Why Agency Brands Need To Hire Themselves In Order To Grow.

You ever hear the proverb about the Cobbler's children having no shoes? It follows that despite the prowess in shoemaking and repair, the cobblers children walk around barefoot because because there isn't time or attention paid to their needs. 

They say that the accountant often has the messiest financial situation and the home contractor lives in a fixer upper. Well, Let's look at agencies and consultancies in this same light. 

Pure Genius spray painted in red on concrete

You do great and important work for your clients. You harness the strategic, creative, production, execution and reporting talent in your shop to deliver genius and results every day. But when it comes time to do the marketing for your own brands, the results is lacking. Why is this? 

• Is it because you're too busy with client work?

• Is it because it's easy to put off? Like: "As soon as those two projects wrap up we'll focus internally" but projects keep rolling on in and you never get to it.

• Is it because you don't have the rights to use client case studies?

• Maybe you just haven't build a strategic plan like you do for clients EVERY DAY!

• Or is it because it isn't tied to immediate revenue?

Truth is that it is likely some combination of these things. But let me spin it this way for you. In this brave new world we're contending with, if you want to attract interest, win new business, and dare I say THRIVE, you can't kick this can down the road to another time

The word ‘Ideas’ written on a crumpled piece of paper

Here are a few thoughts for you, centered by this thought: Treat yourself like your most important client. Through this lens, is there really anything that you wouldn't do to make it happen? 

1. Know your audience and build a deep customer persona for them. What level are they? What are their problems? How might those problems be even more challenging now? Imagine that you are an agency with a focus on experiential marketing, how do prospects handle events or the lack of them right now? Where do they go to find solutions to those problems? How do they make decisions?

2. How Can you develop a POV and create all kinds of helpful, inspiring content that isn't real salesy? How can you look at the customer's purchase journey and think about what types of content might attract them. Or what types of content might get them interested in you. Even what kind of content might get them to ask for your help directly.

3. How can you go about producing content for these various purposes? You do it for clients all the time. Now you need to do it for your brand with your prospect customer as the target audience.

4. Deliver that content in different formats across the channels where your prospects spend both their professional and personal time. You never know when they are thinking about their challenges. Heck how many times have you heard people say that they do their best thinking in the shower... (that was not a suggestion by the way).

5. Take all the great work you've done for clients and turn them into stories that can attract the interest of prospects. What do you do if you don't have the rights to use the client case study? I've run into this many times. Ask the client for permission. They might really like the PR as well. Sometimes though, they will say NO. After all, what is the benefit to them? One thing I'd recommend is when you win a pitch and you're negotiating the terms of your relationship, request approval to use future case studies. Potentially even reduce their spend in exchange for this approval. I mean think about how valuable that proof of your work might be to you from a future revenue standpoint. Now you are able to give them value accordingly in exchange for this asset.

Various forms of gold from Credit Suisse on display

Another way to market yourself is to solve an industry problem, create a movie trailer and showcase it for that industry. That can draw attention and drive inbound requests for your counsel. Is there a possibility that a client will garner enough from your effort to go and solve the problem themselves? Sure that's possible. But let's not focus on the dubious ethics.  If that happens, publicly congratulate them and move on. They'll know and you'll rack up Karma credits...Yes I believe in Karma.

This is by no means a comprehensive action plan but it is a reminder that your agency brand should not be barefoot like the cobbler's kids. You have so much skill and talent in house but your brand needs to be on blast for the world to realize it!

BE HELPFUL. BE INSPIRING. BE HIRED

An Agency Growth Framework

This is an agency growth and business development framework for agency leaders looking to grow more steadily in a time of fewer retainers and more project work. The current situation calls for dedicated marketing and sales resources, inside or out of the agency, building brand, reputation, and pipeline. I present the agency growth framework in the hopes that it might prove useful to agency CEOs looking to grow their agencies. More content will follow that covers each area in more depth.

The Cobbler's Kids Have No Shoes - Agencies and Consultants Struggle to Market Their Own Brand

Agencies and consultancies spend so much time and effort helping grow their clients's brands but not nearly enough time on themselves. Bringing this subject to light and providing some simple tips to kickstart the thinking.

14 Characteristics of the Trusted Advisor

Based on the book The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, this is a valuable list for client-facing consultants, agency account teams, and SaaS customer success groups looking to increase their level of success serving and keeping clients.

Hey Retailers, Blue Pill or Red Pill?

So it's like Morpheus famously said in The Matrix "You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

As Gary Vaynerchuck @garyvee describes in his quick video on Toys R Us failing says retailers need to "Innovate or die". True and becoming more plain each day. So why then, does it seem like most retailers are taking the blue pill of status quo rather tackling the future as it comes to disrupt them?

Certainly there's a high cost to innovating. Thinking about what a brick & mortar location should offer in order to hedge for the future comes with a price tag. When you are squeaking out profit and quite likely reporting to shareholders that can daunting, though I'd argue less so that filing Chapter 11. It's past time to take the red pill and act!

See Gary's video for a quick hitting perspective on Toys R US and think about who the next retailer to file will be. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6319196930262077441

#Bluepillredpill #retail #disruption #getmagnetic

While you were watching Amazon-Whole Foods and Shake Shack

The mythical seventh wave was rolling through China in the form of Hema. Never heard of them? Alibaba and Hema are one in the same. So while Amazon was buying Whole Foods and Shake Shack has decided to go without cashiers, Hema has been testing the only slightly more distant future. 

According to the CNN Tech article by Sherisse Pham @Sherisse  'Hema shoppers have to download the store's app and link it to an account on Alibaba-affiliated digital payment platform Alipay. They can shop online and get fresh groceries delivered, or they can have the produce cooked by Hema chefs and brought to their home ready to eat.

Alternatively, shoppers can go to the physical store and buy goods in person at the cashless checkout counters. They can also get their groceries cooked into a meal on the spot (for carryout or eating in the store's food court).'

It will take a few minutes for the wave to get here and in the meantime, I guess the question then becomes whether retailers can learn to surf. 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/06/technology/alibaba-jd-amazon-online-groceries/index.html

Nordstrom - Hedging For The Future

What a novel idea. Solve for the future while the business is actually doing pretty well, and before the future happens to you.

What will get people out to the store of tomorrow (and I hardly mean that figuratively) vs. ordering 3 sizes of those pants online with free shipping and returning the ones that don't fit for free? Will they like a more 1:1 experience led by a stylist?  How about going shopping and not having to carry big bags around in favor of having everything show up at home a day or two later? Are adjacent services necessary or just an expense and if so, to what extent. 

The mere act of doing this should allow Nordstrom to learn and adapt as part of the future rather than as a page in history. Kudos to them!

Start Up Culture and the Hamster Wheel

If you look at startup culture, you immediately notice that demand creation and conversion are synchronized into the everyday of all staff. This likely has much to do with the fact that there are often but a handful of staff building the business, wearing multiple hats across sales and marketing. Surely classic organizations can and should take a page from this playbook, collapsing silos and focusing on the end consumer need but it doesn't happen much. Yet. 

It seems that many traditional marketing organizations are prisoners of deeply embedded institutional behaviors, silos and annualized expectations. Consider the marketing team who has a calendar of key retail initiatives each year and an entire portfolio of brands all cued up to deliver unique programs against them. In the case of packaged good for example, is sales really meant to go into a retailer and say "I've got 4 brand programs all with the same seasonal moment in mind that I'd like you to support"? When asked "Why do you do it this way?" one marketer in the beverage space responded "This is how we do it every year because it's what sales and retailers expect".

What retailers actually want, in order to provide their support, is strong demand for your product and a decent margin to boot. If you drive people to stores to in search of your product, the retailer will feel compelled to carry it no matter the time of year and you will have a much easier road to closing the sale. 

When challenger brands create social content, show up at events or, dare I say, air a TV ad, it's almost always doing double duty of consideration AND conversion. Isn't all their marketing a form of shopper marketing? Isn't it attempting to make a sale?

Marketing's job should be to create enough value for people across their purchase journey from trigger (I need new jeans) to searching (what styles are in, what do people say about them, and are they for people like me?) to purchase (these are the right ones at a fair price) to experiencing (great wear and hold up over time) to advocating (tell everyone about my great experience) to re-purchasing (I need new color or style of these).

Being the brand people want you to be doesn't have as much to do with a calendar of programs as it does with deeply understanding what people want from a product like yours. Demonstrate that you can make their life a touch better if they choose to bring you into their world, and then remind them along the way, why it was a great decision. 

Perhaps spending a bit more time on:

1. What triggers cause people to begin looking for a product?
2. How do they go about finding a solution?
3. What influences their search along the way?
4. How do they determine value for a particular product type?
5. What, if any, barriers exist at the moment of purchase that might prevent a sale (store navigation, knowledgeable staff, competitor pricing etc.)?
6. Once they've purchased, how do they feel about the product?
7. Do they talk about it with friends?
8. What is the length of time to purchasing another product in this category?

There's little doubt that getting off the "but this is how it's always done" hamster wheel is really hard but if Amazon's purchase and immediate changes at Whole Foods showcase anything, it's that business as usual might be the biggest threat. Just ask the other grocery retailers. #actlikeachallenger

Symphony vs. First Grade Music Class

I'm always amazed and inspired by a large orchestra's ability to play a symphony? So many instruments of different kinds telling a story through music. I then reflect on the few years I played instruments in elementary school. My "speciality" was the clarinet. When our music teacher could actually get us all to play at the same time, the sound was at best uncoordinated. There were a few talented kids but their talent was lost in the din. 

As a marketer I feel like the metaphor applies quite nicely. The pressure for marketing to be effectiveness and efficiency optimized has never been heavier. Yet the effort is often largely uncoordinated and yields questionable results that are hardly ever wrapped up into a solid post mortem. Not uncommon to hear are things like "Our viral video traveled the world 3 times during the timeframe and picked up some awards but our sales remain down". Or, "our sales were way up thanks to the sales team but once the promotion period ended, we sunk to below pre-promotion levels". 

Within marketing departments, why are functions still separated between people who deal in advertising, media, activation, shopper and dare I say digital? Worse, often the budgets are all broken up between these micro teams. Why, on the agency side, why do we still see RFPs and briefs that call out Above The Line (ATL) and Below The Line (BTL)? 

Why don't more marketers think about consumers holistically? In a recent conversation I heard: "that's really a shopper issue. We're focusing on consumers with this brief". Is it not the entire marketing team's mission to sell a product or service to an intended audience? What prevents this? Is it organizational design? Bonus structures?

The old adage 'measure twice, cut once' seems appropriate here and the ability to mine for and make use of information/data has never been more present. Let's spend the time/effort/money on the front end to truly understand the your consumers (who on occasion also buy stuff). Understand what works, what doesn't, and where your product or service can better their lives. Consider the following examples:

• Why don't party hosts put the same thought and energy into cocktails as they do for meal planning?
• Why is family trip planning actually more painful now that we don't use travel agents?
• Why doesn't grocery home delivery scale?
• What are the steps between realizing you want/need a new car and actually buying one? 

We can gain keen insight into the consumer/shopper journey, the steps consumers go through and the potential points of influence along the way to purchase. This allows us to really focus on what matters most to people (defined as consumers and shoppers) and how to best connect with them. 

Then it falls upon marketing departments to coalesce around the MOST important opportunities and make their ideas brilliant and coordinated. Hard to do when the wind instruments are doing their thing while strings are playing something else.  

Is your marketing team playing like an orchestra or a 1st grade music class? 

To Staff Or Not To Staff...The Agency Conundrum

Building out a team to service clients these days is fraught with peril. In this age of communication proliferation when everything is possible and indeed an option, how do you staff appropriately when the budgets/retainers are finite?

How many different types of potential execution/production skills might be necessary? What type of tech do you need? UX perhaps? Even in the core creative team there's a certain diversity that can be necessary now. 

It's interesting that some agencies have taken the stance with clients of developing the strategy & idea state upfront with the promise of execution through network of contractors. Perhaps there's a negative topline implication to this but conversely I believe there's efficiency to be found in the bottom line given the flexibility of an 'at will' model. 

7-Eleven Slurpees and Detroit

My hats of to you 7-Eleven. Well played. The Faygo flavor was some stroke of genius as well. Power to the shopper!!