Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Times are A-Changin' Again for Marketers

Hi everyone

Over my recent holiday break I watched the latest series from the hit TV show Mad Men, about a New York ad agency set in the 1950’s.

It was a time of real insights and storytelling, of brand creation, and when the ad agency had the influence to shape a company’s future. They were times of great change.

Many agency people, and marketing commentators, would love to go back to that same role we once had.

Some people even wonder, with the advent of Web 2.0 and fast & cheap social network enabled content, whether this is the beginning of the end for marketers? Unilever’s so called crowd sourcing experiment is cited as one example of this outsourced marketing movement.

Are we then, as marketers, becoming obsolete?

Those people who haven’t experienced fully the revolution that’s been going on in agencies in the last few years might think so. But I’d argue that agencies are becoming as important as we were in the Mad Men days, but for totally different reasons.

The agency and client model has radically changed to suit the times. Here’s what we’re doing different now, and why I think it’s so important:

1. Understanding & reaching people better: With the shift to social media, changes in consumer preferences, growth in communities, etc. it has never been more important to not only understand relevant consumer insights, but also work out new ways to provide access to these audiences.

“Agencies now help to create or manage customer communities for their clients. They will also create client specific media channels – whether it’s Twitter feeds or Internet radio – which can be used to deliver specific campaigns.” (Phil Johnson, Ad Age, ‘Creating the future of Adland’)

2. Creating engagement not just advertising : Agencies like ours are now are creating acts, not just ads. We therefore must be able create a large type of different brand experiences in different media, but that all speak with one voice.

That means a marketer and their agency should be able to offer everything from a branded web site, TV campaign, mobile promotion, package design, software applications, PR buzz, online games, branded events, email stream or retail experiences that are all integrated and work together seamlessly.

To do this agencies become more like content super-producers, managing the dozens of technology production and content streams, to come together as one. As Allison Mooney notes, agencies need to think like software companies to survive.

3. Managing the social media experience: Social networking does give more power to our customers – but any marketer will know there is a real challenge in getting a social media project balance right. Just setting it up is not enough, nothing will happen. Spend all your time maintaining it and it will drain your resources. And how do you turn the noise into sales?

An agency is crucial to understand what a brand’s role is in this social media conversation, when to contribute, when to listen, and what tools we can give our consumers to be useful. Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom said it best: “Social Media isn’t a box to be ticked or a department to be manned or even a campaign to be launched. It’s about thinking differently about marketing, customer service, the entire company.”

4. Helping change the business not just the marketing: This leads to perhaps the biggest revolution has been taking place for marketers: by understanding our changing customers' lives better, we are now better positioned to provide advice on real customer utility. That is, not just better communications – but better products ideas, better services channels, and better ways of being useful in people’s lives.

Look at all the work that’s being done in an agency now, so much of it is about addressing the core issues of the business. In this way, as Wayne Arnold says in this article, we stop being an agency and start being an agent of change.

Welcome to Agency 2.0

Cheers

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

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