Time to sound out your advisors - online or on leave?
March 2nd, 2008Overall, marketing and PR agencies and professionals haven’t come to grips with the online world. Media and communications people believe that “online” and “digital” is about technology rather than media and simply haven’t got their nut around it. Why is this important? Because it takes time to learn. Marketing professionals who wait until their clients demand it from them before they do are in trouble.
There are digital specialists of course. But try and find a PR agency that demonstrates an understanding of current online media. Try and find leading advertising agencies that demonstrate an understanding of online media not through words, but through their own presence and behaviour online.
Speak to them about online and they are likely to refer you to their “web guy” who “is really smart”" and gets all this “technical stuff” or “their specialist partner”. Just don’t ask me. Ask about social media and web 2.0 and it gets worse.
Greg Verdino is is not shocked to read the result of a survey by “TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony that “agencies don’t get it”. Nor am I. (After all, even newspapers put anything to do with online media under their technology section, here in The Age and here in the “Tech&Web” section of The Times).
Why is this so? Everything they ever need to know is a mouse click away. All I can think of is that it is either laziness or arrogance.
If they had a poke around and took an interest, they would found that understanding and participating in online media is not about technology. It hasn’t been for quite a while. They would see that it is all about media and communications. Which, after all, is their world.
Joseph Jaffe thinks it is almost too easy to lay into agencies, but they are the external marketing advisors to most companies so I think it is warranted. Over to Joseph with a few tips to marketing professional regarding social media:
To help you in your quest, here are 3 pieces of advice:
- Stop being so damn arrogant and deluded to think you can do this yourselves. You can’t. This is all about humility.
- Stop trying to automate the whole process and solving your problems by a quick technology acquisition fix. You’re drowning in your own data and laziness. This is labor intensive.
- Stop trying to scale the whole process and replicate your old bad habits. This is about planting seeds and sticking around long enough to reap the rewards of care, consideration and hard work.
Clients deserve better. If you are a client, you deserve better. The people I am ranting at here are unlikely to read this of course, because it’s a blog. But if you are a client, expect more. There is no excuse for PR or marketing people not to have a solid grip on digital media. And I mean everyone, not a dedicated “Geek”. It is no longer something for tomorrow or for other people. Media and communications people should be leading the way.
(image source as far as I can track it: http://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/)
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:11 am
Hey David - Great post and I agree with you all around. For the record - when I was being sarcastic when I wrote that I’m shocked.
I am anything but - in fact, this is exactly why I left a big agency to join crayon. G
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
Thanks for stopping by. You’re too subtle with your sarcasm for my Dutch head Greg:)
You made a wise choice from what I can see moving to an agency like Crayon.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
It’s not just agency and PR types who don’t get it. A lot, and I do mean a lot, of clients don’t get it either.
We presented strategy and concepts for a Facebook idea the other day.
Guess what - the client wants us to put it on hold until after their agency launches a new ad campaign in May.
Aaaaagh!!!
March 6th, 2008 at 8:04 am
@Stan - you are right of course. I expect that there will be a lot more of that before there is an understanding that this is not advertising on a different platform. My issue is that clients are allowed to be one step behind the agency; it is the agency that should be leading and too often they still can’t, because they haven’t made the effort to get their head around it. You should post on your experience in trying to pitch social media campaigns; would be an interesting read.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I was working on a pitch recently at an multi-national agency and proposed a strategy which included a series of web 2.0 ideas. They went over the heads of all involved including the web arm of the firm, which was a small digital group that had been swallowed up by the mothership to make a show of being a multi-platform agency. While they could build you a nice site and eDM’s you could forget about anything else.
Meanwhile at another multi national, the web division has grown to the point where it has dwarfed the main agency and cannibalised the DM division.
The bottom line is that there are both savvy clients and agencies out there. They are the visionaries who have a head start on the others.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Hi Sticky, thanks for your contribution from the agency side of things. You, and people like you are the ones I most want to hear about to be honest. Why is it that the “web arm of the firm” didn’t get the web 2.0 stuff? Is it myopia or just laziness?
I know that there are truly web savvy agencies and clients out there, who are in touch with what is happening now. They are mostly the small ones though from what I have seen.
Which major agency actually demonstrates through their online behaviour that they are in touch? I want to start a list.
Thanks for stopping by. David
March 12th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Fundamentally David the issue in Australia lies in the local psyche plus the lack of marketing dollars.
Ad Industry people here are stubbornly focussed on the one skill set and although they proport to being lateral thinkers, they can’t stand those who break the traditional roles in the industry. They lock themselves and others into little boxes. that is the Australian way. Heaven forbid that anyone should try to change the status quo.
Many Agencies have acquired hip looking small web firms, with no knowledge of the medium and so to some degree have bought lemons. That’s what I encountered on the negative end recently. The above the line agency does not talk to these people or share skills, they bring them in when a site, banner ad or eDM’s are requested. They don’t integrate properly and have no idea what they should be asking of them.
I’m a maverick and a big picture player who is hungry for knowledge. Just last week I overheard myself disparagingly referred to as an ‘over-achiever and to make it worse she’s a woman too…LOL!’. How dare I be able to do the artisanal work as well as Through-the-line Planning and Marketing, let alone think Digital.
To my second point, the marketing budgets here have shrunk significantly over the last ten years and much of the major Planning and Creative work has moved offshore, along with the Senior marketers of Multinationals. In their wake are younger people with no training who have been promoted from Sales and have no idea. Sadly they rely on fuddy-duddy agencies to guide them.
I love the notion of cross platform marketing, but try to get a big agency to do it well and behind the bluster and big promises are a bunch of terrified people who have yet to come to grips with change let alone targeted social media. Try to show them what can be done and they glaze over.
I won’t name agencies. Who I deal with and what I work on is strictly confidential. There are some great opportunities out there for the savvy, and you’re right in the main, it’s the smaller clients and agencies that are leading the way.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Sticky & David - you both raise good points re: small companies leading the way.
It’s “the wild west” out here online - any small player with a bit of online marketing savvy can carve up as much of the “Ponderosa” as he (or she) can handle.
Our pitch is “fully accountable advertising” - tracking right down to the cent, the profit that the client makes. We aim for SME’s (not the big boys). They love the “better profits, lower cost, invest some money and get a positive return” angle.
Stan - don’t worry about clients not getting it. Part of our job as pioneers is to educate clients - but they have to be motivated to step outside traditional advertising media. Otherwise, you’re selling the proverbial ice to the Eskimos.
Brent
March 14th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Brent, thanks for stopping by. I think you have a great opportunity there. My question remains why the larger agencies with the larger budgets are not pioneering more? Are they too comfortable? This sort of change must come right from the top I believe. When was the last time that the CEO of a major advertising agency had a look at their own website? When did they ask their clients what they think of it? I’d be keen to hear more from agency land.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Two issues seem to be at work here: 1)Social networking is in its infancy with a lot of buzz and very few reliable metrics to back it up; 2) online communications, especially social networking and the lion’s share of rich media communications target a young demographic and currently have limited value for many btob PR and Ad shops.
On the other hand, social networking in the enterprise is catching on with appliances like Connectbeam social software application. Once the online experience is embedded in the enterprise (bookmarking, tagging, etc.) agencies will take it more seriously or fade away.
March 21st, 2008 at 6:45 am
Hi John, thanks for the contribution, and I agree that social networking is in its infancy, but the problem is much bigger in my view. I believe that many ad and PR agency don’t understand the digital space. It’s not always about whether you need to execute a facebook campaign, it is about understanding what facebook is, and maybe participate in the conversation. You are an expert in your field. If you would review the online strategy of most advertising and PR agencies, how would you rate them?
Is there one reason why ad and PR agencies should not lead the market in their application of B2B online marketing and PR?
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Hey David –I agree wholeheartedly with your post and enjoyed reading the comments — I’m from Australia (Melbourne), so know exactly where you’re coming from. I reckon we’ve got the luxury of ’seeing into the future’ as we’re probably 12-18 months behind the US, so really, there is no excuse not to be up to speed.
Our industry (I’m talking PR, but it does extend through marketing and advertising), I agree with you, is both myopic and lazy when it comes to social media. An experienced PR practitioner the other day had the gall to suggest to me there was minimal value for a professional services firm having a website - I was absolutely gobsmacked!
Loved Sticky’s comments too. Must be frustrating being in a big ad agency. Ad people tend not to understand ‘communications’ per se, only ’selling stuff’ (via TV ads that are quickly reaching their use-by date!). Traditional advertising doesn’t sit too kindly in the social media sphere, so good luck there…
August 13th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
We’ve been struggling with this with clients for years, however, in the last 12 months have seen a lot of interest in the medium from clients.
They’re thinking, talking and asking about it now, which is the first step.
We see the next as education, and thats the purpose of Love Digital, helping people understand the basic of Digital as media, not a technology.
August 13th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for stopping by Simon. Interesting to hear that you are starting to get some traction. You should drop me a line when you’ve got a bit of a local case study where you’ve helped a client with something that worked well, especially in the PR space.