Be Nimble, Be Quick, but Stay Away From Price-Point Tricks

Small Shops Have an Advantage That
Has Nothing to Do With Cost

Posted by Jim Mitchem on 02.08.11 @ 03:21 PM

Jim Mitchem

My name is Jim and I run a small virtual ad agency. So small, in fact, that when I post here they should temporarily name the column “Very Small Agency Diary.” Don’t mistake small for inept, though. I’m happy to go toe-to-toe with any agency anywhere on high-impact creative solutions. And when you combine the talent necessary to solve communications problems with a high level of responsiveness, you’ve got the most important difference between the big shops and us.

Think about it — creative aptitude and strategic thinking are not exclusive to agency size. So then, what is the biggest difference between a small agency and a large one? Despite the temptation to say price point (if you’re competing on price point then you have no confidence in your creative or strategy to start with), for most small agencies our point of differentiation is how nimble we are because of our size. You may as well accept it — if you’re a small ad agency you’re probably not going to become AOR for Kraft or Nike. Not that the large agencies can create better work, but they have the resources in place to fulfill and deploy larger-scale campaigns.

This is not to say that small agencies are stuck working only with small, low-budget clients. We’re perfectly capable of securing the kind of work that helps our agencies grow and prosper, but first we must overcome any negative connotations tied to the word small. And that’s why being nimble is so important. Quick response. Direct correspondence with principals. Top-level service. And a sharp creative edge. These are the benefits of working with a small agency.

A few years ago a million-dollar-per-home golf community in the North Carolina mountains contacted me about a rebrand and marketing-communications strategy to launch the new brand. They had familiarized themselves with our agency’s work, and were impressed enough to invite us up to meet with them. For the initial meeting, I took only my art director. It went swimmingly. In fact, they liked us so much that they invited us back up to meet with their board of directors. They told us that we were in the final selection group that included just one other agency — a big regional shop. The big shop wasn’t a behemoth, but it was large enough to run several large accounts for regional brands. Hospitals, colleges, real estate developers, etc.

For our second meeting, I took four colleagues who represented different disciplines within our virtual agency model. The board loved us. But toward the end, they asked whether we could manage their campaign because of their size. Only, they weren’t really concerned with their size, as much as ours. I was prepared for this question however, and cited examples of having effectively worked on Fortune 500 projects and smaller clients concurrently, then reinforced that if we couldn’t handle the account we would have never come back up for a second meeting. We don’t over-promise.

Then I gave them a blow-by-blow account of what would happen should they hire the larger agency instead of us. I told them that the big agency would send its best-looking and best-dressed to meet with them for the initial meeting, which may or may not included a token creative with visible piercings and/or tattoos. When I said this, I noticed a few of the board members look at one another with raised brows. I told them that the big agency would throw around impressive marketing speak and plenty of numbers. This time raised brows were met with nods. Finally, I told them how the big agency would throw a big party if they won the account, and a week later they’d assign junior staff to manage it.

I closed by assuring them that if they chose us, they could not only expect a level of creative that got us the meeting in the first place, but also top-shelf service from the people sitting directly in front of them. No juniors. No phone tag. Just a high level of responsiveness and a level of creative that they knew would be good. A week later I received an email informing us that we’d lost the account to the big agency.

We moved on.

A year went by and I received a direct-mail postcard from the golf community. It was terrible. Now I know what you’re saying — that of course I say it was terrible since I must be resentful for losing the account. But that’s not it. From the pixilated logo to several misspellings to the fact that I ended up in a database for million dollar homes — this was just poorly executed advertising. I’m guessing that the agency celebration party was a real doozy.

Nimble means doing some things more efficiently than the big shops. Efficiency is time. Time is money. Sell that, not price point. The clients you want to work with will understand the difference

Small Shops Have Advantage That Has Nothing to Do With Cost – Small Agency Diary – Advertising Age.

There’s nothing really like it.  The recognition of all that hard work, the realization that yeah, I went with my instincts and it was the right choice.  Winning.  Not that foolish Charlie Sheen kind of winning.  The real kind of winning.  The kind with awards!  The 2011 Summit Creative Awards have provided just such a feeling for Chester + Company and our clients.

Since 1994, the Summit Creative Awards have been showcasing and honoring international small to medium sized agencies.  With awards recognizing advertising in all media platforms, the Summit Creative Awards bring attention to the entire spectrum of the industry, from print to television, PSA to interactive media.  They’ve got it all.

This year, Chester + Company has added 1 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze awards to our list of achievements.  To top that off, we were also awarded the highly coveted Best in Show title for The Duke Pubs Australia Day poster.

The thing about great advertising is that it doesn’t just come from one person.  That final product is very dependent on teamwork.  It’s real collaboration.  Coming up with a great idea, working together to finely tune it and then making it even better.  Then all you need is the skills to execute the idea and clients who are willing to take that risk, knowing it’s going to pay off.  Lucky to say, we’ve got the team and we’re just as lucky to have the clients.

Small Shops Have an Advantage That Has Nothing to Do With Cost

Posted on AdAge by Jim Mitchem @jmitchem on 02.08.11 @ 03:21 PM

Jim Mitchem

My name is Jim and I run a small virtual ad agency. So small, in fact, that when I post here they should temporarily name the column “Very Small Agency Diary.” Don’t mistake small for inept, though. I’m happy to go toe-to-toe with any agency anywhere on high-impact creative solutions. And when you combine the talent necessary to solve communications problems with a high level of responsiveness, you’ve got the most important difference between the big shops and us.

Think about it — creative aptitude and strategic thinking are not exclusive to agency size. So then, what is the biggest difference between a small agency and a large one? Despite the temptation to say price point (if you’re competing on price point then you have no confidence in your creative or strategy to start with), for most small agencies our point of differentiation is how nimble we are because of our size. You may as well accept it — if you’re a small ad agency you’re probably not going to become AOR for Kraft or Nike. Not that the large agencies can create better work, but they have the resources in place to fulfill and deploy larger-scale campaigns.

This is not to say that small agencies are stuck working only with small, low-budget clients. We’re perfectly capable of securing the kind of work that helps our agencies grow and prosper, but first we must overcome any negative connotations tied to the word small. And that’s why being nimble is so important. Quick response. Direct correspondence with principals. Top-level service. And a sharp creative edge. These are the benefits of working with a small agency.

A few years ago a million-dollar-per-home golf community in the North Carolina mountains contacted me about a rebrand and marketing-communications strategy to launch the new brand. They had familiarized themselves with our agency’s work, and were impressed enough to invite us up to meet with them. For the initial meeting, I took only my art director. It went swimmingly. In fact, they liked us so much that they invited us back up to meet with their board of directors. They told us that we were in the final selection group that included just one other agency — a big regional shop. The big shop wasn’t a behemoth, but it was large enough to run several large accounts for regional brands. Hospitals, colleges, real estate developers, etc.

For our second meeting, I took four colleagues who represented different disciplines within our virtual agency model. The board loved us. But toward the end, they asked whether we could manage their campaign because of their size. Only, they weren’t really concerned with their size, as much as ours. I was prepared for this question however, and cited examples of having effectively worked on Fortune 500 projects and smaller clients concurrently, then reinforced that if we couldn’t handle the account we would have never come back up for a second meeting. We don’t over-promise.

Then I gave them a blow-by-blow account of what would happen should they hire the larger agency instead of us. I told them that the big agency would send its best-looking and best-dressed to meet with them for the initial meeting, which may or may not included a token creative with visible piercings and/or tattoos. When I said this, I noticed a few of the board members look at one another with raised brows. I told them that the big agency would throw around impressive marketing speak and plenty of numbers. This time raised brows were met with nods. Finally, I told them how the big agency would throw a big party if they won the account, and a week later they’d assign junior staff to manage it.

I closed by assuring them that if they chose us, they could not only expect a level of creative that got us the meeting in the first place, but also top-shelf service from the people sitting directly in front of them. No juniors. No phone tag. Just a high level of responsiveness and a level of creative that they knew would be good. A week later I received an email informing us that we’d lost the account to the big agency.

We moved on.

A year went by and I received a direct-mail postcard from the golf community. It was terrible. Now I know what you’re saying — that of course I say it was terrible since I must be resentful for losing the account. But that’s not it. From the pixilated logo to several misspellings to the fact that I ended up in a database for million dollar homes — this was just poorly executed advertising. I’m guessing that the agency celebration party was a real doozy.

Nimble means doing some things more efficiently than the big shops. Efficiency is time. Time is money. Sell that, not price point. The clients you want to work with will understand the difference.

via Small Shops Have Advantage That Has Nothing to Do With Cost – Small Agency Diary – Advertising Age.

Book of Tens: 10 Disruptive Trends That Will Shape Our World in 2011

Pete Blackshaw on What to Keep Your Eyes on, From Local Loco to the End of Resumes

By Pete Blackshaw
Published: December 13, 2010

Pete Blackshaw

If you thought 2010 was disruptive, wait until 2011. This year we saw major game-changers emerge — the iPad, a flurry of mobile apps, the rise of social commerce, C-Suite fixation on enterprise social-media — and more. This coming year we’ll see even more dramatic change. Keep your eyes on the following:

Rise of Defensive Branding: While 2010 kicked off with high levels of almost irrational exuberance over social media, this month’s Twitter-powered Wikileaks attack on MasterCard, Visa and other major brands primed 2011 for higher doses of brand and corporate paranoia. Influencer management will go miles beyond sampling “power moms” to smarter segmentation of activist groups. Highly adaptive “sense and respond” listening infrastructure will move from “nice to have” partner to social-media engagement to reputational table stakes. Marketing and communications departments will tear down more walls between them — there’s no choice!

QR Codes Everywhere: Thanks to smartphones and mobile innovation, QR codes have landed at the beaches and are storming the marketing hills. Expect a torrent of innovation, with QR codes linking to everything from instant promotions to just-in-time “how to” videos. Along the way, we see a fresh new crop of startups on the heels of others already out there, such as SPARQCode and Stickybits.

All the World’s a Service Desk: Get ready for anywhere/anytime customer service, from the usual suspect brand stands –Twitter and Facebook — to vastly improved online communities and real-time chat. Aided by better measurements, brands will come to appreciate that efficiently answering questions and solving problems for consumers not only pays out, but also leaves a viral media annuity. Think Apple Store’s Genius bar across multiple channels. We’ll also have vastly improved ROI models around such investment. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness” will sit on lots of desks in 2011.

Media Blending: 2011 will see more than just media optimization, we’re all going to get much smarter and more sophisticated with “media blending,” a form of digital chemistry revolving around the P.O.E.M. inputs (Paid, Owned, Earned Media) framework. We’ll get smarter about maximizing earned media dividends from paid and owned inputs, and we’ll even start to dial up investments in service operations to get better “earned” dividends. TV buys will no longer be looked at in isolation of social-media echo effect.

Sharing Takes a Chill Pill: We’re about to get beyond the age of innocence in sharing, and we’ll have much better data in hand about the cost and consequences (and occasional liabilities) of over-sharing. Of course we’ll still share, but our tell-all blast mentality will narrow significantly in 2011. Services like Path will gather steam because they keep the sharing stream limited to a smaller, arguably more trusted circle of familiar.

Local Loco (Anywhere/Anyplace Shopper Tools): Aided by mobile, shopping behavior will continue to take dramatic turns. It’s already happening — location-based shopping, proximity based shopping, shopping cartels (Groupon, Son of Groupon) and more. Large and small retailers, often in partnership with manufacturers, will arm their shoppers with new tools and apps to find and navigate their store as well as their lifestyle. Retailers may also start opening up their databases to consumers via apps in order to remind consumers of previous purchases or develop smart shopper lists against pre-established goals (e.g. losing weight).

Mood Check-Ins: While location-based marketing is all the rage, 2011 will also see like-minded consumers coalescing around particular moods or mindsets (e.g. Pete checked into “a state of Nirvana.”) We’ve already started checking in to TV Shows or even topics like the “writing implement” on the likes of Get Glue, and new startups such as score.ly are keeping a portfolio of all our badges and digital trophies.

The End of Resumes: Resumes will become increasingly irrelevant to the job-recruitment process. With or without formal policies, more recruiters and employees will lean on the web as a primary form of candidate due diligence. On top of this, new models of Myers-Briggs work-type analysis will emerge from non-survey based means. Concurrent with this development, companies will continue pushing employees as an advertising channel, recognizing that employee advocacy in a digital/social environment is highly effective and even comes in handy when the going gets tough.

The Rise of Speedbacking: Expect more highly adaptive sense and respond behavior by marketers. We’ll see more listening war rooms along the lines of Gatorade and Dell. Responding to consumers in near real-time will become increasingly common. As brands engage across social-media venues, expect them to bring a decent chunk of monitoring and measurements in-house. War rooms similar to what Pepsi’s Gatorade brand created will become increasingly common.

Hispanic/Latino Marketing Hits a Tipping Point: Yes, I know we’ve said this before, but the Hispanic census number will slap us in the face in 2011, motivating real action and investment by brands. The “media blending” success of the 2010 World Cup on Univision will push marketers to even smarter Spanish-language cross-platform integration. Banks will no longer be the only player opening up a dialogue with consumers asking language

Book of Tens: 10 Disruptive Trends That Will Shape Our World in 2011 – Advertising Age – Special Report: The Book of Tens 2010.

Summit
Creative Award 2011: Call for Entries

The Summit International Awards (SIA), the internationally acclaimed organization
recognizing excellence in marketing and advertising, announced it is now accepting
entries into the 2011 Summit Creative Award competition. The SIA is the oldest
and most prestigious organization conducting an award exclusively for firms
with limited billings those under $30 million. Throughout its seventeen-year
history, its Creative Award has established itself as one of the premier arbiters
of creative and communication excellence and stands apart by offering a true
competitive environment where entries are judges alongside those of their
peers. Using stringent evaluation criteria and blind judging processes, its
competitions reward only those firms whose work exemplifies the best in its
class. The Creative Award, whose aim is to laud the creative work of less-than-huge
agencies, makes competition affordable and accessible. It offers multiple
entry discounts, streamlined Internet submissions, many ways to tout winner’s
achievements, and a friendly, knowledgeable customer service staff. Deadline
for entries is February 7, 2011.

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It’s Time to Stop Collecting Facebook Fans

And It’s Time for Marketers to Start Engaging Them Instead

by Irina Slutsky
Published: December 30, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Companies have spent millions gathering fans on their Facebook pages and being “liked” all across the web. But what started as a volume play — call it Facebook marketing 1.0 — is shifting. Increasingly, it’s not so much how many people are liking your brand, but who those people are and how many are engaging with you once you’ve got them.

According to Facebook strategist and CEO of Buddy Media Michael Lazerow, numbers are relative. “If you have 100,000 fans and only 1,000 are engaging with you over the week, that’s not as good as having 10,000 fans and having 1,000 engage with you,” said Mr. Lazerow, whose company works with some of the biggest brands on Facebook. Mr. Lazerow calls it the “engagement index,” a measure of effectiveness on Facebook beyond sheer numbers. It is, in a sense, a reality check on the real value of a fan and a reminder that not all fans are equal.

As Facebook speeds past 600 million global users, the sheer numbers can be staggering enough to send any rational CMO into hyper-competitive overdrive. Some company Facebook pages rack up numbers so large they’d qualify as social networks in and of themselves — Starbucks has 18 million fans and Coca- Cola has 21 million. (Arguably mass brands are more likely to generate a mass of fans — but not all. McDonald’s has 6 million and Pepsi has 3 million, in comparison.)

But other global companies, such as Starwood Hotels, which has millions of people who stay daily in its hotel rooms in the Westins, Sheratons and W’s of the world, has only 20,000 fans — but boy are they engaged. A check of the W Hotel South Beach page (close to 5,000 fans) shows some active locally relevant fans.

So how to grow engage fans and better tap the fans you have? Marketers have employed several strategies.

Seed content
Without content, sheer numbers don’t mean a whole lot, other than bragging rights, said Dave Knox, who worked on digital business strategy for P&G before heading to Rockfish Interactive to open a Cincinnati office earlier this year. “I ask brands, ‘What is the strategy that is underlying that desire for collecting fans?’ and that’s where it unravels much of the time,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with competition — when cola A sees what cola B’s got — so it has to do with numbers.”

Mr. Knox likens the new Facebook counts to a publisher having a high circulation or a blogger having a significant RSS following. Facebook gives brands “a platform from which to broadcast and seed engaging content,” he said. “If they can publish this content to a large number of people, it has a higher likelihood to be shared and liked, landing it in the social stream and reaching new potential consumers.”

Companies like Sam’s Club and General Mills’ property Tablespoon.com post videos and holiday recipes on their Facebook pages, creating original content that fans can engage with, respond to and use in daily lives. And a photo is worth a thousand likes. Every Facebook strategist said that photos are the most viral and engaging content on the site — people just can’t resist a photo. In one example, a photo of a Sony Ericsson phone got 4,263 likes and 821 comments when it was posted on October 26.

Start conversations
For Wendy Lea, CEO of social-media agency Get Satisfaction, it’s less about raw numbers and more about what they’re doing on the pages of, say, Pampers or Tide. “The first thing is to get those fans talking to each other,” Ms. Lea said. “It doesn’t have to be [about] the product. If I’m a marketer, I’m looking for strategies for fans to stay connected, and those strategies are content-oriented.”

Often, it’s the banal, non-brand-related Facebook messages that really get people talking. Pampers uses a simple strategy: it asks its fans to help with parents’ questions about babies. A recent question from one mother asking how to get her baby to eat real food got 256 comments in less than five hours.

In another example, BlackBerry’s posting of a simple Veteran’s Day-related message on its Facebook page generated nearly 8,000 likes and more than 500 comments.

Get creative
“What do you do with those fans? Give them coupons, give them a way to give donations to their charities, give away free music if you’re an artist, have them rate your products, the sky is the limit,” said Facebook marketer Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford. “But to me the big insight is that consumers buy products on recommendations from their friends. So if a consumer raises a hand to say ‘I like this brand’ their friends and the brand’s fans are paying attention.”

One huge Texas brand, the Dallas Cowboys, got very creative on its Facebook page using a simple idea — thinking about what its audience likes to see and do. The brand used the excitement around the NFL draft to drive fan engagement by asking fans which player the organization should draft. It received an overwhelming response from its almost 2 million fans — a reminder that no brand exists in a vacuum and brands can often use external events to their advantage.

Mr. Lazerow said that back in the early days of Facebook, “every brand was guilty of ‘beg, borrow or steal’ to get friends. That’s how the incentivized programs came about — if you became a fan of Zynga, you got free farmland in Farmville,” he said. “But everyone’s realizing that fans are good but not the end point.”

So don’t go after the masses for the bragging rights or to tout in the next press release, without asking yourself what you’ll do with them once you’ve got them.

“If you do it right, you could engage each of the 1 million fans and you’re much better off engaging 1 million people than you are engaging 10,000 people,” Mr. Lazerow said. “That’s what Facebook is for.” Go forth and engage.

It’s Time to Stop Collecting Facebook Fans – Advertising Age – Digital.

LSF Interactive Wins 2010 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award

Leader in Online Marketing Takes Silver in International Award Competition

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–LSF Interactive, a technology-focused global online marketing and media buying solutions and services company, has won the Silver 2010 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award (MEA), in the consumer products category. The award recognizes the success of the paid search and media buying campaign that LSF Interactive executed for Korres, a cosmetic company offering a full range of natural and environmentally-conscious products. during the 2010 event, judges analyzed submissions and selected only 14 percent of 544 entrants from 50 countries to receive the top spots.

“LSF Interactive is thrilled to be named a winner of the 2010 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award”

LSF Interactive provides integrated solutions that come with a unique attribute in this industry: guaranteed results. The company’s client dedication coupled with industry-leading analytical tools that empower clients to dominate their online business has resulted in a highly successful ROI-driven approach, which has been honored by this award. in fact, LSF Interactive’s campaign for Korres resulted in a 60 percent increase in orders, and cost per order goals were exceed by 15 percent.

“LSF Interactive is thrilled to be named a winner of the 2010 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award,” said Daniel Laury, CEO of LSF Interactive. “This award provides validation for our efforts and proves we are indeed a leader in the online marketing industry.”

The Summit MEA competition acknowledges that the goal of marketing communications is to change, influence or reinforce a target audience’s knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs. Using this premise as a basis for its judging criteria, the competition is becoming a true arbiter of marketing communication effectiveness.

About LSF Interactive

LSF Interactive is a technology-focused online marketing and media buying company that leads brands to generate more revenue per campaign. LSF uses advanced, results-driven digital marketing services managed by a team of experts and supported by a state-of-the-art reporting platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, LSF Interactive is a division of the LSF Network Group with offices on two continents and more than 250 accounts worldwide including ClubMed, Le Figaro, Warnaco (Speedo, Calvin Klein Underwear, Calvin Klein Jeans), Waterford Wedgewood Royal Doulton, Hearst Ranch, Lenox, Dansk, Career Education Corporation, LSI, Laird Technologies, Unica and LoopFuse. For more, visit www.lsfinteractive.com and www.lsfnetwork.com.

http://www.internetmarketing2u.com/2010/lsf-interactive-wins-2010-summit-marketing-effectiveness-award/

The Summit International Awards (SIA) organization is dedicated to furthering excellence in the communications industry by rewarding innovation and “those pushing the bounds of the communication badlands.” Book of Odds and its strategic partner Kurani Interactive received two such awards recently, and we are justly proud of both. Both were in the Emerging Media category, which Summit describes as “an award for the pioneers of the bleeding edge means of modern communication.”

Emerging media companies such as Book of Odds break the bounds of the traditional rules of advertising design to find ways “to directly affect the lifestyle and emotions of the consumer.” Since Book of Odds deals with the odds of everyday life, it directly addresses people’s needs, concerns, fears, fascinations, and deepest interests in a simple, often highly visual format. [more]

Book of Odds.

2010 MEA Best of Category | Summit International Awards.