Part !!!: Importance of Culture

EXPERTS ON CULTURE, NOT ADS
Agencies now need to be more than just Ad men. The days of Madison Avenue and Mad Men are done. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be ads or that a hard sell still won’t work. It’s just that, because of how quickly technology is moving our culture forward, we need to see the big picture. As agencies, we can’t just think of the linear path to purchase. We need to understand the world around our group/person of interest.

Today’s advertising should be like echolocation. People need help navigating information in our physical and online environments. Instead of yelling at them with one-way advertising (once again, I know, not a novel idea), we need to help them when they need us. Like echolocation, we need to find avenues for the consumer to reach us (to call out to us) and once they do, we need to genuinely help them navigate their want/need state to find the best solution. Even if the final solution isn’t a sale, there is still value in how we have helped them.

Not only do we need to understand the culture of consumers and our daily life, but also understand how to engage, build, and gauge organizational culture, both internally and with our clients.

The biggest differentiators for business nowadays and in the future will be through corporate culture and customer service experience. The two go hand-in-hand. The better your culture, the better the employees are treated, the more passion and belief they have in the inanimate capitalistic entity called a corporation, the better the customer service will be, the higher the sales will rise. It’s not just for one kind of industry, it’s any company.

Look at Southwest Airlines, Toms Shoes, Google, QuikTrip (QT), Wal-Mart, P&G, IBM, Whole Foods. All of these places are successful because they have a corporate culture they can get behind.

Furthermore, agencies need to proactive in culture, internally and externally. Why can’t agencies make products and produce work that creates value for people? Why can’t agencies build proprietary analytic systems and sell them? When are agencies going to stop charging by the hour and start charging for unique services as a whole. They need a research project, that’s $15K. You need a rebranding and a new position. That’ll be $200K thank you very much. The next post will go into a lot of examples, but I want to keep it top level right now.

Agencies need to show that they understand culture by creating cultural content. Why not create a direct mail piece for clients at Christmas? Why not do something fun and funny (like a video) and put it on YouTube or sell it for charity. Two great examples I will give is Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland office documents local music venues and artists and posts it on their site. BBH (Bartle, Bogle, and Hegarty) has created BBH Labs in order to hypothesize, theorize, build, and dream up social and technological experiments and research. Both of these agencies are better because of the actions they’ve taken. It proves that they live in the world and care about more than just advertising; that they don’t just stay in their advertising bubble without really getting out and experiencing the world or understanding society.

Part Deux: Wear More Hats

Start building more capabilities into your agency or find a strong partner to share and collaborate with on a daily basis. The new advertising industry won’t be built around copywriters and art directors, but around designers and programmers. Agencies are going to have to find ways to get these people in one room together to work on clients. Agencies are already spread thin, but how do we get people to do more. The answer is hire people who can do more, who have more talent and capabilities beyond one role. These hybrid minds are going to be the ones who can understand how to build marketing in this new order. John Porter and Alex Bogusky talk about “baking in” the marketing right into the product. It’s going to require understanding beyond client budgets or media buys.

Wearing more hats also means having more capabilities in-house. Duh. If you have the diversity of intelligence and talents, invest in these capabilities. The less your agency has to split up the pie, the better. If you don’t do a lot of things, you are going to see your share of the pie getting smaller anyways. If you are known for great TV spots, but don’t have any strengths in package design, clients will go to someone who can do both. Digital media and non-traditional marketing are much less costly and have proven to be much more effective at reaching specific audiences. More importantly, every separate element of a product, from advertising to packaging to product design to customer service are all one in the same now.

One major issue that I have with agencies is their use of the same secondary research tools like Iconoculture or Mintel. Everyone is getting the exact same research. It would be like giving an artist the same three colors as every other artist. No, they are not going to end up with the exact same painting, but it will have the same shades and tones. It won’t stand out against those other artists.

What I’m saying is build your own research departments and make it part of your capabilities. Instead of giving money to someone else to find the insights make clients pay you to get the answers. Not only will they trust the answer more, but they will buy into the entire process more.

Push and grow with your clients to push and grow your own capabilities. Not unnecessarily of course. When it makes sense to repackage, repackage. When it makes sense to build a YouTube channel, build a YouTube channel. When you can do feel confident doing both (or a TV spot and mobile application), what client will turn away?

 Imagine if your agency was made up of just as many designers, developers, SEO specialists, anthropologists, behavioral psychologists, and statisticians as art directors, media planners, planners, or account people?  

Most importantly, build on mistakes. Don't be afraid to push the limit, to make mistakes. What you should be afraid of is playing it safe or not taking the time to recoup/rebuild/refocus your team after a mistake is made. If you clearly understand what went wrong, at which point in the process things went awry and why, it will be recognized the next time. The creative process (esp. with client interaction) is a tepid venture and there are plenty of moments where an idea can gain or lose steam, whether it's the best idea or just decent. 

A few links I enjoyed recently

I will post the other parts of the dialogue/rant/essay I have promised later today, but I wanted to share these links. Maybe I am doing this for myself partly too because my Delicious account has far too many saved links to ever find anything again.

http://unhappyhipsters.com/

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/technology/tablet_ebooks_media.fortune/index.htm#q_close

http://creativity-online.com/news/mothership-takes-off/142141

The first is just plain funny. The second talks about the evolution of the print format with the iPad and other e-readers. The third is a profile on an interesting upstart that may (will) be an example of what agencies need to strive to become similar to (in mindset and capabilities).

http://www.fastcompany.com/mic/2010/industry/most-innovative-advertising-marketing-companies