How to acquire new clients

In my work I meet lots of agencies, some I work with, most I do not. There seems to be major lack of understanding how clients think. Therefore, let me give you my 2 cents on this topic:

How most FAIL:
1. start with 10 minute company introduction with absolute nonsense data I could not care less
2. Show an image cloud of all of your clients and tell what you do with them these days, another 30 minutes
3. Tell me how you can help us to achieve our business goals with your knowledge base, 10 minutes of jargon storm
4. Ask me what I think, should we try with a project. C'mon you have not even shared any cost information nor assured me

How to SUCCEED
1. All you need is to tell office locations, # of people and key focus of your work
2. Show quick analysis of my company health check. Sharing other companies cases makes me think you expose my business too
3. Show a concrete benchmark against our competition and how can we improve by focusing on simple steps
4. Share your business model and how the improvements showed could be executed in modular, low risk manner

In most cases, people I meet know absolutely nothing about the company I work for. I could understand they do not know organization, processes or even some challenges but web is full of tools. Let's use say Tesco as example. Here's a elevator pitch for you.

1. We are an advertising agency focused on digital marketing. We employ 25 people in London and Singapore
2 We know you are a leading company in UK retail but we also wanted to see if you are leader in digital communications. So we made a quick health check and learned following things:

WEB
- Your website ranks top 1500 in the world and top 50 in UK
- On average people view 9 pages when they visit your site and spend 7.5 minutes
- 30% of visits come through search engines, where keyword Tesco is dominant
- Visitors have skew towards females with Kids, middle-age and both low education and very high education backgrounds
- over 3000 websites link to you site

SOCIAL
- There are only few posts about Tesco in blogosphere
- Facebook has many unofficial Tesco sites with mostly fan vs. hater discussions
- Twitter side there are also some sites with low follower figures

Overall your website presence is outstanding. You could likely increase your site visits by simply focusing on SEO. Whatever products consumers search, your site should pop-up in top three. SEM is another area that can drive much more visits, thus loyalty to your brand.

Social Media side is clearly an issue you should consider improving. Your presences are fragmented and there are many discussions happening about you. Polarity is somewhat negative and there seems very little interaction from company side to engage in them. Facebook and Twitter are well behind competition and we can already see how people try to persuade others to move to ASDA etc.

Our company is specialized to manage both website and social media optimization and engagement. We could offer you any of the following packages:
- Facebook group consolidation and management into a proper dialogue channel 10k set-up and 5k monthly management fee
- Twitter consumer acquisition to reach 10k followers and then manage them. 10k set-up and 5k monthly management fee
- SEO keyword analysis, strategy and recommendation/execution 50k project
- SEM campaign management with promised cost per click model of 40 cents (you decide the scope)
- Overall digital strategy creation with concrete execution plans and details 10k monthly fee (you decide duration)

These are rough figures based on standard work we do. In case you are interested I can of course provide full break-down of costs on hourly level and quote other projects on the field of digital, including mobile application development.
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OK, that may have sound super simplified but for me it would work. I do not want to waste my time. So concrete figures and details assure that even if I do not start a project, I walk out of the room knowing so much more about my own business. I also know who was the guy who helped me to learn this which makes me feel I own him a chance when opportunity arises. If you do not believe me...try me :)

Heineken Italy Activation Milan AC Real Madrid

Sometimes, we need to surprise consumers in a positive way. Heineken took the brave approach and likely drove even some relationship wrecks by doing this. The ones who made the sacrifice, surely got their reward in the end ;)

Nice reminder of brand building in the new age

The Brand Gap

View more presentations from coolstuff.

3D video projections

Continue from nice video production of Nike, I would like to raise another point where video will change our lives. And no...I'm not talking about HTML 5 video which I also happen to love.

The latest development on Samsung 3D video shows nicely what future experiences can be created in OOH. Combining context (the architecture of the building) with the video production we can start to see very entertaining and surrealistic sites. Do not believe? Well check the video

Marketing Culture must change. USP is dead

We live in a fast pace world where technology superiority is lost in days. Whatever you create, someone else copies it. Similarly, we have marketing touch points…many of them…from atl to digital; from posters to games; from toilet sink ads to tattooed foreheads. It’s becoming more difficult to stand out.

Marketers are stupid. I mean, they all well educated, they know the theories well…they are just stupid when it comes to marketing. What makes them stupid is they forget their references. Most theories were written in 1970s. Since then the world has changed…so why wouldn’t marketing?

Now you likely start recalling all the latest books about web age, long tail, consumer is king etc. Yeah, they exist but still large majority of marketers use same tools and mechanics than they did a decade ago. So what is the dilemma marketers want to solve?

It all starts with the idea of problem and solution…oh, I love that. Let’s imagine a problem people may have so we could solve it for them. Wake up poop heads, majority of people could not care about the problems you are offering them
The second approach involves target segments…yeah, we are not humans but we are 35-year-old males, who like high heel shoes and want to express their individuality and superiority by wearing a pink tie in their forehead.

The third and well loved approach is differentiation…if we only are different from competition, people will select us. I hear this often when marketing people are searching ingredients to their brief to agency. Forget the fact all products look, feel, taste and smell the same…we will articulate why we are different and people will love us!

People have changed and marketing must too. Web has unleashed consumer awareness of products, their features and what people think about them. There is no need to invent artificial problems, put people to imaginary boxes or differentiate indifferent products.

Consumers need a solid base of facts, spiced with benefits and brand engagement on their own terms. They need exposure in the right context (place, time, event, and people) and easy access to the products. They want recognition from brands of their personal contribution and engagement, not marketing slogans. They expect response to their posts, not PR statements how the company is on track with their strategy. They love to be educated…without feeling they sit on the school bench…without being treated as a child.

I’m sure there is a place to old school marketing tactics…it works well with old school marketing channels…and broadcasting propaganda. Unigue Selling Points may well live there…continue to make money hungry media agencies happy.

For all the other places…there is social media collaboration and conversations…truth…honesty…and world peace

Agency versus Client Part 1

Whoever works in marketing knows that relationship between marketing organizations and their agencies is turbulent. Clients have the money...but they are (often) idiots; Agencies have the brains (sometimes) but they are forced to suck up the idiots. So here's a story about that cultural tension to solve

We have creative agency that has proven to produce good quality work when briefed well and given some freedom. They seem very flexible and like many agencies, worried about the fact that their client may walk out if they are not served well (makes sense)

We have one client that seems to belong mostly to the idiot category (purely invented for the sake of argument).
#1 They don't brief because there is not really time for it, so they ask agency to write the brief. When they review their own brief (created by the agency) they inform it's spot on. When it comes to budget - they approve it but would like to add 3 additional photo shoots. The original budget was already ridiculously tight (of course). Because client is always right agency decides to approve the extra, non-billable work and sucks it up.
#2 Second issue in this relationship is always travel costs. Agency has established their offices in all the wrong places, causing unnecessary travel. Not only that but agency dares to propose the client would travel to one of their locations as it would require 2 people to travel in stead of sending 7 people on their way. Client has forgotten that they awarded the agency in the first place for their central locations and good reach globally. They also make it clear that travel cost is not a number game...that is how many people travel. It's WHO needs to travel. Marketing manager of client clearly is more important than 7 creative people all together. Only exception to client rule is when he needs a haircut in this Metropolitan city...or when his wife needs to do some shopping. Then the agency location is just fine. Agency sucks it up...move people between countries to meet client needs...and make their own travellers to stay affordable, smoking and non-allergy free rooms
#3 Decision making must be the greatest tension. Sometimes the issue is that client doesn't make decisions...so there is no way of knowing how to proceed...only deadline has been decided and it was just brought forward. Sometimes it's the lack of commitment to stick with decision. Every decision or approval changes when work is shown to client's next level of management. Client has very arrogant...yet bunny like puppets who make themselves important until their managers state their views. Again, agency must tighten the upper lip. Final form of decision making conflict is the activist client (I'm afraid I belong to this client group). They write the copy text and say this is what I want...don't change this. Agency tells that copy-line is actually NOT following commonly understood grammar rules. This could be ignored by agency BUT whoever ridicules that ad when live...the agency will get the blame.

How to solve this? Should agency management take responsibility of managing client expectations, discuss the scope of work, agree travel policies and work with client to make improved decision making mechanism with clear change management rules?

Well, in this case the agency management takes the client to expensive dinner and hopes the operative people solve the problems...