Alternative marketing thinking

A debate is raging in the direct marketing, promo and media agencies around the world about how so many of the awards in their categories have gone to mainline agencies? The Grand Prix in all three categories were won by mainline agencies. JWT Mumbai winning in direct, BBDO New York winning the promotion grand prix and Sweden’s Forsman & Bodenfors taking home the top media prize with their MMS campaign for AMF Pensions.

A look at the gold winners in direct and things don’t change too much. Couple of golds for Lowe Bangkok and one each for JWT’s London and Costa Rican offices. The only “non mainline” agencies to have won golds are new-age integrated agencies, BMF Sydney, MortierBrigade from Brussels and The Communications Agency from London. Same is the case in promo and media. No “traditional” media agency won a gold in media. The winners in promotions too were no different.

The only two categories where specialists were able to hold forth were design and cyber. Even in design six of the 11 gold winners were mainline agencies.

Somehow the story of specialist agencies losing out is not restricted to Cannes alone. Faris Yakob, writing in Campaign UK laments the inability of true media agencies to win media awards at Clio where he was on the jury.

Faris has a point. And he feels the problem is not with the specialist agencies as much as it is with award shows and the entry process. He thinks that the entry is almost as important as the idea itself. “Since most of the campaigns are from other countries, as a judge you may have never encountered the work, you have no idea how it resonated locally, whether people loved it and talked about, or simply ignored it.”

The other thing, he feels that works against specialist agencies is that the entry is all you have to go on - a short form video advert for an agency. And traditional advertising agencies have quite a lot of experience making short form video adverts, whereas media agencies don’t.

Writing for Adweek Janet Evans Barker, one of the judges on the Cannes Direct Jury echoes what many people in specialist agencies think. “The reality is that some direct marketers and even some sales promo folks feel that Cannes is the bastion of general agencies. Some commented that the Direct Lions aren’t really about direct marketing at all, but about cool creative ideas masquerading as direct marketing in an attempt to win an award.” While she doesn’t fully agree with this view, she believes that while there is a hell of a lot of innovative direct work being done by (DM) agencies —that truly IS direct— it simply isn’t being submitted. Maybe there is a some truth in there. We searched for “Cannes” in Direct Magazine and there were some old bits but nothing about the 2008 festival and winners. DMA only does a little better.

So here is what we think. Specialists agencies have to think differently when it comes to winning at Cannes and Clio Awards. Explaining entries using a good video is critical if we have to top contenders in broad based award shows. Sure we can be happy with our Echos and Caples. But just as traditional agencies are crossing borders and walking away with accolades that are reserved for direct marketing, DM agencies need to learn the tricks of packaging their truly brilliant ideas as well as some of the mainline agencies do.

Planner Richard Huntington writes. Once upon a time in a land far away come the appointed hour of the creative presentation, agencies recommended one idea to their clients. It would represent the best solution that they could possibly develop to answer the business problem they had been given. But then agencies like Chiat Day and HHCL change a few things around. They would present multiple routes earlier on in the process at what were termed ’tissue meetings’, nothing could be bought or sold in these meetings but they allowed an early airing for fresh ideas. More.

CPB recently won the Microsoft account. And the biggest challenge that the agency is facing is to convert a bunch of Mac heads to start seeing the genius that’s Microsoft. “Crispin sort of exists because of the revolution in desktop publishing that the Mac brought about. You could be a small shop and compete against Madison Avenue for the first time because all the tools were in your computer.”, Alex Bogusky in Fast Company. So how will the iconic agency help Microsoft be seen as cool? Read this story . Meanwhile Nike and CPB decided to part ways from their association on the Nike + running account.

Interesting post on The Kaiser Edition titled The Content Manifesto. Not a manifesto really but a collection of posts from many great thinkers and planners of today. Many of the pieces listed under the manifesto are seminal in the way they see the advertising and marketing business a bit into the future. The thinkers at Kaiser believe that content is the future of advertising and that agencies need to morph into producers of good content. Like what Mother is doing here. Getting started with comics.

There are many interesting thoughts on similar lines out there. None of it better than this presentation by Paul Isakson. Some of the more interesting slides include the way traditional advertising/marketing looked at consumers as being at the periphery of the game, with the product being at its heart. Paul inverses this diagram by simply flipping the arrow making customers move in towards the brand using advertising, CRM, distribution and packaging.

Further on, Paul quotes what he thinks is the new CPB folklore of Alex Bogusky, who tells his people that he does not want to see scripts anymore, but the press release.

Some of the examples of this thinking include the recent Burger King Wopper Freakout. Was it an ad, a commercial, an interaction, an event? It got spoken and written about all over. The Philips BodyGroom work. The online work for Coke, The Coke Zero Game.

As with most modern concepts, there is a section on utility, or branded utility with Nike+, Dominos BFD builder and mobile tracker.

There are some examples of how companies are using new tools to ask consumers what they want. Including the recent My Starbucks Idea.

Paul sums up by finding the definition for new marketing as something that improves peoples lives, as opposed to selling, or introducing people to products and services.

Campaign Magazine’s annual roundup of agencies show that most network agencies have seen a decline in revenues. AMV BBDO is down 7%, JWT is down 25%, Publicis down 24.4%, DDB down 10.7%, Ogilvy down 11.9%, Lowe down 14.76%, McCann down 5.5%, and Grey down 2.6%. Only two network shops bucked the trend: Euro RSCG up 32% and TBWA up 19%. Meanwhile, big growth came from Fallon, up an impressive 150% (on a much smaller base that the biggies), WCRS up 87%, DLKW up 20%, VCCP up 17.9%, Miles Calcraft up 24%, BBH up by 13% and Wieden + Kennedy up by 12%. The WK London blog has a write up.

Forrester analysts Peter Kim and Mary Beth Kemp have been tracking how marketing is changing. Their new study on the connected agency is out and is available as a free download. Forrester analysts interviewed 16 of the world’s top marketing companies and advertising agencies including HSBC, P&G, Wunderman, OgilvyOne, Target, Coca-Cola, RMG Connect and Publicis Dialogue to find out what consumers are doing and what kinds of solutions marketing are seeking.

Highlights from the study:

Advertising is stretched. And may soon snap. Fewer consumers than ever find that ads entertain, inform, or motivate them to make a purchase. Around the world, just a few consumers believe that companies generally tell the truth in ads.

Consumers Make Advertising Irrelevant. Consumers have replaced trust in advertising with trust in individuals — in particular, friends, family and colleagues, turning to communities and away from mass media.

Media Can’t Deliver A Captive Audience Anymore. Consumers have more reasons to dislike advertising: irrelevance, interruption and clutter. These come from marketers building media plans on a platform of legacy thinking.

Operational Processes Can’t Cope. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) understand the need to become customer-centric but face a myriad of operating challenges in getting there.

Agencies must change to keep their place in the value chain. Senior marketers have turned to agencies for help but have found that most don’t have the proper skills or structure to assist.

The Connected Agency. While the market fragments around channels and skills, the connection between the vocal consumer and consumer-centered marketer gets filled with static from multiple agencies fighting for attention. An agency with a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights.

The Marketing Ecosystem Responds. By harnessing community insights, the Connected Agency will force the marketing value chain to adapt as well.

Read the full report here.

One of the trends that we are seeing these days is the rise of technology empowered creative ideas. Like the Adobe interactive billboard, Marco Echo’s SMS graffiti or LED throwies. Jung Von Matt, one of Germany’s most awarded agencies has set up a lab to create the next generation communication ideas. Here is their next wall.

BusinessWeek Magazine called in a roundtable to discuss the best and worst of 2007. Johnny Vulkan, co-founder of and partner at Anomaly; Simon Waterfall, D& AD president and cofounder of London-based digital agency Poke; Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder of Sydney-based creative collective, the Glue Society and Sheungyan Lo, executive creative director, northeast Asia, for JWT, based in Shanghai. Here is the roundup.

Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts is worried about the proliferation of nimble new media agencies that are adept at the social media game. He believes that businesses are desperate for an uber-consultant—a brand navigator who devises an overall message, then subcontracts the work to the relevant people–interactive shops, direct marketers, and so on. Read more in BusinessWeek.

In an economy of ideas, GSD&M takes ideas seriously. So seriously that the agency which handles clients like Southwest Airlines, BMW, MasterCard, and the PGA Tour, has made its sole mission to foster, harness, and focus the scarcest resource in business: great ideas. Spread across the 83,000 square-foot headquarters building called Idea City is a network for solutions. Said Roy Spence, CEO and Chairman GSDM “we’ll have the advertising-marketing component, we’ll have the purpose-based branding component, we’ll have all of our analytics models as a component. We will be the only major advertising agency that will have media planning, market account planning and creative inside of one city.” This is not the first time that GSDM is putting itself in the centre of the ideas business. This Fast Company article tells us that the agency has been pursuing the ideas business concept for a long time. In fact it’s campaign for BMW that repositioned the car company from being the “ultimate driving machine” to a “company of ideas” was conceived by GSDM. More here from AdAge.