Agencies: 15 Risks You Can’t Afford Not to Take
Viewpoint: Forget the Recession, This Is No Time to Ignore Changes to the Agency Business Model

By  Tim Williams founder of Ignition, a consultancy that works with marketing communications firms to help them create and capture more value.

(excerpts from the  full article, linked to above,  arereproduced here for your convenience)

…As every informed agency executive knows, we’re at the nexus of the Great Recession and the Great Transformation of Marketing. In circumstances like these, a strategy of “just try harder” won’t take you very far.

Economists are always talking about types of risks you can afford and the kinds you can’t afford to take. For those of us in the agency business, the latter bucket of risks is mostly about failing to adapt to the dramatic changes affecting the agency business model.

Here are 15 things agencies can’t afford to risk.

1. A skill set built mostly around interruption instead of engagement. Agencies are used to delivering exposure for their client’s brand messages, measured by things such as reach, frequency and cost per impression. With the consumer firmly in control of his or her media-viewing choices and habits, no amount of exposure matters if nobody’s paying attention. What agencies sell — or should sell, anyway — is engagement. The metrics of engagement are completely different from the traditional media measurements of the past, including attentiveness, receptivity and buzz potential. Exposure is about efficiency. Engagement is about effectiveness.

… 3. Core competencies focused on “one to many” instead of “one to one.” Lots of agency professionals have an irrational fear of data and databases, even though the future of marketing clearly revolves around understanding how to leverage that information. Thanks mostly to the internet, mass audiences can now be identified and targeted in ways that make much better use of marketers’ money. Agencies need to move from mass messaging to mass customization. Agencies know broadcasting, but must now learn narrowcasting.

4. Creating brand-to-consumer communications at the expense of consumer-to-consumer communications. The agencies that grew up in an era of controlled communications now have to learn how to serve their clients in a world of open conversations. This requires a very different skill-set and service offering. It also means moving beyond consumers as audience to consumers as media.

…6. Production systems that are linear instead of organic. Most agencies still have a straight-line approach to production, based on a legacy system of trafficking work out the door and then moving on to the next job. But in the digital world, most jobs never die. A website is never done. Online campaigns can be constantly monitored and optimized. Agencies must adjust both their workflow and compensation systems to accommodate production work in real time.

7. Developing media plans instead of channel plans. The view of progressive media professionals is that everything is a channel, and what’s really needed in place of the conventional media plan is a holistic channel plan that potentially includes all three major forms of communications channels: bought (paid media), earned (non-paid channels such as viral videos) and owned (channels owned by the brand itself, such as online properties, employees, stores, etc).

8. Placing media instead of creating media. Quick, name a headline created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky? Chances are you can’t, but this firm is considered a creative leader because they take such an inventive approach to where the message appears, not just what it says. The real opportunity for agencies isn’t in buying existing media channels, but rather creating channels that never existed before.

9. Creating brand transactions instead of brand relationships. We’ve all heard agency executives say to clients, “Our job is to get the consumer to buy the product once. It’s your job to take it from there.” Agencies have historically been focused on helping to make the sale. But in a marketplace where the actual experience with the brand forms strong customer opinions that get circulated worldwide at the touch of a button, agencies have a big opportunity to help clients create and maintain positive brand relationships from consideration to purchase to ownership.

10. Focusing on “the big idea” instead of “big multichannel ideas.”The days of a writer or art director holed up in a room to come up with the “big idea” for a broadcast campaign are over. No doubt brands still need powerful creative ideas to win in the marketplace, but what’s needed in place of one big, strategic TV-centric idea is a lot of smaller tactical ideas that can live in a number of channels. It’s surprising how many agency creative teams still lack this perspective.

11. Traditional production staff instead of “producers.” No longer does production just mean press checks and TV shoots. As agencies execute in channels ranging from sidewalks to iPhone apps, the production professional must become a real “producer” with the flexible skills and resources found in branded-entertainment companies.

…13. Continuing to allocate client budgets to media instead of creative. Consider this:

Q: How much does it cost to reach a million people on a major television network?
A: Around $60,000.
Q: How much does it cost to reach a million people on YouTube?
A: $0.

In a world where many of the most powerful media have a cost of $0, ideas are the real currency of marketing, not money.

…As Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage change; you can only be ahead of it.” Agencies, no matter how smart or resourceful, won’t be able to manage their way out of these disruptive changes in the marketplace. They can, however, devote their considerable creativity to staying one step ahead.

Play the video and find out!

This video is interactive.  Anytime you see a click right on the video for more in depth information.

Marketing Voices: Three Recommendations for Marketing Leaders (11min) « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing.

New Study Finds Correlation Between Social Media and Financial Success

Written by Sarah Perez / July 20, 2009 12:15 PM /

(the article linked to above is reproduced here for your convenience)

A new study released by enterprise wiki provider Wetpaint and theAltimeter Group shows that the brands most engaged in social media are also experiencing higher financial success rates than those of their non-engaged peers. To determine this relationship, the study focused on 100 companies from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands survey and the various social media platforms they used like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and forums. Although it’s difficult to prove for certain that the companies’ involvement in social media has led to their increased revenues, the implication behind the new data is that it has.

After examining the companies and their social media activity levels, the brands were ranked on an “engagement scale” where scores ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.

Four “Engagement Profiles”

The study grouped the brands into one of four engagement profiles that related to the number of channels they’re involved in and how deep that involvement is. At the top of the list are “mavens,” the brands heavily engaged in seven or more social media channels – like Starbucks and Dell, for instance. “Butterflies” are like wannabe “mavens,” and are also engaged in seven or more channels but are spread too thin, investing in some channels more so than others. “Selectives” focus on six or fewer channels but engage customers deeply in the ones they’ve chosen. Finally, there are “wallflowers,” or brands engaged in six or fewer channels with below-average engagement; these include companies like McDonalds and BP.

Out of the top 10 brands engaged in social media, the mavens dominate the list. All of the top 10 are mavens and have seen financial success even in a down economy:

1. Starbucks (127) 
2. Dell (123) 
3. eBay (115) 
4. Google (105) 
5. Microsoft (103) 
6. Thomson Reuters (101) 
7. Nike (100) 
8. Amazon (88) 
9. SAP (86) 
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

$$$ Does Social Media Pay? $$$

Of course what everyone really wants to know is whether or not social media actually pays off in terms of dollars and cents. This study seems to show that it does. The most-engaged brands are significantly outperforming their peers across numerous industries in both revenue and profit performance. They have even sustained strong revenue and margin growth in spite of the economy, notes the report.

Whether this correlation is actually a causation cannot be proven with the data on hand, it can only make the implication. Given the large number of companies analyzed and the consistent findings, it seems probable that social media has had a major impact on the companies’ financial success.

It’s also worth noting that the level of engagement appears to be a factor, too. The companies deeply engaged in fewer channels (”selectives”) delivered higher gross and net margins than those only lightly engaged in more channels (”butterflies”). It other words, as the report says, “it’s not about doing it all, but doing it right.”

The ENGAGEMENTdb Web Site

Along with the complete study, available here, an accompanying web site has also been launched at www.engagementdb.com. On the site, companies can compare their social media efforts with the top 100 cited in the report. They can also opt to detail their social media efforts for inclusion in the online database at the site for future research and study.

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites.

(the article linked to above is reproduced here for your convenience)

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites

by Josh Bernoff

We just published our third annual Social Technographics Profile in a document called “The Broad Reach of Social Technologies” . The author is Sean Corcoran, with help from out data expert Cynthia Pflaum. The data across North America, Europe, and Asia will be available later today.is now available.

Starting with the book “Groundswell” and continuing now for three years running, we’ve analyzed consumers’ participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the “Social Technographics Profile.” The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We’ve kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies. This provides something that’s often sorely lacking in analysis of online social phenomena: perspective.

The headline: in 2009, more than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month. In a bit more detail:

• In the US, social technology Creators and Collectors grew slowly, and Critics didn’t grow at all. Creator activity appeals only to those who like to create or upload content, and regardless of the ease of blogging and YouTube uploading, this doesn’t apply to everybody. If you believe in the future that everybody will be creating or organizing content, we disagree — it’s a matter of temperament, not technology. As for Critics, those who react to content, this group hasn’t grown at all. Looking deeper into the data, this is a result of a small but actual  decrease in the number of people contributing to discussion forums. Why? Probably because much of this activity has been sucked into social network sites like Facebook.

• At the same time, Joiner activity exploded and Spectators became nearly universal. The explosion in Joiners from 35% to 51% of online Americans reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks. Meanwhile, Spectators — those consuming social content — reached all the way to 73% of online Americans, which should end any remaining skepticism about whether this social thing is real. Soon, with the level of social content being put out there, it will be virtually impossible for an online consumer not to be a Spectator. Marketers, if you’re not doing social technology applications now, you’re officially behind. We expect a wave of Web site reorgs and redesigns to include social activity.

Looking at the data by age, we now see that participation among those under 35 is nearly universal (less than 10% Inactives) and even among those 55 and over, about two-thirds are participating. The trend is clear, soon, if you’re online, you’ll almost certainly be consuming social technologies.

We are now releasing international data at the same time as this US data. A few highlights: Europeans continue to adopt these technologies more slowly than in the US, with about 40% Inactives in the countries where we do surveys. The Netherlands and Sweden have the most participation, Italy has the most Creators, and social networks are most popular in the UK. For more details see the summary of Rebecca Jennings’ report on social technologies in Europe.

Asian social participation is typically as high as or higher than in the US. For example South Korea, where I’m going next week, has only 9% Inactives and 48% Joiners, as a result of the popular CyWorld social network site.

The international data by country, age, and gender is here. will be available later today. You can even put the data on your own site — we’ve made it embeddable. In my travels, I’ve found that marketers have a variety of attitudes about social technologies, ranging from “it’s obvious that they’re growing” to “it’s a flash in the pan”. The point of data like this is to provide a real, solid, objective basis for planning and discussion that goes beyond personal experience. No matter who you market to, and in what country, you need to know what your customers are doing. These surveys can help you take that first step+.

Global Advertising: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most | Nielsen Wire.

(the article linked to above is reproduced here for your convenience)

Global Advertising: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most

July 7, 2009

Recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising, according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries.

Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.

“The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, has increased significantly,” says Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company.”

However, in this new age of consumer control, advertisers will be encouraged by the fact that brand websites are trusted at that same 70 percent level as online consumer opinions.

Carson adds, “We see that all forms of advertiser-led advertising, except ads in newspapers, have also experienced increases in levels of trust and it’s possible that the CGM revolution has forced advertisers to use a more realistic form of messaging that is grounded in the experience of consumers rather than the lofty ideals of the advertisers.”

Brands Gaining Global Trust… In Some Regions More Than Others

In the two years the biannual study has been conducted, brand sponsorship has seen the greatest increase in levels of trust from 49 percent of Internet consumers in April 2007 to 64 percent in April 2009. Regionally, Latin American countries lead the way with 81 percent of both Colombian and Venezuelan Internet consumers and 79 percent of Brazilians trusting brand sponsorships. In contrast, sponsorships hold the least sway amongst Swedish (33 percent), Latvian (36 percent) and Finnish online consumers (38 percent). In comparison, 72 percent of United States Internet consumers trust brand sponsorships, placing the United States 12th out of the 50 countries represented in the survey.

Brand websites, globally the most trusted form of advertiser-led advertising, hold the greatest sway in China (82 percent). Following China are Pakistan (81 percent) and Vietnam (80 percent). However, brand websites tend to be trusted least amongst Swedish (40 percent) and Israeli (45 percent) Internet consumers. In the US, 62 percent of Internet consumers said they trusted brand sponsorships, placing the United States 21st out of the 50 countries surveyed.

“The regional differences provide a clear guide to advertisers as to how they should focus their ad strategy in different countries. It also shows that, despite the authority of word of mouth when it comes to consumer decision-making, advertisers still have a major say in the process. This is backed up by past Nielsen studies which showed that the majority of people posting comments online went to the advertiser website or emailed feedback to the company before they posted. The website, and monitoring feedback through it, is a golden opportunity for advertisers to shape the tone and content of consumer opinion before it reaches the digital masses,” said Carson.

For more regional data, download the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey press release.