Adventures in digital marketing

A recent Campaign article which asked the question "Should agencies outsource digital?", in which Kate Nettleton discussed the differing points-of-view within the industry regarding the outsourcing of the so called “techy” end of digital creativity, has promoted me to put down a few thoughts of my own on the subject.

I've actually discussed the outsourcing of production with quite a few people over the years and in fact it’s a model I’ve worked with in varying degrees for quite some time now, from right back in the late 90’s at TDPL/Leagas Delaney through to the present day.

We all know that agencies employ freelancers – it’s so common place it’s never questioned as a business practice – but for agencies of a digital slant to completely outsource a whole chunk of what is often perceived as being a key business function is quite a recent phenomenon.  In the past, and particularly in the pure-play world, having a dedicated production (and by that we’re really saying programmers right?) team in-house was taken for granted.  But I don’t think it has to be that way personally, and I can see it becoming less common as we continue to understand how Digital Marketing and Advertising has to function as a business over time.

Kate points out in her article that a “new breed” of agencies are taking a note from the traditional world and outsourcing skills which don’t necessarily fit in with the overall creative business of an agency.  And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense – in fact I completely subscribe to it myself.  I love Martin Brooks’s comment that “digital agencies can’t take the strategic high ground if their business model relies on building banners in-house”.  It’s completely right.  How often do we hear the buzz-phrase of “we sell ideas” and yet never see it delivered because people are tied into a particular back-end system or delivery method?

In an ATL agency for example, where the majority of business may be focused on TV commercials – it’d be extremely unlikely that they’d have a load of directors, editors, sound experts and the like sitting around as permanent members of staff.  Those people, with highly technical and creative skills are brought in on a case-by-case basis as and when required – because it allows everyone else to focus on what they need to do – come up with great creative ideas. 

Why, then, do we (and I include myself in this to some degree) think that to do digital creative work in marketing and advertising we need to have programmers and other technical experts sitting around on the books full time, rather than get them in on a similar case-by-case basis.

The outsourcing of digital production makes perfect sense.

However, what I can’t stress strongly enough is that outsourcing your digital production or development does not, in any way, mean that as an agency you can forget about the technical side of the business, regarding it as “not your job” or unimportant.  When you remove technology from one side of the equation it has to be replaced elsewhere – and invariably what that means is that the people who you do have on a permanent basis in your agency need to pick up some of the knowledge to make your ideas work.  What that means is that it is essential that the creative teams, strategists, planners and account managers are more technically minded than perhaps you would normally have, and are able to understand what is and isn’t possible.  They wouldn't normally be like that in an environment where programmers are sitting next to them. 

Allowing them to believe they don’t need to know that stuff because “they’re not technical” is not an option. Technology doesn’t disappear from your business because you’re outsourcing it – it just moves around a bit – but it is still present and is as important to the overall creative process and end deliverables that you provide as ever.

Bill Brock’s comment that by outsourcing digital you allow the agency to “be free to go for best-of-breed ideas, not end up selling website ideas because we had a website designer(s) free” is completely on the money and if you look at the other founding members you can see that together they can all help to provide that essential in-house technical knowledge that must be present.

Creative ideas should never be shoehorned into the technical solutions that your agency is capable of delivering in-house – they should be free to come from anywhere and delivered in any way you can think of that’s applicable.

Outsourcing production, to different 3rd-party partners who are expert in their specific fields allows agencies to mix-and-match what they need to answer a client’s brief and deliver on their objectives – and at the end of the day that’s what we are all trying to do.

It has made perfect sense in the offline and traditional world for the past few decades – are we not big enough now to admit that it makes perfect sense in our decade as well?

Howard

Grabbing hold of current trends in both music sales/distribution and digital advertising/marketing, Trent Reznor's band the Nine Inch Nails (disclaimer: I am and always have been a very big fan) have launched their new instrumental album, Ghosts I-IV, online in a variety of both digital and physical formats with prices ranging from free for the 9-track DRM-Free sampler album to $300 for the Ultra deluxe package.

With a nod towards Radiohead's recent launch of In Rainbows, which they offered online for the price the user felt they wanted to pay and was covered alongside the future of the music business as a whole in great detail in an article by David Byrne for Wired Magazine, Reznor has changed tack slightly by providing a large range of options to suit all pockets.

Free music being what it is recently, with a lot of artists testing the water one way or another, such as Prince with his Daily Mail (gah! must clean mouth out after saying that paper's name) free CD, there are lots of discussions ongoing as to whether this is a solid new approach or simply something already established artists with a loyal fan base are able to exploit at this time.

What really interests me in this instance is what Reznor has done alongside the variable pricing structure for his latest work - which is providing a whole host of other formats to the usual MP3, as well as material specifically designed to act in a marketing context.

When you download the album (I got the $0 version for now, although I will be getting the full thing on pay day!), you get a couple of folders full of wallpaper, the cover art for the album as a JPG, a PDF document which acts like the insert in a CD (some lovely photography contained within) and, most interesting in some ways for us digital marketing types, a whole host of pre-made banner, button and blog header images.

Reznor is doing something very intelligent and interesting here.  Not only is he experimenting with the free music approach, something which in itself will generate a load of PR one way or the other, but he's giving the music itself away in multi-track formats to encourage people to play with and remix his work (something he did previously on other albums, giving it away in Apple Garage band format at least), and by providing the ready made blog and banner formats, he's giving people a way to show their loyalty to the band, and in turn generate a viral style effect for the album which he couldn't possibly hope to achieve on his own or through an agency with a media plan.

By giving away so much stuff, stuff which fans will firstly think is way cool and want to put all over the internet, Reznor's actually giving the fans control over his marketing campaign, truly putting it right into the hands of the people who know and love the most about the band in the first place.

User generated advertising was a buzz word a short time ago, and perhaps still is in certain bars around Soho on a good night, but handing over the control of the campaign, utilising free media space in highly targetted areas with an applicable audience, is IMHO a master stroke and a perfect example of where marketing is possibly going in terms of control and transparency.

Undoubtedly the freedom NIN and the like are now experiencing in terms of no-label is also extending itself into their thinking for no-agency marketing and no-control PR.

In more ways than just my musical taste alone I have to say right now Trent, I am a big fan.

Howard

Leading web guru Guy Kawasaki has launched a new site, alltop.com, to join his already large portfolio of web products.

Alltop is typically simple but excellent in it's execution, taking the top stories from a whole host of different feeds and bringing them all into one place. 

With topics for most tastes ranging from food to tech to moms it's poised to become a key destination especially as the twitterati will no doubt jump onto it like hot cakes and with Guy's so called golden touch no doubt make him a few quid as well.

Check it out at alltop.com

Howard
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OKA Direct, the last site I produced whilst at TEQUILA\ London, just got reviewed in the NMA this week.  It scored a pretty healthy 88% overall.  Congratulations to all the team still at TEQUILA\ as well as those moved on to different strokes. OKA was actually three sites produced at once, RAPT direct and Cath Collins (although CC appears to be down at the moment for some reason) being the other two, all based on a common architecture.  NMA particularly liked the idea of being able to buy a whole room at once, rather than selecting items individually.  Good - that was my idea :) Well done OKA and TEQUILA\ Howard --

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Tags: nma, oka, ecommerce, web site, rapt, cath collins, tequila

How many times have you heard a creative director, MD or other senior manager say in an all agency pep-rally meeting "We're all creatives in this agency - no idea is a bad idea"?

Quite a few times I'll guess.

Well, I want to add to that.  Expand on it if you will...

We're all planners in this agency. No strategy is a bad strategy.

Now, I don't mean literally we all sit around blogging all day waffling on about the planosphere (vincent! :P)- no, what I mean is that in some ways, planning is as much a group activity within a healthy agency environment as is creative thinking.  As is good client relations.  As is wanting to make a profit.  The list goes on....

I was chatting with a planning colleague of mine, and we were talking about the relationship between different departments, and how, to borrow from Logic+Emotion a bit, we all need to overlap, not be silos.  Planning and digital, for example, can work amazingly well together, and insight into the ways people use digital in their daily lives really is something both "departments" can add to.  There's a lot going on right now about combining creative and planning.  Everyone is merging them together again in some way or another. 

For me, the best results on any project happen when you get excited, passionate and informed people together from the start and they all input into the big idea. 

Something I've mentioned a couple of times recently is that, for me, digital strategy in terms of planning a campaign falls into two distinct phases.  The first is the more traditional channel planning phase, overall marketing strategy - what is it we're trying to do, who are we talking to, what's going to fire them up, all that stuff.  The stuff that helps good planners and good account teams write creative briefs that really help creative teams come to life.  The kind of brief that creative teams so often complain they don't get. It's during this phase that it's driven by planners but with others adding value.

The second phase, is the one where we look at digital itself and the whole host of different channels and executions it can contain (see the previous digital ecosystem chart I made which is, quite probably, already out of date!).  This is where digital teams, planners and creatives can all add value, working out what specifically it is in the digital field that is going to best address the requirements identified in phase 1 - the part where we already worked out we want to use digital, but were not sure how exactly.  It's in this phase that it's driven by digital specialists with others adding value.  See the subtle difference?  Both (digital?) strategy phases, but with slightly different drivers.

Phase 1 - what are we doing and, by association, do we want to do it in digital?

Phase 2 - what bits of digital do we want?

To many people these stages can appear to be one and the same - often, when I talk to people about marketing strategy in relation to digital, the distinction isn't clear for them to make.  But make it I believe we must.  They do two different tasks. Both of them essential to good creative output.

We're all planners in this agency.  No strategy is a bad strategy.

Doesn't mean we'll use yours though...

:D

Howard
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Tags: digitalmarketing advertising planning planners planosphere silos overlap skill sharing communication

Why aren't there more techy planners?

We all know planning is the buzzy side of the industry at the moment - everywhere you look someone is saying something about planning.  Whether it's bringing it into the fold with creative earlier on (good idea by the way) or how much bad planners are simply good bloggers (I am neither) it's the topic on a lot of peoples lips.

So, why are planners who get technology so thin on the ground? 

Come on!  We need planners who know why face-book is the new Dr Evil.

We need planners who know not just what twitter is, but why it's seen by many as so revolutionary.

We need planners who understand technology, live with it, love it, and know how it works, as well as knowing all the other stuff planners need to know.

I know a few of them, or know of, but I know a hell of a lot more who are just plain disinterested.

There's a shed load of cash in the planosphere right now.  But I tell you what, if it were me hiring, I'd be giving you a shed load more if you could have a conversation with me about pownce's implementation of AIR vs Twitter and twitterific!

Howard
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Tags: digital, planning, planners, planosphere, technology, integrated

Is it just me, or are Google becoming a real pain in the bum?

They're everywhere.

Buying up everything and causing others to buy up everything just to fend them off.

Threatening to monitor us day and night.

Installing Spyware onto new Dells.

Selling ads into RSS feeds from the newly acquired Feedburner.

They're becoming a little too cocky if you ask me.  No one likes a showoff!

Howard
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The Geek Squad Has Arrived proclaim the posters in the window of Car Phone Warehouse stores nationwide.  After being a hit in the states it would appear that the home based PC support service is now here in the UK.  I've been discussing a digital plumbing service for some time as a business idea i'd like to have setup if I had a spare few thousand quid lying around (which I don't!) and it appears with this I obviously wasn't the only one.

In a deal with the "a store in every town" Carphone Warehouse, you can now pay to have your PC serviced in the comfort of your own home. All very well and good.

But, for me, this might not be such a good thing as it would appear, especially at the prices they're offering.

For £24 a geek squad technician will login remotely to your machine and perform a PC MOT on it.  This sounds alright, until you find out this includes cleaning up old file, checking your AV is up to date and giving you a health check.  This is quite obviously the PC equivalent of Kwik Fit giving you a free brake fluid check before trying to sell you a new exhaust and a set of tires.  Except, it's not free of course!

Got any other problem?  It'll cost you £99 if they go to your house, or £49.99 if they do it remotely.  Now, i'm not being funny, but that's expensive!

Compare this to how I truly believe most people currently get their PC stuff done.  They do it in one of two ways. 1. they do it themselves if they are like you, me, or anyone else who had a Spectrum as a child.  or, 2. they get us to do it for them and pay us in beer and curry.

I can't personally see all those people switching to a service that costs £50 a pop for a single issue.

My other problem with Geek Squad is more of a marketing related one.  They've actually been quite lazy in the way it's branded and just directly imported the image from the USA in to the UK and, to be quite honest, it really doesn't work.  I know what they're trying to do - they're trying to get a sense of 1950's "Full Service" garage culture into the thing.  When in the USA you'd drive in for petrol and get an oil change and a car wah thrown in.  I know of this, and in the USA I am sure it works like a charm.  But over here it doesn't resonate.  We didn't have that culture - it doesn't translate. 

To me, the geek squad employees look more like a weird vision of the Men In Black crossed with the blokes out of the Matrix, and are suitably worrying as a result.  They look like the Krays.  Not the kind of people I'd want in my house. 

I think the concept is a great one - I wish I had money to invest to set up a business, but it's not been done well from a brand image point of view, and it's so damn expensive.

Correct me if I am wrong in 6/12 months please - but right now I'd really suggest someone look at the business model and the corporate identity and address some major issues quickly.

Oh, and two more small things.  If they're that cute and female when they turn up, it could be worth the money and, secondly, watch out when they're installing that wifi router in the bathroom :)

Howard
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After the Apple Gate Engadget happenings I couldn't stop thinking of this.

I must caveate this by saying that I really know nothing of the conference industry at all, so please bear that in mind here, but...

...If we have ad-funded Web2.0 projects, and online PPC advertising is making such huge changes to the whole industry, how come conferences like the recent FOWA to name just a few, still ask us to pay for the priviledge of going to an event to be talked at by predominantly companies looking to sell us something indirectly?

Couldn't this be 100% ad funded as well?

Just a thought...

Howard
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