Ad hoc, full service, boutique or à la carte?

I am old enough to remember when the advertising industry spawned first, creative hotshops (remember Cramer and Saatchi?), then media independents and it wasn’t long before the discussions began to rage between the comparative value of buying full-service vs ad hoc. Later, when digital media first reared its interactive head it was seen as a separate service. Now, digital has been embraced as part of the marketing and communications scene and the old argument (in a slightly different guise) appears again.

We could spend a lot of time discussing whether ad agencies have sufficient digital expertise or fully recognise the possibilities, or if specialist digital agencies have a sufficiently broad marketing base – but in what is still an immature sector the discussion is rather pointless as the offering is so varied and patchy as to provide no obvious answers.

To compound matters, specialisms within the digital arena are growing and replicating faster than a swine-flu virus. We now have SEO, PPC, mobile, content, ecommerce, content production, international, email, research specialists and many, many more.

Nobody but the biggest digital agencies (big bucks) can keep the depth of expertise on their books to bring together the right mix of specialisms required for even moderately complex solutions. But few clients, particularly SMEs, have either the physical resource or the knowledge to assemble the right team of suppliers for an à la carte solution. The instinct of a big agency is do as much internally as they can; it maintains control and maximises revenue. But to provide a client with the most effective, and cost-effective programme, they need to take a more project management role.

The alternative is for clients to employ a digital project manager to manage the best possible team of disciplines to achieve their strategy.

 

On the move

It seems like a long time since we first started hearing about the wonders or threats of convergence, but there is a strong indication that mobile in its various manifestations may be taking over the driving seat.

I’ve always been a bit of a purist so far as my mobile phone was concerned: it was just for making phone calls. Then I subscribed to mobile broadband, mainly to use a dongle on my laptop as I travel a lot (don’t get me started on the price hotels charge for broadband). Anyway, that permitted me broadband on my phone. My first use was Google maps when I was was lost. There followed a number of distress driven uses and soon I was hooked. My phone upgrade then led me to a bigger colour screen (my eyesight is no longer what it was… if it ever was).

So, where I always made sure I carried my laptop everywhere in its rucksack, I scaled down to a netbook for foreign trips. At one time I felt naked without some form of computer… now I am relaxed with just my phone, comfortably using it for most of my quick applications.

My tasks for the coming weeks?  Adapt and make sure my websites work well on mobiles.

 

Ask for advice!

It is a simple truth, but if you ask people something, they just might tell you.  Market research built a whole industry on this simple principle. Today, smart marketers embrace social media. One major mobile ‘phone manufacturer used social media to ask its users what they wanted from a mobile phone… the users virtually designed the new range of phones.

Starbucks mounted their successful ‘My Starbucks Idea’, campaign where visitors to a microsite put up ideas and some were then put into action and their progress could be followed.

This is a great way of finding out what customers think and want without going to the vast expense of formal research and focus groups.  For small businesses this is invaluable, giving them access to research and R&D approaches once the preserve of only the big boys.

Amazingly, I still meet organisations who are afraid of letting their customers have their say… because they may say something bad! Surely, if there is something bad you would rather know so you can address it?  That sort of answer is also gold dust for any company.

 

Creativity for all – the ever changing face of digital.

Digtal media is a slippery, slidey thing morphing faster than a Terminator CGI. Just when you think you have a handle on it it changes before your eyes. When I first got involved back in the dark ages of new media (1990’s) it was a dark art, the preserve of strange hybrid creative geeks and bored (or visionary) graphic designers. When I tried to sell it commercially, the most common rejection I received was, ‘We don’t know who is looking at it: probably some 13 year old kid in Uzbekistan’.

Then a tsunami of metrics hit us, and digital became the most measurable medium available to marketers and communicators. Classically trained marketers loved it… and stats ruled over creativity for a while.

Then creativity returned with a vengeance riding on the back of rich media. When I started as a young creative in a Manchester ad agency the chance of working on a TV commercial was a remote day dream. Rich media attracted passionate creatives who were already cutting their teeth on social internet. On-line became the most exciting area for creatives to work.

Today we are seeing a convergence of measurability and creativity. Marketers, particularly those involved with brand issues are seeking qualitative as well as quantitative measures. Click through rates are no longer the end of the story… or even the beginning. I’m not suggesting the on-line arena has matured and the factions are now living in happy harmony: as I said at he outset… it is a formless, changing beast.  What I do applaud is a return to creativity and a chance for every aspiring creatives to produce stunning, provocative solutions and snap at the heels of those with multi million pound budgets. And, an opportunity to use the stats to demonstrate that brave ideas actually do deliver in a crowded, media-rich community.

 

Did the digital world have a part to play in the financial crisis?

The financial crisis was brought about by the sector, an overvalued model, and incompetence of players who should have known better. But the digital world did have its part to play, as a tool and a conduit rather than a cause.  The speed and spread of communications can bring the dominoes tumbling with far greater rapidity. Traders worldwide are watching their screens and reacting instantly. Data is transferred instantly to investors, fund managers, the media and the world at large. But not just data – information, misinformation and rumour travel just as fast.  So while the credit crunch itself was due to staggering miscalculations and lack of competence, digital media was probably part of the conduit by which a crunch was turned into a crisis.

 

More big ideas

Sincewriting my last post, I’ve been musing on what characterises a big idea. One feature is discontinuous change. It is not just another link in a chain of small ideas. On that basis, such things as the Internet and the mobile phone would I suggest qualify as big ideas – so would Communism, space travel and nuclear power.

While discontinuous change characterises big ideas, it is a necessary but not sufficient feature. Scale and impact upon humanity are also important features.  Hence, the iPod, good idea that it is, is hardly up there with nuclear power and the Internet.

 

Is print dying?

Back from holiday and the first thing I hear on the BBC Today programme is a discussion as to whether Internet publishing will kill off paper publishing – traditional printed media. Scary stats were quoted on the circulation figures, especially of regional daily papers. There has been a lot of discontinuous change in the print industry.  I started my working life creating ads to appear in newspapers that were changing over from letterpress to litho: ‘It’s just a fad’, we were told. Like phototypsetting, all colour newspapers, desk top publishing, digital photography. Change goes with the medium.

Yes, a great deal of what paper publications once provided can now be delivered better digitally. But there will be a place for paper publications. Whether this will be in forms we recognize today or whether new forms of print media will emerge remains to be seen.  I think it is an exciting time for entrepreneurial publishers to be looking at how digital will present new opportunities for print media.

For those of us not directly involved in publishing the biggest impact wil be upon our promotional activity. Will all our advertising spend be directed on-line? How should digital communications be integrated with print as part of a communications strategy? Where do we place our PR emphasis?

Perhaps the most important decision is how we harness the power of social Internet. It’s easy to look at the world of publishing in terms of just the commercial media, but with an estimated 50 million plus blogs, we are all publishers now.

 

You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it.

When I first became involved in what we then called ‘new media’ back in the late 80’s, the naive criticism I would have to deal with was along the lines of.. ‘Well we don’t know who’s viewing our site… probably some 14 year old kid in Uzbekistan.’  But today, digital is probably the most measurable medium available.  Marketers love it: clients get positively orgasmic when I send them pages and pages of stats. Accurately calculated ROI sends them into paroxysms of delight.  The battle for data and accountability is won… so what next? First we have to learn to use the data, but also to extract the more fine grained data.  But do we have to be more human centric? Do we have to bring back semantics and meaning… the skills of the creative, the copywriter and art director? Perhaps we may be at the beginning of a new era as the winds of social Internet allow us to build on the hard data with a more qualitative, collaborative approach by listening to the people as well as the statistics.