded marketplace for web strategy, design and development and came up with the idea of writing a case study for Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2008 suite.
They wrote an online meeting organiser tool "Meet with Approval" using both open source and MS tools, a commercial site where users pay for the tool and which has netted over 2000 users and 500+ meetings since launch in October 2007.
Approaching Microsoft, Clive Howard offered them the opportunity to use this as a case study to prove that it is possible to use both open source and paid-for software tools and that four key “myths” about open source were not always true: (speed, support, price and integration).
Microsoft has a business need to improve its relationships with the open source developer community. It is a huge potential market for MS products and is a place where many of the most vocal anti-Microsoft messages are promulgated. And so we hoped that MS would pick up on this opportunity and agree to write a joint case study.
They did and the outcomes have blown us away.
Microsoft has chosen Howard/Baines to speak at the UK launch of Visual Studio 2008 to an audience of press, analysts and key MS users. Now that is a powerful group of people who MS is very keen to impress… and they have been very generous to Howard Baines, inviting them to the whole day including lunch with analysts and one-on-one press interviews with key technology journalists. This has enabled Clive Howard and Jeremy Baines to gain both great brand building opportunities with audiences that would have been beyond their reach (without Microsoft) but also to use the case study in their own media of choice for promotion as well.
Well done, lads!
[Update: Howard/Baines will be interviewed in Computing magazine and Marketing Week]

I blogged about this a while back… and picked up a leaflet (well, it was actually shoved in my face) at the TFM&A show…seems that more people are considering mobile as an important part of their online strategy.
I got the leaflet from Brand Attention – a mobile marketing specialist agency…. but I think they were really missing a big trick in the way they marketed themselves.
How many of you have ever, ever looked up a website on your mobile phone?  I will bet it is less than 1 in 10.  And here’s a nicely written leaflet about  their services leading with a front page image including a QR code inviting you to ‘hook’ onto mobile.  Nice device and nicely produced.
But the trick they missed was to actually SHOW punters and prospects like me who passed by their stand how to use it and what online mobile can look like.
Imagine this… instead of giving me a leaflet they’d had a big notice saying “Show me your mobile phone and win…. ”.  Then when I showed them my phone they quickly worked out if it could read a QR code and if it was web enabled…. and, using MY phone, went to their website from the code link and got me to read whatever it is on the site that is the hook.
This would have demonstrated to me how quick and easy it was, using my phone, plus I’d have registered my phone number on their site (customer data capture) and read their marketing message.
[it wouldn’t have worked with my blackberry as it doesn’t have a camera in it! But I could still have visited their website].
Shame, really.  Because I’m sure they are where a bit of the future of online marketing is happening – or going to happen.  But until I experience it and it works and is relevant to me….. I won’t use it.

I have blogged before on TFM&A and their shortcomings…. and here

Thinking I might be given the opportunity to give some feedback on their shortcomings, I answered their post-event follow up by following the link in their post-event email.  Now, it does appear to be linked to my registration so they KNOW it is me… but no “recognition” by saying “Hello Rebecca, thanks for answering this questionnaire”!….. I like to be thanked for my free advice.

But there was no opportunity for any open free text responses… mostly guided questions.  This is such a basic error as they’ll never know I am blogging about their blasted event and they could do so much more.

And to end it all the ‘close window’ link at hte end of the survey doesn’t do it…… Pissed off for wasting my time with these folk.

PS having said that, I did get some good research into databases from their exhibitors.

Just got registration confirmation email…. and another trick missed.

If you feel that a colleague would also benefit from visiting Technology For Marketing & Advertising, please forward this email where they can register for FREE at:
http://www.t-f-m.co.uk/colleague

I left the link unconcealed so that you can see there is no embedded connection to ME.

The conference has no way of knowing who their most powerful & active referrers are.   Who are the “Mavens” who will help them with their marketing by contributing their personal contacts to hte common effort.

And other things…. no blog of the event, no questions about whether I write or contribute to a blog, no message forum space, no Jaiku / Twitter channel planned.  And that’s just the obvious stuff.

Gad, wish I wasn’t going now.

Correction: TFM&A doesn’t use best practice any CRM.

Just got emailed by TFM&A to get me to sign up to their 2008 event. I’ll probably go.

But first a gripe.

If they are the pre-eminent exhibition and conference for technology for marketing and advertising (as the name implies) why oh why can’t they use best practice for email communications?

My email WAS individually addressed to me “Dear Rebecca Caroe”. Good start.

It WAS sent just to my email address and although it made it past my Outlook spam filter, Mailwasher picked it up as ‘not to me” and I had to manually accept the communication.

But when I clicked on the link

It took me to a registration page where NONE of my information was pre-populated.

As I laboured my way down the registration opting in and out for various items, it dawned on me that this was just a ‘plain vanilla’ registration page for all the outbound email marketing. Why wasn’t there a unique response code embedded in my link? Why don’t they ‘know’ which email I replied to and from what source [they asked me both in the registration questionnaire and these questions were mandatory not optional].

And lastly, why isn’t Business Development, a skill area listed under specialisms?

I feel alone in the marketing world.