FRANKthoughts

AdAge (you’ll need a subscription) published a revealing article basically stating that:

“Increasingly marketers are realizing that [offline and online] has to be integrated … but interactive agencies have not yet proven they have the capability to manage brand strategy,” said Brian Haven, senior analyst at Forrester Research and the author of “The Forrester Wave: Interactive Marketing Agencies”"

This comment effectively summarised the key challenges faced by most clients and agencies. Clients are demanding integration and a single stop solution to their marketing campaigns. After agency briefing, from response to post campaign reporting, we see a split in offline and online strategy, media planning and buying. Clients are wanting digital to be incorporated into their campaigns but are agencies delivering the “right” recommendation?

With the exponential growth of online, agencies responded by “attaching” a digital arm to their existing business. A great example are the numerous interactive “divisional” names / teams with the largest being Emitch being the digital company for Mitchells. These divisions are also structured separately sitting separate from the “offline” teams and in Emitch case…”down the road”. With such disconnection with online and offline, it’s no wonder “integration” does not happen in the level it should be…. despite how many times interactive agencies evangelise to their clients about “Web 2.0″, “integration”, “user generated contents”, “engagement”, but come back with the same seperate solution to offline and a banner “push” strategy.

So, with digital agencies being so separate from the early strategy planning process, they tend to play a role as buyers only. Digital agencies also lack the ability to outside of digital…. not everyone blogs, read 10 blogs a day, twitter, and have a huge life outside of Facebook. David Armano wrote a great list of “how to become a better digital agency”:

1. Speak in Brand
Brand agencies understand it is more than a logo, design and a website. It is understanding the emotional triggers that can deliver a rich and lasting relationship with their customers. Digital agencies have a wealth of knowledge of digital trends and tools to help create/foster/maintain that relationship. Problem = Digital agencies don’t speak or understand brand… they talk about engagement but don’t have a way deliver it in creating Facebook groups, creating relationships with consumers, etc. and are to data focus to think what actually engages a consumer to their client’s brand.

2 . Think Outside the Browser and the Banner
I’ve added “and the banner” too because 90% of agencies out there are thinking just that. Digital agencies are experts in their field. They know the trends, they know what is happening, they know where their users are. However, they can be to focus on digital and can discount things like TV… “TV is dead” .. only 1.5million watch Grey’s Anatomy every week. Digital agencies need to think holistically and offer their experience on a consumer’s digital experience. A great example of marrying digital and offline is Nike+ and iPod.

3 .Evangelize Digital To Broad Audiences
Working on digital campaigns 24/7 can isolate us from clients and offline teams. We are guilty of speaking in CTR, CPA, M-Rec, UB, UA, etc only helps in making you look good but clients/offline dumb. With all the CTR and CPA, what is it really doing to my campaign and business in layman’s term. It’s about understanding your client and to understand are they digitally savvy or digitally resistant? I’m sure most agencies come across “But I don’t see banners?”

4. Corner The Market on Talent
Digital talent is short. Reward and retain your staff.

5. Make Relationship Our Business
Like all business, create that relationship and help your client build ther business not a report on how successful you’ve bought a banner and delivered it with a good CTR. Without a solid relationship, digital agencies will be seen as “execution” vs “partner”.

6. Celebrate Our Strengths
Digital is so much more than users being online. It is understanding consumer behavior in how digital has evolved them to be more open, on demand, and creating relationships in a whole new level. Internet is just a tool. Digital are in a strong position in understanding this and should strongly promote this strength…. and go have a beer too.

7. Generate Big + Little Ideas
Digital agencies must come to the table with ideas that go beyond messaging but can live outside the browser. Little functional ideas and Big emotional ideas. This can only be done by understanding consumer insights, product, business and competitors. I strongly feel Nike has been performing strongly in this field globally with great insights in understanding the jogging community to deliver Nike+ and iPod, and the football community to deliver Joga Bonito.

8. Play Well with Others
Digital agencies must work with other agencies and consultancies while being more proactive in driving their own ideas. Media agencies must play nice to Creative agencies and vice versa…. (we’ll see how this works in reality!)

9. Think, Breathe and Live Strategically
Strategic thinking is mandatory… a challenge for digital media agencies to think more than media planning & buying strategy and Digital creative agencies to be more than a flashy website with a game.

10. Get Fuzzy
A great point to finish on. The ad industry is a machine in scaling up in dollars, people, mass producing messages and selling promises. Digital agencies have experience phenomenal growth and heavily shift focus to revenue to keep stakeholders happy. But perhaps at a cost?  Innovation is happening in the marketing world which is driven by smaller groups of people who collaborate in less unstructured ways of larger agencies. What do you think social networks really are? The start ups are developing digital products and solutions which are giving the blue chips a run for their money. Digital shops need to stay fuzzy while being professional enough to move large clients forward. It’s the best of both worlds but we must be both agile and persuasive.

Let’s now see how interactive digital agencies do in the 2008 report card. A+?

WOW! again… Steve Jobs does not disappoint with the new MacBook Air which sets new standards in mobile computing. Gizmodo says it’s “It’s super light, super fragile, and super small.” Read their blog for a comprehensive review and user pics. The only set back is perhaps it does not have user-replaceable battery. Ie. similar to the iPod and iPhones. I personally have never bought a replacement battery for my iBook but I can understand the frustration from some users. My 2.5 year old iBook barely lasts 15mins off the power point and it takes away the advantage of working mobile. So Martyn… at $2,499 a pop…how about it for the team?

I was surfing the web at night, catching up on my daily dose of news on theage.com.au when I came across an unusual ad. The medium rectangle ran a loop of a count down to “Activating Prize Status”. The banner had no brand name and message… just a call to action with a red flashing “Activate” with a horse.

Did I click on it? Yes I did just to find out what it was… and it turned out to be a Reader’s Digest DR campaign. >>

This raised a few issues with me:

1 - I’d expect these sort of bait and hook method to be found on lower quality sites. Especially Fairfax Digital’s strict stance on quality control of all ads, I’m surprised this got through.

2 - On the first level, the banner’s lack of messaging and branding to create relevance to the user will fail to generate click response. Apart from the red flashing “Activate” button, why would I click something that is a) dodgy looking b) has no relevance to me c) no incentive, and d) worth interrupting my time and take me away from my current page.

3 - If by chance I did click on it (because it was so bad), the landing page does an equally poor job in “selling” me Reader Digests. The site wants me to give my private details so I can enter a “Sweepstake” and most likely be bombarded by junk. And, if you’ve ever receive a “You have won!” letter from Reader’s Digest, it is a never ending loop of constant letters of “You are nearly there!”.

Given Reader’s Digest has the largest subscription based magazine in Australia (by a long shot), their readers tend to be deeply loyal to the brand and reading content. As such, rather than killing the trees by sending thick fat envelops and dodgy bait and hook DR methods, how about looking at it in a more emotional level and really understand the type of people who reads Reader’s Digest, where they can be found and how to engage in a deeper level to convert a subscription sale. I can think of numerous ways… So here is a tip for the agency / marketing manager..Reader Digest itself is already a community of readers, why not use them to be your ambassadors? Extend the community to promote your magazine in the best form of marketing… Word of Mouth.

How would you help Reader’s Digest?

This is what happens when your legal team wins over your marketing team. From “Boing Boing” comes this story about Ford. It’s all about some Ford enthusiasts thinking they can take photos of their cars and print them. Apparently this is a big no no at Ford who owns the rights for their cars even after they sold them!

This comes as a bit of a shock after Ford’s effort to become more open minded. Needless to say the Ford lovers involved in this story were outraged so Ford’s legal team will definitely be a nominee for the “most stupid move” award.

Users can choose their favourite granny from a photo and two weeks later their socks arrive for 27Euros… but it can take a while as there are waiting lists already!

Mozilla has decided to launch a humorous viral campaign consisting of a website called “Fight Against Boredom”, a video on YouTube, a Facebook page and links to download Firefox. However, the website is not available at the moment.

What’s interesting is how they tackled the debate on Firefox vs IE. Through a song, they tell us how Firefox users are statistically better off then IE users. There are harmless ones such as “Firefox users are 67% more likely to go mountain biking” and those that provoke, for example “Firefox users are 38% less likely to have breast cancer”. The latter has caused heated debates on the statistical validity (backed by Nielsen) and ethical issues behind it. Regardless, it has certainly caused quite a buzz.

Noah Kalina (A photo everyday for 6 years) “evolution” video was parodied by Dove. It is an unusually captivating way of watching how things become the way they are.

Now the Simpsons have parodied this viral video, and it’s definitely the right part for Homer!

Every company wants to profit so it’s not a big surprise that many brand managers are thinking about sales as the one and only goal. Everyone is talking about it, measuring it and figuring out ways to make it go up.

Maybe we should stop worrying about sales and start working on the single reason we have sales in the first place - our users/customers/clients.

I believe the question we need to ask ourselves is not “How can we get people to buy more?” but instead “What will make our users happy?”

Hmm… is this how “Happy hour” was born?

A fantastic video of Bill Gate’s Last Day at the CES 2008. It almost humantises the face of Microsoft traditional associated as an evil corporation. As Gizmodo puts it “And I know its scripted, edited and contrived, but I’m sold: The man is a cool geek.”

Great video with cameo appearances from Bono, Spielberg, Napoleon Dynamite, etc…

Wikipedia co-founder James Wales has launched the Alpha release of Wikia Search.

Backed by Amazon.com for US$14million, plus a host of venture capitalist and business angels, the prime distinguisher between Wikia Search and the current crop of Google-dominated search engines is that the newcomer integrates human input with computer algorithms.

But of even greater significance: Wikia will publish the code supporting the search tool, a move that underscores the growing trend in technology - even within Google - toward open source software.

Being an alpha release, they have flagged the search quality is pretty poor at the moment but they are expecting that to dramatically improve over the weeks.

It’s great news that there will be an alternate search tool to Google. We’ll see how Wikia Search evolve/grow over the coming weeks…. maybe even contribute.