With the World’s dipping economy and the US recession corporations could look to cutting back Marketing and Advertising budgets in order to save money. It might not make sense, from a marketers point of view, to cut back marketing spend during tough times but this could usher in a new challenge to the marketing fraternity in terms of making their marketing strategy and plans more effective.

Marketing has cemented its place in the global economy as a key department which ensures the creation of wealth. Reading a recent Bizcommunity article, a figure quoted was that of 20% of all advertising in South Africa, not only being ineffective, but actually damaging the brand it’s supposed to promote. Another R50 billion was quoted as being “wasted” marketing spend every year in South Africa. That’s an extremely huge number to ignore, and although I can’t find the global figures, one can only assume that these numbers remain roughly the same across different countries if not getting even worse.

Research agencies such as Millward Brown, Mindshare, AC Nielsen and Initiative are excellent tools for corporations to use in terms of understanding fully how to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing spend. Tons of money gets spent on market research every year which test everything from distribution to ad effectiveness.

What’s missing is the appropriate use of the information on every level of the marketing plan. Millward Brown has years of experience testing various ads and what separates the great ads from the good ones, those that exceed objectives and those which just barely meet them. This information is even broken down by country and LSM profile which means you get extremely targeted information. Using this information as criteria for judging creative work from agencies will put the effectiveness of ads on a whole new playing field.

Another aspect is the choosing of appropriate media, especially from a South African perspective, not many corporations are taking advantage of the new media landscape in terms of leveraging their brands on social media platforms such as Facebook, Myspace and even Twitter. Mindshare and Initiative are companies which specialize in media and have information which cover all types of consumer interaction with brands. Are we really using our media agencies to their full capacity? A few brands are, the rest are getting left behind.

Essentially what is being proposed is going right back to the basics of marketing, getting the core of the brand on the right path and following on from thereto make effective and efficient marketing plans and strategies. It is no longer the case of making a great ad and watching sales fly, consumers are more media and marketing savvy and they now have less to spend. Marketers need to ask… “What will make them spend the little money they have left on my brand?”

For thousands of aspiring young people around the world trying to begin careers in creative advertising May 3rd 2007 could be the day they’re discovered.

How? Because DDB Worldwide, a leading agency network, is partnering with ihaveanidea.org, advertising’s intellectual archive, to bring Portfolio Night to students, juniors and creative hopefuls in more cities than ever before.

[But,] portfolio Night isn’t just about reviewing junior portfolios, it’s more about uniting the advertising industry at all levels for one day and helping make the next generation the best generation

…says portfolionight.com.

On May 3, careers will be made, giants will be born, beers will be drank and friendships will be made. For those that have never attended Portfolio Night in the past, all we can tell you is that it is a magical night.

Find out where, when and how you can attend by heading over to portfolionight.com.

Check out the advertising career E-Course at About.com if you want to work in advertising but you have no idea where to begin!

11th October

This looks to be the most exciting Planning event any enthusiast could attend. Not only do you have the young digital super hero Mark Cridge (founder of Glue) telling us all about the future of new media but you have a stand off between BBH’s Jim Carrol and Nike’s planner Russell Davies. This is going to be much like being 13 and staying up late to see the Bruno/Tyson match.

One problem….it’s £600

Find out more here.

Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner has been the most engaging read I’ve had for sometime.

If you’re a wannabe planner then this will get your curiosity juices flowing. How are swimming pools more dangerous than guns? How were the Klu Klux Clan brought down by the Superman radio show? The answers are all in the data. Enjoy

When you think of Digital Planning what springs to mind? The comprehension of band width, RSS feeds, online hits, page views, traffic stats, unique visitors vs registration figures, static banner ads vs a beautiful flash creation and all the rest of the complicated matter that just gets in the way of what is such a strong and simple area of planning.

I’ll elaborate. In the beginning when ad agencies had media buying imbedded within the agency, agencies were able to talk to clients from the CEO down. Now that media pulled the ejector seat on ad agencies (i.e. the numerical promise media buying can make of investing X amount will give you a return of Y amount), no longer can an ATL agency get that senior management exposure, so what we are left with is straight discussions with a Marketing Director informing him/her that this print/TV execution will bring XYZ equity/image to the brand (a now fuzzy and cloudy promise). Whatever numbers/justifications are brought in to support this, are nine out of ten times weak. I mean where did they come from?

A. The reasons this will work came from research groups we commissioned

Okaaaaay, so that means that when you roll out my national/global campaign you’re basing its potential success on what 10 people said in an orchestrated environment…and that you orchestrated that environment. Get out

B. The reason this will work is from thorough competitive analysis

So what you’re telling me is that this campaign will work because you’ve looked at what everyone else is doing and we’re either going to be similar or so dramatically different that we become irrelevant. Get out

C. We are the creative agency, we know this will work

That’s what VCCP said about the new Coke Zero campaign. Get out!

So as you can see, ATL agencies are at a ceiling, okay, it’s not that bad but it could be soon. It’s the reality I’m afraid, it is soon and it’s time to smash the champagne flute and kick the life out of any idiot you see wearing a black turtle neck or a t-shirt and a suit jacket who mentions ‘brand equity’ and then has nothing else to say.

Rocking in the free world is the potential of digital and interactive planning. Let me demonstrate the contrast.

I’m working on a project for my agency right now outside of my usual tedious account handling role. I’m part of a planning team designing and building an online infrastructure for a well known passenger carrier. I request data such as call centre statistics, offer redemption figures, costs of tickets to all destinations and in which season.

Now I’m no fan of numbers nor can I compute econometrics, regression etc….not without flipping into a rage and only finding release by drowning a puppy.

However, it’s relatively easy to spot that it costs the client £6 per call from their call centre to a prospect and when broken down the acquisition of prospects taking up offers brings in an average of £4 per call. They are losing money with the current offer that is in place and with the data they are using for prospects. I show this to my Planning Director and he formulates it and presents it back to the client.

Now we have access to the CEO and any part of the client’s organisation as we need to have that contact in order to build a new and efficient online/digital/interactive whatever infrastructure. It’s obvious when you think of it. A TV ad goes out…that’s it whereas you build an online environment that offers X Y and Z you need to think of.

1. Having the technology to support it being accessed/downloaded i.e. a voucher
2. In store staff being aware of it so they are on board to support offer redemption and the process behind it
3. A system in place to track redemption so that you can build up numerical evidence that supports your campaign
4. Which area does this benefit the client? Is it a simple ROI, is it an acquisition of new customers, is it retention of loyal customers and more times than not you’re also ‘branding’ at the same time – where, how etc?

I hope I’ve explained this well enough. The point I’m trying to illustrate is how as a digital planner you can have such a more fulfilling exposure to your client’s business by almost putting on a Management Consultancy hat on. It doesn’t take being gifted at number crunching, it doesn’t take being able to take a company’s balance sheet and give a Good Will Analysis (I googled that under ‘finance’ by the way and have no idea what it means). All it takes, in my humble opinion, is a deeper curiosity in how a business works than standard ATL Planners who are more than capable to think this way if they choose.

So what’s the difference to working in a branding agency (TV, Press and Print) to a marketing services agency (DM, POS, Digital etc) to a content marketing agency (TV programming, Events and Publishing)?

Well, quite a considerable amount. Whilst in an traditional ATL setup you’ll find that rigorous data that substantiates an agency’s recommendations is quite hard to obtain and manipulate in order to stand up in court. As a result creative recommendations are based on research such as forums where ad concepts are tested on a small group of consumers in order to gauge a positive or negative reaction. This is usually conducted by a research agency which have been instructed and overseen by an ATL planner. Results are summarised and then feedback to the client with the agency’s point of view on how such concepts will create a particular image for the brand. However, client’s are now starting to view ATL agencies more as production houses where original ideas are then amended by the client in order to meet how they wish the advertising should look and feel. Some argue this is the right considering that the client knows their brand better than any other and others feel this is wrong whereby the agency is the creative consultant and understands how the science of advertising works on consumers that and at the end of the day what agency wants to produce creative that doesn’t work? Therefore the work in ATL agencies is heavily reliant on ideas based outside of data and then are tested.

In terms of the work what you’ll find in the marketing services/BTL agency is that you micro manage projects. There is significantly more detail to cover and much more data to comprehend which is far more reliable when substantiating an agency’s recommendations. What I mean by this is that when on an account such as one in the retail sector your team is not only working towards creating new campaigns based on a client’s brief (pro active servicing) but you are also managing day to day client’s needs (re active servicing) such as maintenance of your client’s website which mainly consists of copy changes. The plus for the client is that they can brief an agency to change the copy on their homepage and this can be updated within a matter of hours. Outside of this you naturally gain a closer understanding of your client’s consumer and this is through heaps of data from footfall stats, to offer redemption stats to website traffic stats. So whilst it is therefore only natural that whilst going through the motions of your day to day activity you pick up a sharper picture of a client’s business along with the environment in which they touch consumers – the retail experience and what kind of POS they use i.e. where purchases are actually made.

The new trend of content marketing is quite an exciting industry sensation right now. With heavy restrictions on TV advertising and the risk of ill targeted BTL mediums (blanket DM drops, pop up digital banners) brands are now considering developing their own media platforms. What better way to get closer to your consumer than providing them with entertainment and have that media platform pay for itself? To elaborate, lets take publishing. You advise your client Levis to develop a monthly magazine. You bring in writers for articles in your magazine that are close to the brand so you develop content based around fashion, music and other youth trends. You can then approach other brands in line with yours (Apple for i-pod, Peugeot for the 206, The Tate Modern for innovative art etc) so they have an opportunity to advertising in your magazine….and they pay for the media space in exchange for your distribution channels of that magazine. So after printing and distribution you have a business model that not only creates a new platform for your brand (Levis magazine) but also it pays for itself through media sales. Furthermore, you control the access to your media platform so only brands that have a positive association are used in your magazine, this also means keeping your competitors out. If done right this is pretty much a huge area to exploit in the marketing service tool box. In terms of working, it’s creative, it’s entrepreneurial and it requires you to have your ear to the ground to what consumers are doing in their day to day life and where their interests lie. Other examples of content are events such as Innocent smoothies holding Fruit Stock in Regent’s Park recently.

So there is vast difference in what these agencies do and how they do it. The question now faced is how do you bring these together? How do you tie this offering under one roof and hand a client over the table a fully stitched together proposal of recommendations on every level. Will the agency of the future have account handlers, planners and creatives that are able to converse in all these mediums rather than having a specialist over here and another over there? I hope so.

Having just made the move from my ATL department and started working in my BTL department is probably the best thing that has happened to me throughout my training.

My grad training is split so I spend 6 months ATL and 6 months BTL. Having just made the move from global TV, press and print I am now in retail dealing with POS, digital, radio and TV (anyway).

What’s great about getting a fully integrated training is fairly obvious which is that while your contemporaries at other agencies are just having a digital experience you are able to converse about how to manage a branding campaign through TV, press and print and while your strictly old school friends are getting just baptised in TV, press and print you are able to take the wind out of their sails by asking them what happens if your client requires web based solutions.

Furthermore, it’s a chance to understand planning. When working in on an account that uses digital and other BTL methods then you become naturally closer to understanding the consumer. Essentially the data used for a targeted DM piece is what drives the campaign and in order to speak to your client and not look like a chump you need to be up to speed with who is using your website.

As a result, what a perfect setup to move into planning when you have 6 months ATL and 6 months BTL. I would therefore suggest that when you are looking to work at an agency you enquire on what training you are provided with.

That, or you’ll be left behind.

I’ve had a few emails asking about hacking M&C Saatchi and how I went about it. Far be it for me to indulge, but if you insist.

I was on my placement year at Leo Burnett working on McDonalds and thoroughly enjoying it. However my time was nearing an end at Leos and the Saatchi & Saatchi Scholarship Scheme was approaching. I rang Saatchi & Saatchi who told me that my brief to enter into the scholarship was to take their logo “Nothing Is Impossible” which would be supplied on an A3 poster and place it somewhere topical and interesting.

I toyed with ideas which were terrible, like taking a photo of a homeless person outside the Dorchester holding the poster. Really base line poor stuff. But, whilst having a cigarette outside Leo’s with my friend who was working in Arc (same building) we were talking about hacking websites and how people do it etc. Then, I thought, that could be a sweet idea to place the Saatchi & Saatchi poster on a website, and what better place to do it than on the agency they love to hate and vice versa M&C Saatchi. We both pretty much pissed ourselves laughing at the audacity of the idea. We were then joined by another of my friends from Arc (both worked in digital one being a project manager and the other a designer). We ran the idea past him at which his face broke into a smile. I had no idea on how to hack a site, make a website or anything like that so these guys were really the people who made this idea work.

However, everything got a bit out of control and I’ll explain why. There was quite a bit of press coverage about this, namely The Times and Campaign. Both thought that I had actually hacked the official M&C website. Thing is I hadn’t, I just convinced digital illiterate people that I had, such as the press. My friends constructed a site that replicated the M&C one. I had bought the domain name www.mcsaatchi.gov (Maurice and Charles are avid Tory fans and create their campaigns so it seemed like a potential money earner in the unlikely event the Conservatives won the 2004 election). Anyway, the site was constructed showing the image of the Saatchi & Saatchi poster falling on top of the M&C Saatchi logo.

I then took it upon myself to spread this far and wide to stir a bit of noise before I sent it on to Saatchi & Saatchi. I posted it as the actual M&C website on advertising forums and emailed it round to as many contacts as I had as well as the whole of Leo Burnett who in turn passed it on to their contacts. Before I had even sent it to Saatchi & Saatchi I had a viral website as we were able to track it being viewed up to 300 times a day and travelling from London to New York to Rio.

I then thought it was best to get this over to Saatchi so I emailed their HR department telling them this was my entry to their Scholarship Scheme. I rang them up the next day asking them to make sure that the people who needed to see this saw it and quick as my spidey sense knew there was trouble ahead. They applauded my audacity and from there I had an telephone interview and was told that I was accepted onto the scheme. Sweet I thought, but this viral website started to travel further and further.

Cue the phone call from M&C’s lawyers informing me of my breach of intellectual property, that the website had been pulled down by the domain owners and that I was facing court action. Laughing in the face of danger isn’t exactly how I would describe my reaction, more like a desperate need for my mum and that I was unable to stop saying sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. After this lovely chat I rang Saatchi & Saatchi who calmed me down, told me it would be fine and if there was going to be any trouble they would step in. That was great and I had started a little fisty cuffs with two adversaries that had been quite dormant in dispute..

To cut a boring story short, Campaign and The Times covered the story, convinced that I had actually hacked the real M&C site, which was fine by me, M&C dropped any court action as they were starting to look silly for chasing me, I rocked up to Saatchi & Saatchi where most had seen my website and the pats on the back were very encouraging indeed and then the website stills I kept were entered into the DMA Awards 2004 and helped to win Gold.

So that’s how it happened. I placed the stills and the Campaign article in my portfolio and flashed it at every interview which went down a treat. Other than that it’s not the kind of thing I bring up over dinner with clients.

You can check out the website here on a secure server:

Username: saatchi
Password: 3ntry

Never before has the agency world required new blood as it does today. I’m not going to harp on about digital again……okay I am for a bit. It would seem that according to Precision Marketing Magazine (4th May 06) middle and top management just don’t get new media. This means that whilst the traditional ATL shops hold on the reigns and only allow in 4 – 5 grads a year DM, Digital, POS and Event Management agencies are taking in more new blood than ever before and they aren’t with years of experience. Instead, they are young, enthusiastic, keen to absorb and will go to extreme lengths to make their mark.

However, it is true to say that the large ATL agencies are making changes. Where the old skool way of grad recruitment still exists you’ll find many a eager graduate forcing their way in as Account Assistants and climbing the ropes this way. It’s also true to say that agencies did have a phobia of the untrained and inexperienced but what seems to be happening now is a shift to the much more clued up grad. This is more than likely to do with the realisation that a good school a good degree and a nice accent isn’t what agencies are looking for these days. It’s now time for the hungry to rule who spend their summers hunting around agencies for a week here a week there of experience and then hustle agencies to give them a break.

This looks to mark the future of advertising as the old boy networks disappear, that we see many more females taking up roles not just in account handling but more importantly in creative and pathetic bully manager mentality is ushered out the door.

Creatives are also changing. The suit jacket, t-shirt and jeans wearing creative who is in his mid 40s and refuses to talk to account execs are a dying breed. It’s about bloody time.

These insecure and wasteful creatures that stroll around with their egos 5 steps ahead of them are now having to justify their existence and the ad they did that won awards but no remembers it some 8 years ago won’t save them. Nor will their political ties to senior management.

Incoming the young creative teams who can talk digital, can talk SMS, can talk DM and then, if they think appropriate, TV, radio, press and print. Even better, these creatives don’t have the insecurity of their elders, their personalities are far more client facing, they make the whole process much easier by getting on with account handlers and roll their eyes at the term ’suit’. At last the agency’s core competitive skill are becoming a bunch of young, gifted fun loving professionals.

Yup, it’s a new dawn and a new day and about time