So, here we are again in September and the infamous planning rounds
that agencies and clients subject themselves to at this time of year.
Having been party to many planning cycles and the resulting plans it
strikes me that there has never been a better time to relook at the role
agencies can and should play in this process.
There will of course be the usual jostling for position at the clients side
- each agency discipline vying for their siloed specialism to take
precedence - the time to push for the mythical 'lead agency' status' with
over- enthusiastic MDs pushing their planners and GADs to achieve a bit
more leverage and hopefully income to replenish their depleted coffers.
It is again time for projects and plans to be put forward, but this time with
an actual business context rather than just the next piece of creative work
to chew over lunch. And moreover it's the chance to ascertain which media
channels worked better than others and how to achieve more with less (I
shall smile wistfully as the '10% growth and 15% margin' target gets
bandied around again like some sort of amazing new theory of market
innovation) and again the measurements doled out by the media guys
will no doubt be full of caveats.
Well this year should be interesting and could be the year to make real
progress as an industry. We had news today that the recession ended in
May (according to the RPI - which is bizzare and should get the ardent
media conspiracy theorists happy) so the temptation to do exactly as we
did last year but with a reduced marketing spend might not be the wisest
way to approach things.
Let's not repeat the mistakes of the past
This should be the year that clients try the new stuff: using the community,
engaging in dialogue to create preference and reinforce current patterns of
behavior - rather than trying to change old ones and accepting that perhaps
behavior actually drives beliefs not the other way round. Something that
certain DM agencies would rather not face up to.
Good strategic marketing planning was never about predicting the future -
it has always been about asking the critical questions about how a market
has changed, what the dominant, residual and emerging trends are and
how to harness those across the shared value drivers across the business.
This is the time to see how we can solve our clients business objectives
using smart business acumen first then how we express it creatively rather
than trying to protect our own revenues through self serving strategies that
are post rationalized to fit our worldview as so often happens. The answer
is almost definitely NOT a TV campaign anymore - at least not in isolation.
Yes it is always painful to realize that perhaps we are not capable or
credible of offering anything other than advice in our area of specialism,
but we should at least use this opportunity to see how we can add credible
value in future. And that might mean starting from zero all over again.
Stop thinking like a planner -
Start thinking like a management consultant!!!
We should be asking questions about the value chain - how the internal
organization functions not just the consumer facing one and have ideas
and views on how to help transform cultures positively to deliver exceptional
customer value.
We might suggest adapting an existing or new portfolio to take
advantage of new technological developments - potentially huge unrealized
value that has sat in a silo somewhere. A new product naming strategy perhaps
to achieve better SEO results might actually be a better place for agencies to
deliver value than just another 'big idea'. Or the creation of what I call 'Value
Based' Social Objects - which score highly on a 'Useful & Interesting' index
that get passed around on the networks so they form a distinct blob on the
social graph. Something that many ATL agencies just don't get and the digital
guys aren't convincing enough to make their own.
We must start adopting the best practices of the management consultancies
married to the explosive qualities of creative excellence that can transform a
category (Meerkat anyone?) to really start to reclaim our place at the
top table and earn proper fees for the value we create.
One of the best ways to get everyone to re-evaluate marketing expenditure is
to adopt a zero-based budgeting model - no legacy spend but a true evaluation
of how all the channels and value propositions need to work to meet objectives:
strategic, customer and competitor.
But it's unlikely really I accept - zero has always been a scary word - humans
have avoided it's negative associations, the Greeks declared it to be unnatural -
theologians even argued that God banished the void by creating the universe
and medieval thinkers banned it together with other Arabic ciphers entirely.
Well I say bring it on. Zero is liberating. It is where it all begins because it forces
us to create something to replace it. And in this climate that might just be us.
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