Agency Survival - Join in on the Conversation
March 19, 2007 – 8:52 amI appreciate the Futurelab Marketing and Strategy Innovation Blog because, well, the name says it all.
Alain Thys, one of the contributors fo rthe blog, recently wrote a post called The Seven Tips for Agency Survival, summarized below:
TIP 1: Take the lead in ROI conversations rather than undergoing them
TIP 2: Differentiate yourself
TIP 3: Stop advertising, start communicating
TIP 4: Learn about the stuff that really works
TIP 5: Challenge the industry orthodoxies
TIP 6: If it has no meaning, stop doing it
TIP 7: If you don’t want to or can’t implement the above, harvest and start over
There are a few quotes that stood out:
“..being average is a guaranteed path to irrelevance.”
The ROI topic was a good mention. This conversation has been happening in the direct marketing area for years, and with the commonplace of tracking with interactive campaigns, the requirement for tracking and correlation from ad spends to sales is starting to spill over into other media.
Sure, brands will continue to have a place in the budget for brand awareness and discretionary media spends, but those line items are shrinking and becoming more difficult to sell in to clients. And can you blame them? Why should they invest in media that don’t have a correlation to sales, either directly, or indirectly? Keep in mind that the goal isn’t always about maximizing sales at the sacrifice of company image or other items, but also about minimizing losses in the time of downturns or negative press.
As part of our Interactive and Emerging Media Groups, I live in the space of “What’s Next after What’s Next”, so I have a biased view of Tip 4 and investigating new media and the impact on client and agency business.
Although I agree with the importance, I don’t necessarily think that everyone needs to complete a deep dive in the emerging channels, because someone still has to complete the strategy and operations in the other, keep the lights on channels. Following the mindset that everyone can’t be good at everything, I think it is better to have a dedicated group of resources that can focus on the new channels.
Instead, I recommend having a venue for the teams that live in the new media space to have a channel to communicate these changes to the rest of the agency.
Sure, being involved with emerging media has risks, just as any other item that hasn’t been commonly accepted by the general public, but along with risk come reward.
So next time budgets come up for discussion, consider setting aside a percentage of the overall spend to new media. Ten percent make you feel uncomfortable? Try five percent. Still too much? Try one percent, just allocate something.
As the saying goes, money talks, and allocations of budget line items to emerging media projects shows the importance of this, and sends a clear message from clients to their agencies.
Can’t tell your YouTube from your MySpace?
If your agency doesn’t have an emerging media group, what is their plan for mobile, social networks, blogging, virtual worlds, and the list goes on.
And maybe the answer is that they have partnered with other firms that specialize in emerging media, and thats OK, but if they give you a blank stare, you’ll be doing your customers a disservice by not looking into these items yourself.
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