Perceptint Musings

Growing up I was an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. It was the one place where I could attempt to do anything my mind could come up with. Having an overactive imagination since seeing Star Wars at age five, D&D gave me a freedom to explore any and all ideas freely. My wizards, knights, thieves and fighters could build, destroy, frolic or pillage, it just depended on my mood and the roll of the dice.

I often think of D&D when I remember some of the things that clients have asked me to help scope, build, market, or give feedback on. I have run into a very common misperception in the corporate world. It’s the idea that because certain activities occur on a computer, they can be magically generated with a few simple keystrokes.

I started thinking about this today after yesterday’s post on agency discontent. And it reminded me of all of the times I had been in situations that the best dungeon master couldn’t think up. Like the meeting where I was asked to help build a new travel site in the new .Net language from Microsoft.

It was 2000 and Microsoft had just written the .Net white paper, outlining their vision for online services and data communication. I had read the white paper several times and knew the concepts that Microsoft was talking about. Now here I sat with 3 travel agents, none of whom had worked in technology positions ever.

They had heard of MS .Net and wanted to use all of the cool new technologies that Microsoft had outlined. Email or phone updates if a flight was late, agents pushing and pulling offers at will, and their users finding it all as simple as making a sandwich to use. They had $500,000 to get their business going and they wondered if we thought they needed a CTO?

The folly that I could not get through to them was that the white paper contained not one ounce of code. It was a road map for Microsoft’s future, where they wanted to take online technologies. But they had $500,000, that had to get them some .Net. Remembering my job at Kinko’s out of college, I could only imagine some elaborate copying/binding job of the .Net white paper, and that couldn’t cost more than $5,000.

Marketers have to better educate themselves about the intricacies of the channels they want to explore or are currently using. It isn’t enough any more to say you want something and then be disappointed greatly when it doesn’t pay off. And agencies aren’t always the reason that a client doesn’t get what it expects.

I believe clients have to lead agencies to get the best and most valuable work produced. That means clients have to fully articulate their needs, their brand proposition, their desired outcomes, and their potential weaknesses. They have to own up to the expectation that they are the critical piece in any marketing programs success.

The agency might miss in terms of creative or execution for a program, but are they ultimately to blame? Any marketing program I’ve worked on required levels of client approval to move the project ahead at every step. If the client and the agency both thought it was a good idea, the agency alone shouldn’t hold the sole blame for failure.

The best marketing magic captures something that the agency and the client know to be true. It reflects the clients business, speaks to the right audiences, and appeals to the right parts of the brain to drive success. This is true online and offline.

Computers might enable a whole new world of data driven opportunities, but that still doesn’t mean these things just magically happen. Today’s complex marketing programs take a great deal of work, a dedicated drive to see them to completion, and talented people to make them sparkle. A dice and imagination just aren’t going to get you there like the old days.

Have you experienced the sense that people think things online just happen? Have you seen it produce a problem within an organization? Your comments and thoughts are appreciated.

There was a great article published at iMedia Connection last week by Justin Berton called “How to survive the age of client discontent“. The article talks about 2007 being the year that a number of creative agencies lost some of their biggest clients because of the growing expectation on the agency to really impact their clients business through integrated campaigns.

It also offers tips for agencies to focus on to stay on top and retain their accounts. The article rang some pretty loud bells for me because I spent 2007 inside an agency where I routinely heard clients call for more strategic work, better leadership, and new and innovative ideas.

That discontent and sense of needing to do something about it is also what lead me down the path of creating the role of a digital marketing advocate. In my mind, for clients to truly start succeeding, they need someone inside with an agency perspective. They need to understand how an agency think. And they need to be prepared to lead their agency more.

I think so much of the discontent out there being felt by agency clients is fueled by the misguided expectation that because we’re spending money online we should be rolling in its benefits. This type of attitude is what built the first wave of the web and it was fueled by a rushed expectation of success by default. Because we spent money online, it should be coming back to us tenfold.

But letting the agency lead the client into this new world puts unrealistic blinders on the agency and the client. They both focus less on what they can do, and end up talking more about what they would like to do. It also means that the agency doesn’t get a true shot at success because they are always trying to outdo themselves rather than focus on delivering against the work they’ve already booked.

My goal for 2008 is to help more agencies succeed and for clients to feel less angst and frustration towards them. For an agency to really succeed today, they need savvy clients who partner with them in a true spirit of mutual success.

Did you find 2007 to be a tumultuous year for you or your agency? As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome.  

Yesterday was one of those rare days where I felt completely overwhelmed by technology. I had been sick for most of last week and online very little. When I found myself at my computer yesterday morning, I had this numbing feeling that I couldn’t keep up.

For 13+ years I have read at least one hour a day about technology and digital marketing. In that time, the pace of change has never slowed down. If anything it has gotten faster. I’ve seen clients go from the most rudimentary websites all the way to running some of the most sophisticated marketing campaigns they’ve ever embarked upon.

I’ve seen standards and new buzz-worthy applications come and go on a regular basis. I’ve seen great ideas go the way of the dinosaur because they had great technology, but no business sense. Does anyone still long for Kozmo the way I do?

I’m feeling much better about it all today, but it made me think - how are we all keeping up with the rapid pace of change? If something I recommended six months ago is no longer applicable because the technology has changed or is no longer around, I have to keep my clients prepared for change.

Here’s my basic outline for keeping things straight:

1. Focus on the tasks at hand. This means making sure you are still good at everything you are already doing like email, paid search, etc.
2. Keep a laundry list of things you’ve heard about and need to explore
3. Read about digital marketing and your industry every day. Spend a few minutes investigating the buzz
4. Look for case studies if the buzz on a technology picks up to anything louder. Having practical applications to understand how marketers are using a new platform or technology help put it into a project perspective that most of us and our clients can understand
5. Don’t let buzz pressure force you into something early. Moving into new channels and opportunities takes careful planning and expectation setting. Don’t move too quickly and get bit when you could get rewarded
6. Have something ready to say to the higher-ups. It’s inevitable today that someone in the marketing department will get that dreaded call from the CEO or another executive asking why we aren’t already doing “insert buzz application here”? You need to have a standardized response along the lines of, “We’re actively looking at that as a new channel and here’s what we know” to “We’ll add that to our channel investigation list and get back to you ASAP.”

How is your businesses keeping up with the changes and do you feel these same pressures in your position? I’m very interested to start a conversation about keeping it all in order. How do you or people in your organization deal with it? Any and all comments are welcome.

The advantage of being a digital marketing advocate versus a digital marketing strategist is the luxury it provides for you to step inside a client’s world like never before. Being a strategist, I would need to be tied to a particular agency to provide the agency’s strategic road-map for the client. Being an advocate, I’m inside the clients world looking out at the agency’s who are doing the work and providing feedback on the relationship, services, and quality of work being delivered.

In this model, I can help steer the strategic road-map without being limited to one agency’s set of services. I’ve touched before on the limitations that working with a single agency can cause. My belief is based on experience and feedback from many clients.

So how does an advocate maintain relationships with agencies and clients without being seen as interfering in their relationships? Here are a few ideas for how it is done.

Reach out to the agencies
Agencies working for their clients need to know when an advocate is working with their client’s team. Getting to know the agencies, their teams personalities, their goals and objectives, and understanding how they work best are all critical components to making the relationship work for the advocate. I’ve got to understand if I can treat the agency as an equal partner or if I need to enhance the communication strategy of my client to see if we can get an agency on the same page with us.

Having worked for agencies, I know the personality types that are drawn into this type of work. The value I bring to my clients is helping them understand those personalities and how to work best for them. My ultimate goal is to make sure my client is getting the most out of their agency, both the relationship and services.

Insist on quarterly or bi-annual agency report cards 
Agency report cards are critical to maintaining long-term positive relationships. These report cards should cover all of the major service lines, report on any incidents and resolutions during the quarter. It should also offer the agency a place to make its voice heard and express its ideas for improving the overall relationship.

If an agency isn’t willing to be graded on their work, why should a client be willing to spend millions of dollars with them? The trick is making sure the exercise is equitable to all parties and offers honest and actionable feedback that can be tracked over time.

Praise the agency when they deserve it
Enough agencies do great work that they deserve to be patted on the back for it. Being on the agency side, this isn’t always something you would expect from your clients. But when it happens, it can take all of the behind the scenes struggles of a project and really revitalize an agency team. As an advocate, I have to know when to dish out the praise and when to dish out the tough love. If more teams felt the praise from their clients, you’d have less agency teams end up at that point of “I’m working on an account I just don’t care about”.

Do some of the agencies work for them
Information gathering, presentation of new concepts, and sometimes just plain pioneering are the things that a client expects an agency to magically deliver. The problem is its tougher for an agency to do all of these things because they do sit outside of the fenced-in backyard. They don’t always know the current political environment, the marketing environment, etc.

If agencies were brought in to situations where clear objectives had already been established, the client already understood the scope of the request they were going to make, and the potential channels had already been brainstormed, they’d have a lot more to work on and deliver against than just having the client fill out a creative brief. The advocate has to serve that critical information role for the client. They can help their client establish a base-line understanding of a situation or new channels and then look to agencies to see how they are addressing those channels in practice with their customers.

The ultimate goal for all of these ideas is to create smarter buyers of agency services. I can’t supplant what a fully staffed agency can deliver. But I can sniff out a rotten egg when I smell one and provide my client a better understanding of how to maximize their existing relationships.

What do you think? Are there other things the advocate should focus on to ensure they’re not seen as a threat by agencies? As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Just a question to anyone reading this. How do you feel about the continued growth of social networking/media outlets? 

Social networking sites are still growing like crazy. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Bebo, Ning, and a number of other well known social sites continue to grow and spread their influence.

My issue is this. It feels awkward moving from platform to platform and “reacquainting myself” with my connections. Here’s how my experience has gone so far. I’m interested to hear back from others to see how it’s gone for you.

I knew starting my own business that I’d have to get serious about using the sites I already knew about and had either joined and lagged on or never joined but knew I needed to. LinkedIn, followed by Facebook felt very safe and easy to dabble in.

LinkedIn put be back in touch with a number of colleagues that I’d always liked to have stayed in touch with. Facebook presented me the option to reconnect with friends and find new colleagues in the digital marketing world. I knew where people were working, what their kids looked like, and had a good idea of how deep their knowledge ran on 12 question movie quizzes.

So then I get an invite to Plaxo from a good friend and I want to respond. Then I need to setup my connections in Plaxo to see who’s there. Then I have to give it access to my Hotmail, Gmail, LinkedIn, COBRA insurance forms, etc. And there are so many people on each of the various sites that you pretty much always choose the generic “hi I’m here now too - please recognize our previous connections and reaffirm here again today that nothing has changed in the last six weeks” email.

Anyways, that’s my quick take on the last six months. I’m finding real value in using Facebook to make professional connections and LinkedIn to find business people. I don’t know that I can commit to managing too many more social profiles. I’m interested by Twitter, but don’t have the patience for IM news. I like fast, but not so fast I can barely digest it fast.

As a marketing advocate, I have to know about all of the various social outlest, but as a user, I find myself gravitating towards just a few.

What’s your take? Do you feel any of these feelings or can you not get enough? I’d love to discuss.