"Value" Messages Will Return, So Get Ready

Think back four years.

Your boss, your client or your agency was on the “Value” bandwagon, or asking you to climb aboard.  Typical trade press headline:  “How Your Value Message Can Be Heard Above the Din”.

Well, get ready, because inflation is coming back, and value messages won’t be far behind.

U.S. Inflation:  Delayed, Not Denied

This occurred to me while reading an insightful economic analysis explaining how easy money policies at central banks will eventually lead to 2% inflation in 2014 and 3% in 2015.  True, those are single-digit numbers but they will make a difference to consumers struggling with reduced take-home pay and rising transportation and housing costs.

Put differently:  Your $5 air freshener is going to be a much tougher sell.

What is Value?

Too many marketers think Value = Price.  In QSR, for example, most “value” campaigns are about 59-, 69- and 99-cent items.  In reality, Value = Price + Benefit.  What do I get for what I paid?  That equation is in consumers’ minds no matter what the economy.  (Here are a couple of smart posts on this topic from Bob Gilbreath.)  Our job as marketers is to figure out how we make that $5 air freshener worth it to the consumer.

Your task gets even tougher when prices in general are rising, even if you offer a discount, which is why we should worry about 3% inflation.

Dust off those recommendations from 2009

Rather than just cut prices, which admittedly may be a part of your strategy, think longer term.  The trick is not just to survive tough times, but position your business for better times.  If your competition isn’t ready when consumers start pulling back, you can aggressively steal market share, making you stronger when the economy improves.

Now THAT'S added value!

For example, if you have been looking for a way to claim ownership in the consumer’s mind of a particular category benefit, this is the time to seek it, when your competitor is more worried about short-term survival.  Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new benefit – that is, improve value by offering something new or something more at the same price.

Back in 2009, Hyundai made a brilliant offer:  Buy a Hyundai, and simply return it if you lose your job.  That wasn’t just “value”; they were telling consumers that they understood how uncertain things were, and made a bet that built longer-term brand equity.  (Unfortunately, they blew a lot of brand equity this year via a U.K. ad depicting a failed suicide attempt.)

Think ahead to 2015

The point is, think about the long-term opportunities in a short-term crisis.  And start thinking about them now, before the crisis hits.

Advertising Jumps the Shark, Gets Back on Track

Does content deliver advertising or does advertising deliver content?

Joe Mandese at MediaPost has the answer for you, in a piece headlined “Advertising Jumps The Shark: Becomes Conduit For Content”.  

But first let’s get through that headline.

Jumping the Shark

Numerous readers pointed out in the comments section that the headline misused the term “jump the shark”.  Any student of pop culture knows the story:  On the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, Fonzie water skis over a shark, a moment now seen as the point where the show lost its original purpose – a fond look back at the 1950s – and got just plain silly.

Let’s first admit that the advertising industry has jumped the shark many more times than Fonzie, before or since.  We’ve jumped the shark via pointless line extensions, bad strategies, failed campaigns and poor planning.  Mea culpa.

Conduit for Content

In this case, the alleged shark jump is the launch of a new digital advertising platform that pulls existing Internet content into online ads.  It seems like a simple concept – link ads and content – but there’s a bit more involved.

The platform’s purveyor, Kontera, claims to be able to identify the most relevant content and serve it in web display, social and mobile ads.  That’s a bit more complicated than a shark jump – and more revolutionary.

3 Reasons Why it Matters

Mandese’s right, this is an important development the entire advertising industry should watch.

1.  It makes advertising useful, informative and/or entertaining.  These are the three things audiences seek in any medium.  For some reason we’ve been relearning that lesson the hard way in the digital advertising world.  In this case, Kontera claims to be supplying content that’s already popular, and hence should make ads more relevant.

 
2.     It adds sanity to online advertising.  Most web display advertising is the opposite of shooting fish in a barrel – more a minnow in the ocean.  You run ads that get clicked at infinitesimally low rates, paying only for those very small results.  Matching truly relevant content to truly relevant ads could significantly shift the equation of supply and demand.
 
3.     It challenges the distribution model.  Whether on TV, online or in-store, content normally is a means of distributing advertising.  That is, a :30-spot interrupts the program you were watching.  Kontera allows advertisers to buy ad space and use it to distribute all kinds of content.  Extrapolating that beyond web display ads, you can see how it would change journalism, entertainment and information in general.

Fond Look Back at the 1950s

If you read further down in the comments section of Mandese’s article, you’ll see an arcane conversation between him and me about whether it was also true in the 1950s that “advertising (was) a means for distributing content,” much like Kontera.  My point is that Radio and TV shows of the period, like soap operas and Texaco Star Theater, were also examples of brands delivering content.  (Mandese disagreed.)

It doesn’t really matter.  The only thing it proves is that for the past fifty years we’ve been force-feeding audiences our advertising when they wanted to see their content.  Up to now web display ads have followed that same model.

If, as an industry, we succeed in reversing that, and make advertising a means for distributing content, we won’t be jumping the shark.  We’ll be back on track.

The Role of Creative Production

Exploding Growth in Media Formats Puts More Demand on Creative Production

It’s a cruel quirk of advertising lingo when financial terms creep into normal business practices and hijack their identity.

One such example is “below the line.” In the days of Ye Olde Marketing most agency invoices were simple calculations of a 15% commission. An accountant, faced with expenses that had to be billed as one-time fees, drew a line on the invoices and listed the non-commissionable items below it. The commission structure hardly exists anymore, but the important work of Digital and Promotion gets stuck with a moniker that connotes second-class status.

Production: "Non-Working?"

In a similar way, Media and Production expenses are defined on some budget documents as “Working” and “Non-Working.” Production is said to be “Non-Working.” More than a few agency producers have complained about this term, especially in an era of tight budgets. Anything called “Non-Working” is just begging to be reduced.

At the very same time in history that Production budgets are squeezed, its role is more important than ever. As a colleague succinctly put it the other day: Exploding growth in media formats puts more demand on creative production.

Production costs were predictable in the past. Each discipline, be it Advertising, Promotion or Direct Marketing, knew what kind of programs they could expect to do. The biggest variable was a higher cost for a more elaborate TV commercial, in-store display or mailer.

Two Kinds of Complexity

In modern times you see two kinds of added complexity. One is that there are many new channels of communication, or as my colleague put it, “media formats.” As we’ve posted before, even “TV” isn’t that simple because it entails various online versions on top of the standard broadcast :30.

The second kind of complexity is that if we truly start a project with a channel-neutral or media-neutral approach, we won’t know ahead of time what mix of old and new formats we’ll be producing.

How to Cope with Exploding Growth in Media Formats

Here are a couple of suggestions on how to cope with this new dynamic.

Consistent Brand Voice. If your brand reinvents itself every year or every quarter, you not only risk confusing your consumer, you make creative production less efficient. Even the most routine IMC program these days has many moving parts across Advertising, Retail and Digital. A consistent approach will make it easier to produce things on the fly. To be clear, the goal is not cookie-cutter creative, it’s running a tight strategic ship.

Plan ahead. A digital agency creative director joked to me once that IMC stands for “I already Made the Commercial.” Too often, TV artificially drives the process. Instead, use to your advantage the long lead times demanded by retailers. A good client-agency partnership will plan one year ahead of time for best synchronization of efforts.

Media neutral production. Starting a project with a consistent brand voice and one year of lead time is useless if you then just assign production silo by silo. How can the various specialists help one another? At some point each one has to tend to her own work, but starting everyone from the same place makes it easier to synchronize.

Be a cost-control maniac. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: That’s why God created Procurement. As marketers, however, we have a responsibility to deliver great work at a reasonable budget. Challenge yourself and your colleagues to find new ways to save money. (At some point in the near future we’ll elaborate on this point.)

Any other experiences, suggestions or questions?

3 Reasons You Should Care About the BzzAgent Acquisition

Last week Boston-based BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketer with extensive analytical capabilities, was acquired by dunnhumby, a direct-response marketer, also with extensive analytical capabilities, that in turn is also owned by U.K. retailing giant Tesco. (American readers should know that dunnhumby works extensively in the U.S. with Kroger.)

Bzz you should notice

I’ve worked directly with BzzAgent, and it’s always been a great experience. The starting point of their capabilities is a network of some 800,000 Bzz agents, consumers who receive product samples from manufacturers hoping to generate positive word-of-mouth. Just search on Twitter for #ImaBzzAgent, #BzzAgent or @BzzAgent to see the conversation they drive. As their CEO Dave Balter has pointed out to me in the past, BzzAgent is more than a network of “advocates,” they truly understand social media and analytics.

To oversimplify a bit, BzzAgent is great at driving consumers toward brands, and dunnhumby is great at closing the sale at a particular retailer – which is also known as shopper marketing. This is a powerful model for manufacturers and retailers alike.

3 reasons you should care about the BzzAgent acquisition

1. Shopper Marketing holds Social Media accountable. As Balter put it in an interview last week, social media “is still in the world of ‘likes’ and clicks, but substantial budgets just don’t come from that. Shopper marketing, on the other hand, is the ultimate measurement vehicle. It’s a thousand percent about ROI.” Yesterday someone posted on Ad Majorem that social media is just media, not necessarily an advertising vehicle, and they’re right if no one knows its effect on sales.

2. The path to purchase still ends at bricks and mortar. I’ve posted before that Social = Mobile. If you accept that premise, and observe that shoppers carry mobile devices into stores, we can also say Social = Retail. Apple and Google mobile platforms offer plenty of apps for looking up product information. Twitter is a secondary market for online coupon offers. At some point the cash register rings and its usually at a physical store.

3. There’s a trend forming. Not only did dunnhumby acquire BzzAgent but Walmart acquired Kosmix, which for lack of a better term we’ll call a “social commerce” platform. Read more about Kosmix here, here and here. And then there’s Groupon, which is also a blend of social media, shopper marketing and e-commerce. In short, retailers are figuring out how to harness the power of the Internet.

Perhaps now someone will figure out foursquare’s reason for being.

3 Reasons You Should Care About Shopper Marketing

This blog has always been about the complete range of ways to connect marketers and consumers. The definition of advertising includes all channels: broadcast media, promotion, direct, digital, word of mouth – everything.

Near the top of my list has always been Retail, with a bit of amazement that Digital seems to trump Retail in trade publications, at industry conferences and across the general buzz of Twitter feeds.

This week Retail won a moral victory. According to a Booz & Co. survey, major manufacturers expect Shopper Marketing to grow faster than digital, social and advertising. You can see two articles about it here and here, and the report is available here in PDF form.

Why you should care about Shopper Marketing

There are at least three reasons why advertising people should care about Shopper Marketing.

1. Your clients care about it. If you advertise a product sold at retail, think about the fact that your clients have clients, companies like Walmart, Kroger and Dollar General. Like you, those retailers want to sell a lot of your clients’ products. They also want to drive traffic to their own stores and increase the cash register ring for each customer. All of this is Shopper Marketing. Most advertising sells only the product; Shopper Marketing achieves objectives for the retailer as well as the customer. It’s not just a matter of shelf talkers and floor signage, it’s a strategic approach that approaches consumers when they are really shoppers. The Booz & Co. survey predicts that as Shopper Marketing rises, trade spending will decline. I’m not so optimistic, but if it happens, then retail will become more strategic and much less about pay-to-play.

2. Your competition is using it. If you’re a great advertising person, you’re helping your client identify a clear consumer insight, develop a compelling strategy, write a smart channel plan, and produce creative that’s memorable and persuasive. If it works, your target consumer will go and buy the product. What happens, however, if on the way to the shelf she sees some other offer or information that leads her to buy a competitive product? You will have been outmaneuvered. This is a wide battleground: Shopper Marketing vet Chip Hoyt points out that "the shelf" isn't just in a store, it can be at home or on the go.

3. Consumers take it seriously. It sounds trite but the store, however you define it, really is a medium and consumers engage with it. My colleague Jim Lucas observes that 110 million U.S. households make an average of 120 store trips a year, which means 13.2 billion chances to sell. Especially in a tough economy, consumers will read the circulars, cut the coupons and stop to see the end-aisle displays. In addition, one of the points made in the Booz & Co. study is how consumers research their options before making a purchase, using product information or pricing available on the Internet. Aha! I knew it. Digital does play a role! Yes, it does. If you work in a digital agency, you should be especially mindful of Shopper Marketing.

Take time to learn

Shopper Marketing has a place in the marketing mix just like any other channel. Take the time to learn about it so it doesn’t become a strategic blind spot. We’ve suggested some resources in the past (here, here and here).

Who "owns" Mobile?

Smartphones will eclipse feature phones as a percentage of the U.S. mobile device population by the end of 2011. Clients are discovering smartphone apps that offer an opportunity to engage and continue consumer relationships. Agencies each want to be the one to help their clients leverage these apps. All kinds of agencies: traditional, new breed, media and of course digital.

Which agencies own Mobile?

First we ought to properly frame the question. An AdAge.com article this week took the view that "creative agencies" and "media agencies" are fighting over the right to "own" Mobile. Apparently they put digital agencies into the "creative" category, which is fine as far as it goes.

It doesn't go far enough, however. Missing from the discussion is retail. Some promotion and shopper marketing agencies are starting to create mobile apps for their clients, and retailers themselves are developing programs in which their vendors - uh, partners - can buy into - uh, participate. One example described in Tuesday's NYTimes.com is Shopkick, currently backed by Macy's and four other retailers.

The gigantic Venn diagram

The landscape of agencies, clients and retailers is more complicated than just "creative" and "media" agencies. This shouldn't surprise us in an era where all available marketing channels form a gigantic Venn diagram that shifts and overlaps in new ways every week. We've observed this before (here and here) and in a way it's the point of this blog.

Asking who owns mobile is like asking who owns television: the agency who develops a 30" commercial, the agency who plans or buys, the network or station, the program developer or the cable service provider.

It's the same with mobile. Someone has to decide there's an opportunity to engage consumers via a mobile device. Someone has to develop the app or ad. Someone has to figure out the way to engage the consumer, which in some cases will be a display media buy and other cases something resembling word of mouth marketing.

Mobile survival guide

There are two implications here:

Who knows Mobile? Clients won’t ask which agency owns Mobile, they’ll ask who knows Mobile. If you’re an agency person, worry less about whether you should handle Mobile and more about whether you’re prepared to handle it.

Mobile is not a silo. This actually applies to all disciplines, but you can’t treat Mobile or anything else as its own discipline. It has to be considered as a strategic option from the beginning, and made part of the plan if and only if the business solution demands it. Planned that way, it will work well together with advertising, digital and retail.

Reducing Assortment II

About a month ago we posted on the subject of reducing assortment, or retailers removing brands and SKUs from their shelves in an effort to make shopping simpler for their customers. In other words, reducing assortment is a matter of reducing complexity. Unfortunately it also seems to be a matter of reducing sales.

Ad people discover retail

This situation is starting to hit the radar screen of ad industry people. For example, this month AdAge.com published a comprehensive report, focusing mainly on Walmart and its Project Impact. The article comments were pretty good, mentioning other retailers' initiatives

Other articles worth reading

Walmart’s “action alley” started getting crowded again in March, with big displays from Pepsi and the New Moon DVD that month. For a hybrid industry/consumer look at the effect in stores, check out this post from Wallet Pop last week.

Hub Magazine -- a publication worth reading in general -- ran an article called "The Walmart Crapshoot", which offers an insightful analysis of Project Impact, including an important historical comparison between Walmart and Kroger.

What will Walmart look like this Christmas?

You can read a lot on the Internet, of course, but there's nothing like a good store check to figure out what's really going on. The next few months will be interesting as Walmart decides how their stores should look as we approach Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season.

Canada and its consumers

TORONTO -- In my international role it’s a privilege to work with my clients and colleagues in Canada. They have an amazing operation here. It’s a fascinating country with interesting consumers.

Sadly, Canada is a gigantic blind spot for most American business executives. Part of this is cultural since most Americans don’t know much about Canada at all. Corporate culture does little to change that. The Canada strategy of too many companies is to treat it as part of the United States: ship them the same products, air the same advertising, and let them try selling it all to the three retailers who dominate the trade.

To be sure, this strategy has its benefits, most of them related to cost efficiency. One of our clients generally follows this strategy with some success. Yet beyond the U.S.-made TV commercials for U.S. brands we also create many Canada-specific programs in retail, promotion and digital.

These efforts are justified by the opportunity we find in such a vibrant consumer population. There are many sources available where you can gain a deep understanding of Canadian consumers so we won’t try to duplicate them. Instead, here are some personal observations, vetted just a bit at dinner last night with my agency colleagues.

Mosaic, not melting pot

The first thing that strikes you about Canada is its cultural diversity. Immigration has been rich and abundant, particularly from China and South Asia. There is still strong European immigration, too. My friends distinguished between the U.S. melting pot and the Canadian mosaic; that is, American immigrants tend to assimilate while Canadian immigrants maintain stronger senses of national identity. On that point...

Quebec is not Canada

French Canada is an amazing, confounding jewel. Chicago-to-Toronto feels like a domestic flight while Toronto-to-Montreal feels like an international flight. It’s not just that Quebecois speak French almost exclusively. The customs, daily routines and value systems are unique to Quebec. You could say it is “European” but that would miss how unique Quebec really is. That's saying something, too, since Canada in general is unique...

Canada is not the U.S.

My question at dinner: What makes Canada unique? The first response was: “You mean versus the U.S.?” No, what makes Canada unique. Canadians, a very polite bunch, bristle at comparisons to the U.S. because a lot of Americans and other foreigners see only the similarities. There are indeed vast differences between the two societies – chronicled in the Canadian analysis Fire and Ice – even while they share a strong friendship and a 5,525-mile border.

Resourcefulness

This one didn’t get much traction at the dinner table but I’m sticking by my view. Through the people I meet, the stores I shop and the marketing I see, there is a resilient resourcefulness to Canadians. Perhaps it’s left over from the frontier era or it comes from all the new immigrants. Maybe it’s the spirit of cooperation we see in every meeting. My clients and colleagues move their business forward in a distinctly Canadian way, even while they also follow the marketing plans sent up by their American counterparts.

They’re an amazing bunch of people. I’m eager to come back and see them soon.

Is Emerald Nuts?

Last week's Super Bowl advertising disappointed many of us. You can watch all the ads here and see a roundup of industry reaction here.

Emerald Nuts "Awesomer"

One of my personal disappointments was Emerald Nuts. It's a great brand that did some great advertising in past Super Bowls, notably the Robert Goulet ad. This year, however, their message was "Awesomer" but their strategy was not: Use the Super Bowl to tell people they can enjoy two kinds of snacks, Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret Popcorn.

The strategy was nuts

So why was this wrong strategically?

Two different brand names. A typical measure of effectiveness for a :30 TV ad is brand linkage, or the ability of a consumer to remember the brand name to buy. Most Super Bowl ads struggle to communicate just one brand; two is doubly difficult. All the more so when they are...

Two different products. Someone online wrote that these are peanuts and popcorn, not diapers and chainsaws. They're both snack foods so what's the big deal? It's a fair point. But while you can expect people to eat them at the same time, will a :30 TV spot convince them to buy them at the same time? No, because they offer...

No clear selling proposition. Let's face it, most food advertising literally says "this tastes good". (In this case they at least put an acrobatic twist on the usual bite and smile.) The Robert Goulet ad was much more specific, selling Emerald Nuts as a mid-afternoon, energy-boosting snack.

So what were they trying to do?

Taking a closer look, it's important to note for the umpteenth time that marketing does not live by TV alone.

As one blogger observed, Emerald spends about a fifth of their marketing budget on thirty seconds of Super Bowl advertising. To judge based on this investment alone would suggest a flawed strategy.

It appears their strategy is much more balanced, however. According to various published reports, they built a lot of other activity around the Super Bowl. FSI coupon. Trade circulars like the one above. Consumer promotion. Online activity. Working with their agency they appear to have built a through-the-line program around the Super Bowl as an event. No brain surgery there.

Did they succeed?

They claim to have succeeded: check out this press release issued on 8 February 2010, the day after the game. They cite sales results through the period ending 23 January and lots of other results. The only point we might dispute is whether the "Awesomer" commercial was "groundbreaking".

We can't dispute, however, the importance of all the other channels utilized. I still don't think the TV commercial was very good. By the time it ran, however, it appears Emerald had driven all the sales they needed. That's never crazy.

Inputs vs. Outputs

A key tenet of channel neutral-planning is that budgets are not pre-assigned.

In Ye Olde Marketing, each discipline was given its budget before the fiscal year began; thus a marketer would usually spend the same amounts on TV, promotion, etc., from year to year.

In modern marketing we start with a consumer insight and figure out the mix of channels that will best engage the target and achieve the business objective.

So it was interesting to read this article on Adweek.com this morning telling us that "CPG's Online Spending Lags". The data, shown in the chart above, appears valid.

The headline, however, represents an old mindset. "Online spending lags" -- lags behind what? CPGs have a lot of smart people helping plan their budgets, people who actually use online media and understand its power to engage consumers. Isn't it possible they are assigning a budget to online media that properly leverages its power to engage their consumers? Or is their some percentage of the marketing spend CPGs "should" assign to online media?

The percentages assigned to all marketing channels -- retail programs, mass media and digital -- should be outcomes of the planning process, not inputs.

How TV fits into IMC

My two previous posts about a successful TV commercial and the broad reach of Radio generated some commentary on LinkedIn and Twitter. Some of the chatter was skeptical: TV? Radio? Really?

Yes, really. That's why I posted. There seems to be an unhealthy skepticism toward broadcast media. To be sure their business models are in question. The ground is shifting underneath them just like it is for all of us. (Over the weekend there were a couple of more articles on this subject: The Wall Street Journal examined the Comcast-NBC Universal deal and the self-proclaimed Newspaper of Record pondered "An Unsteady Future for Broadcast".)

Even so, TV and Radio were never the best or only media an advertiser could use. They each have their own strengths: For example TV reaches large audiences very quickly, which is important if you're launching a new CPG product. That's powerful but an advertiser must close the sale at the shelf, so it's advisable to complement broadcast media with an FSI or a shopper marketing program.

With that, it's time to check in on our two IMC projects, one where we handled all media for a client, and another where we worked with multiple agencies.

Agency + Client = Great IMC

You may recall that we were in the process of getting to a channel-neutral plan. We ultimately decided that TV was necessary to build awareness quickly, but in this case we built the TV plan around a strong retail plan that invites consumers to see and try the product. Likewise we used Radio to build awareness of retailer events ("shopper marketing" in some dictionaries). We can summarize the role of TV as less like a megaphone and more like the flute played by the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Agency + Agency + Agency = Great IMC

We left off with this project also on the verge of a channel-neutral plan. In this case TV will played a more traditional awareness-building role, but the magic of working together with all of our client's agencies is that we had good peripheral vision on what everyone else recommended and did. It's only a small part of the deal that our messages were consistent across all media. The real benefit is that each medium played off the others in real time, like on a basketball court. TV, then, was planned in conjunction with all other activity.

What's the right role for broadcast?

My point is that TV and Radio should never be the default position for a marketer; nor should they be eschewed. The right role for all media -- broadcast, retail, digital, social -- should derive from insightful consumer and business analysis. Then, figure out how they all work best together.

The power of the shelf

Much has been written about the rise and rise of retailers: the slotting fees they charge manufacturers, their influence over marketing of CPG products, and more recently the budgets devoted to Shopper Marketing.

Over the years I’ve watched this trend and appreciated the power of the shelf. On two previous CPG assignments I helped develop really powerful TV advertising that fell flat in the market because my client’s product wasn’t adequately distributed or merchandised (their version of the story, not mine).

Some of you manage only advertising, some only retail, some both and some neither. But all of you must keep in touch with what happens “on the street”.

Yesterday I spent the day with my clients checking stores in a medium-sized Midwestern city. Three things struck me.

The Reality of the shelf. Strategy back at the office means little if your product is not placed or merchandised well. This is very obvious, but admit it – how often do you really get out of that office and make a point of seeing what shoppers really see? My client and I had been discussing a portfolio management issue and based on what we saw in a dozen Food, Mass and DIY stores, both of us had our perspective changed at least a little.

The Clarity if the shelf. Many marketing questions are hard to answer from a spreadsheet. Under the luminescence of 400-watt halide lighting, however, it all becomes so clear. Yesterday I realized our pricing might be backwards and a contemplated new product launch has two existing products in its frame of reference I really hadn’t considered thoroughly enough.

The Power of Collaboration. Our traveling team was a mix of marketers, salespeople, data analysts, a researcher and yours truly. Discussing issues in the store and away from the office really drove new thinking.

I'll write a lot more about retail and shopper marketing in future posts. For now, see the above photo -- a cold and flu program at Kroger that offered real value to consumers. An excellent example of shopper marketing -- nicely done.

Get out on the street and see the power of the shelf.

A peek inside Draftfcb

Today on DRAFTFCBlog, my thoughts on the essential departments any agency needs.

How multiple agencies produced an IMC program for their client

Yesterday we had the pleasure of co-presenting an IMC program to an important client.

“Co-presenting” means: us (the lead agency), the digital agency, the promotion agency, the shopper marketing marketing agency, and the public relations agency. That’s a lot of agencies. You’re probably thinking: What a disaster that must have been.

Actually it was a success. Together we showed them a single, simple idea that could drive the work of all the agencies, plus some examples of tactics showing how each agency would take the idea and run with it – all of us in the same direction.

How did we get to a successful meeting?

Strategic homework. Part of our job as the lead agency is to help the client develop new product ideas and understand the best way to sell them. This is a big responsibility requiring us to have deep knowledge of the consumer and the category in which we compete. You can’t just show up to a project – be it IMC or a single advertisement – and get to work.

Strong relationships and clear roles. Although we have a unique role in doing the strategic homework, we are part of a team supporting this client and we work assiduously to build team relationships. The client is paying for those resources, so why not leverage them? More than that we just believe everyone has something to contribute and should be respected on that basis. It’s important to note, however, that the resources can’t show up and cooperate without clear roles set by the client and accepted by the team. In this case, we led and the other agencies followed, in the same way team captains take the field with their teammates.

Know when to work together and when to work individually. Recently there was an article on how to conduct successful inter-agency brainstorms, and it was a painful read. We've all been there. The only thing the author left out was this piece of advice: Don’t do inter-agency brainstorms. In the project we presented yesterday, there were occasional touch points – some face-to-face, some via conference call – where we hashed out strategic direction. We would then go away and work, regrouping later to share what we had created. Because the strategy was sound and our relationships strong, the ideas followed – and so did the sense of cooperation.

We’re not done yet. The same client who established clear relationships was courageous enough not to preassign his marketing budget to the various channels (advertising, in-store, digital, etc.). That means I’ll be posting soon about channel-neutral planning, one of my favorite subjects.