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Model schmodel!

So here we are, six months into launching our "new model" agency. After a couple of other new agencies have launched saying pretty much what we said when we launched we began to wonder if there really is a new model? 

Maybe the differences in agencies has nothing to do with new models or old models. Maybe it has to do with the evolution of smaller companies who become larger. It seems to us that new agencies launch with passion and an "us versus the universe" mentality, which as a newer shop fighting to thrive, I can tell you that you need to survive. 

For us, it's all about the creativity, the work, the innovation and the passion. As a newer shop without a large management structure it's easier for us to be innovative. When we want to go do something, we just do it. When a larger agency wants to do something innovative, people have to meet about it. Reports have to be made. Boardroom battles have to be waged. Money has to be made. 

Maybe this is the real difference in models. At one time, most agencies were small, hungry, innovative and passionate. Then, at some point in their existence, this shifts. They become financial organizations, often with shareholders or holding companies to which they report. 

At the beginning, every agency, no matter what they say, is just a collection of passionate people trying to do their best. They almost all have the lofty goal of making a difference. So the new model for us isn't about interactive, or digital, or non-traditional or any other "buzzword du jour". 

Our new model isn't a new model at all. It's the only model. People working together to do their best. Hopefully that's where we'll always be. I'll let you know when I buy an Aston Martin.

Here's some proof of what we call Return on Involvement.

I read this today on the Marketing and Innovation Blog. ExpoTV has done some pretty compelling research about the power of engaging people in an online conversation. Here at HQvB, we think that creating online communities for people to get involved with brands is key to marketplace success. 

But that's not to say there's not a role for what people call "traditional advertising". There is. We think the best use of traditional advertising is to point people to these communities. To get the ball rolling on a bigger brand idea that involves people, and then let them use their own social network to spread the word. 

I had great success a coupe of years ago at my last agency when I did this for a campaign for the Canadian Tourism Commission and Toyota. We used TV to get the ball rolling, for a just a few weeks, and then let people who we got involved in the online community use their social networks to get others involved. It was a huge success. Here's more proof that this thinking works: 

Consumers Itching to Talk to Brands 

by: Matt Rhodes 

"A new study from ExpoTV shows that 55% of consumers want an ongoing dialogue with brands. The study investigates how brands and consumers interact, and in particular how consumers want brands to engage them. And the results are exciting. In addition to the 55% wanting an ongoing dialogue, 89% of respondents said they would feel more loyal to a brand if they were invited to take part in a feedback group. These results mirror our own experiences, where involving people in a true feedback process has positive impacts on loyalty and advocacy. "

Read the full article here

This video sums up exactly how we feel about the ad industry. And why we started a new vision.

Inspiration, anyone?
by geertdesager

Ever wonder why your agency charges outrageous fees and commissions?

Maybe this article from Ad Age about the Cannes Festival gives a new perspective. Not since the heady days of the eighties have agencies reveled in this kind of excess at their clients' expense. We here at HQvB wonder what the total would be if you added up all the parties, drinking, yachts, penthouses and other associated costs with these self-indulgent masturbatory ad events? 

It's definitely time for a new vision. Here's an edited version of the article.

Cannes Can: No Recession on Riviera Economy Be Damned, Creatives, Marketers Set to Throng Big Ad Festival 

By Laurel Wentz Published: June 16, 2008 CANNES, France (AdAge.com) -- 

Skyrocketing gas prices, credit crises, procurement officers: none of these can stop the ad-world extravaganza that is Cannes. This year's festival will be the biggest ever, complete with more entries, more delegates (especially more marketers), more agencies planning beach bashes or lavishly catered parties, and an even bigger presence -- and yacht -- for Microsoft. 

Somewhat surprisingly, Americans aren't deterred by the weak dollar that has pushed delegate fees above $3,000 and room rates at the beachfront hotels such as the Majestic and Carlton to close to $500 a night. Mr. Thomas estimated up to 800 of this year's 9,000 or so attendees will be from the U.S., up from almost 700 last year. 

Even agencies not known for their Cannes parties, such as Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Fallon and Avenue A/Razorfish, are throwing bashes. Lowe has a penthouse, and Tribal DDB is borrowing Yahoo's. 

On Thursday night alone, there's the Dentsu sushi party, cocktails on London agency CHI's boat and a Havas-sponsored Craig David concert at the Carlton after "portal Terra's late-night party at Pierre Cardin's lavish villa hanging over the ocean." Before-beach parties will be hosted at the Carlton by Young & Rubicam and on a stretch of sand Publicis has branded La Plage Publicis. 

Don't forget the hot-ticket USA Today dinner for the U.S. judges (if you don't have a ticket for that one yet, you aren't invited). And Thursday isn't even the big party night (that would be Friday). There are even a few new venues, such as the eccentric but cool boutique 3.14 Hotel, where each floor is a different continent and Goodby is doing cocktails. 

Passion can be the key to performance, says the Globe & Mail.

In the Report on Business today there's an article about Biovail's Eugene Melnyk's bid to take back the company. It goes on talk about how many corporations do much better when the entrepreneur who started the company comes back. Bombardier is another example cited. 

"...passion, and it isn't something you can measure by checking a box. But it happens to be essential. A large shareholding by management - skin in the game - might be the most important governance policy of all." 

We couldn't agree more. 

How is a group of managers ever going to have more passion for building a company than the people who founded it in the first place? They won't. 

We think it extends past that. How is a group of people who work at a large agency, with all the departmental in-fighting, the politics, the financial targets set in New York or London, the posturing, the careers planners, ever going to be able to put more passion into their clients business than a group of people who have struck out on their own to chase a dream?

Something to replace awards as a measure of creativity.

We read this in AdAge today. The idea of cultural penetration has been around for a while in advertising. But the suggestion that measuring it and using CPU, Cultural Penetration Units as a measurement of creativity over awards seems particularly appealing to us. 

Why? 

Because cultural penetration tells you that what you're doing is hitting a nerve with your audience and that the campaign idea is effective. Awards tell you that a bunch of "hipper than thou" creative people think your work is cool. I'll take the public any day. After all, that's what we're paid for. 

In any case, here;s the article: 

CPU: A Unit of Measurement for Both Creatives and Marketers Case in Point: Goodby's 'TCOBO' Spots for the NBA Playoffs 

By Teressa Iezzi Published: May 26, 2008 

What's the measure of creative greatness? Awards are OK. But more and more, real success can be measured in CPUs: cultural-penetration units. ROI-obsessed marketers buy into all kinds of made-up metrics; this one is at least a less arbitrary indicator of business success, and it's one that both shrewd advertisers and creative types can get behind. 

CPUs are an amalgam of a range of brand-creativity feedback mechanisms: internet views and parodies, talk-show/ national-news/entertainment-show mentions, likelihood of awareness from siblings/aunts/parents (you know, like when everyone watched spots), and other indicators. 

How does a campaign pile up the CPUs? A recent push from Goodby Silverstein & Partners touting the NBA playoffs provides us opportunity to study a high-CPU brand initiative. "There can only be one" launched in April and immediately garnered acclaim inside ad circles. The spots feature a simple split screen filled with half the faces of two basketball stars -- forming, effectively, one superfamous, somewhat distorted visage. The pairings cover a who's who of the sport -- LeBron James and Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash, Kobe and Shaq. They speak, in unison, of solemn sports things -- above all, victory. The spots close with a super that reads, "There can only be one." They proved simple, fresh and memorable in a tough category. 

But Goodby's ads were only the beginning. "TCOBO" went on to the kind of cultural notoriety marketers literally can't pay for. The campaign's CPU rating spiked when Time magazine reinterpreted its conceit on a recent Clinton/Obama cover. Other imitators followed -- "SportsCenter," Adam Sandler (to promote his upcoming film) and, of course, YouTube enthusiasts. The best tribute to date is a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit that also offered an Obama/Clinton pairing but with character-revealing out-of-sync dialog added.

 

So how and why does it happen? Why do the media and the public make a campaign their own? One of the effort's architects, Goodby Executive Creative Director Jamie Barrett helps us break it down. 

First, a bit of luck on the campaign itself. The original tag idea was "Who wants it more?" Turns out the agency couldn't use it. Whew. From a list of other options, "TCOBO" leapt out. (Oh, and the odd grammatical construction? Barrett says that was "just the way it came out of our heads. 'There can be only one' felt a little less colloquial or a little too melodramatic. 'There can only be one' just felt better." If you're a fan of the '80s cult movie "The Highlander," you may disagree.)

 A great directing team (Dayton Faris) made the spots sing, as did a good client in the NBA ("They embrace good ideas, they help make them better and they help make them real," Barrett says). Barrett says he "can't pretend that we thought we had anything other than a good ad campaign" but identifies some of the reasons for the monster cultural penetration. "For one thing, it's dead simple, so YouTubers and 'SportsCenter' and 'SNL' and others can easily take it and parody it and play with it," he says. "For another thing, it features a lot of cool people. It's not that often you get Kobe or Shaq or LeBron inches away from the camera, staring you down and speaking from the heart for 30 seconds. It's oddly intimate." 

That simplicity seems to be at the heart of many campaigns that hit big culturally, but there are many other, often intangible factors. For the best agencies, aiming for cultural uptake is nothing new. But what's key here is that creatives are beginning to care more about CPUs than awards, and that can only be good news for marketers.

Does your ad agency's strategic planning process add real value?

After more than a decade of going to agency planning meetings and waiting endlessly for creative briefs, I've come to the conclusion that ad agency planning processes do more harm than good. Why? Because the process is more about "crafting a document" than it is about solving problems or identifying opportunities.

Why not just sit down with your agency and spell out what the issue is. INstead of going through a long, drawn-out process, why not ask them to come back with solutions, simply spelled out? In the midst of World War 2, Winston Churchill asked his admiral of the navy to, on one side of one sheet of paper, give him the state of the Royal Navy and outline his plan for winning the war.

If you can't spell things on one piece of paper, you probably don't have a good handle on what you need to do, was the thought. And we here at HQvB agree. We're hired to look at things differently. we're hired to proactively identify opportunities, and come to our clients with insightful solutions.

We're not hired to make documents, meetings and reports.

Apparently, we're not the only ones that think so. Here's what Nancy Vonk, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy Toronto and winner of the Grand Prix at CAnnes last year had to say about this recently in Creativity:

"The starting point for any project should be media-neutral and ideally begins as soon as the client's problem or opportunity presents itself. Screw the 'brief.' I see that piece of paper, weeks or even months in the making, as a giant speed bump between the agency and a great idea. Just tell us the problem and let us have at it. The 'duh' here is that agencies have to stop behaving like ad agencies. We can be seen as our client's best possible problem solvers for any creative solution they may need. And that can include ideas for anything from new products to how to improve working conditions for farm workers who grow the cotton for the fashion brand's clothing. Then there's the need to be proactive. Most clients have opportunities and problems that haven't even occurred to them but could be brought forward by the agency, always with a solution attached."

When you look at it this way, you begin to wonder what value those armies of account people creating documents and meetings at your agency are really offering your company. Heck, even senior execs at those agencies don't think they're offering much value.

What Nancy thinks is the way to go is hard for agencies to accomplish, as most of them, including her own, work on an outdated model of selling units of time. Which is why so many people get involved in any given project. And why it takes so long to draft those documents she talks about. It's how the agency makes money. It's how they feed their machine.

At HQvB, we've traded in this old notion for a model based around the valuation of our solutions. It allows us to focus on what we, and Nancy, think is the important part of the business, solving problems in creative ways.

Advice for young creatives going to Portfolio Night

The creative partners here at HQvB have been asked to join other leading creative directors and pass our wisdom, experience and knowledge to the next generation of advertising creatives. Since we only have a few minutes with each, I thought I would pass on some advice here:

1. Don't get bitchy when a client turns down you first idea. Some of the biggest awards I've won have been created on the second round after I've been pushed past the first round ideas.
2. If you want a job, nothing stands out lie a really well done, visually interesting long copy campaign. Whether you're a writer or an art director, nothing says you can craft work like a great long copy ad.
3. It's the new digital world and you're supposed to be on the cutting edge of it. I've seen too many books full of visual pun print ads. Why not show the CD you're meeting with that you can think cross-platform with a cool digital ida that uses traditional media to steer people to it.
4. Don't try to be cool Just be yourself. People like you, so don't try to BS.
5. Have a good answer for "what ads out there currently do you like?" Just about every CD asks this question, but rarely do you hear a good answer. It shows you're paying attention to the industry and are a student of the business.
6. If you're a writer, do some radio. Make it funny. Radio is really hard and if you can prove yourself on this, then you'll go places.
7. Don't show any ads with prices, starbursts, or "..." at the end of headline. Just don't, they all suck.
8. Have fun. This is supposed to be fun.
9. Lastly, have you're parents and friends insult you for a couple of weeks. This will toughen your skin up for the criticism you'll get from a good CD. It may not be in the job description, but taking criticism well is something all CDs look for.

The advantage of starting new.

This is from an article in the New York Times. It talks about how hard big agencies are finding it to change to the new reality of our world. I got me thinking. One of the reasons why it's sometimes an advantage to start a new company is that in doing so you force yourself to create a model that suits the reality of today. Most agencies were created to work well in another reality dominated by traditional media. So it's their DNA. It's tough to suddenly your change your DNA. Which is why the dinosaurs dies out. If they could have changed their DNA, they would have survived on.

Lee Clow thinks the answer is to hire young people. We don't think so. What good is hiring young people if you stick them into a model designed for another time?

Which is why we think we have an advantage in today's digitally dominated media world. Our company has started there. And so we're creating a model that suit the new reality.

Here's a bit from the article:

LIKE Cher in the movie “Moonstruck” ordering Nicolas Cage to “Snap out of it!” — and slapping him across the face to emphasize her point — speakers at an advertising conference urged the industry to stop wallowing in self-pity and get on with the challenges ahead.

“We should just stop talking about what was,” Tom Carroll, president and chief executive at TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, said here on Tuesday at the start of the leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

“It’s like driving in the fog,” said Mr. Carroll, who is also the chairman of the association, known as the Four A’s. “You’re not sure what’s ahead of you, but you have to keep driving.”

Mr. Carroll acknowledged that it would be hard work to “change the way we do our business,” but called it a necessary response to the profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape.

“All industries recalibrate themselves,” Mr. Carroll said, illustrating his point with a rhetorical question, “How’d you like to be in the CD business?”

Mr. Carroll’s tough-love talk was echoed by a colleague, Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative at TBWA, who in wearing onstage his trademark garb of a T-shirt, jeans and sandals was perhaps the most casually dressed speaker in the 90-year history of the conference.

“Stop whining,” Mr. Clow told the estimated 380 attendees. The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.

“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”

A revolution is upon us. Which side are you on?

I read this article on FutureLab's blog today. Very compelling.

Social Media Biggest Shift In Marketing Strategy Since Television?

by: Karl Long

Hyperbole? I don't think so. I believe that social media is reshaping the business landscape and is changing, or requiring change from every aspect of the business, from business strategy, to product development, to marketing, to human resources (hey, even Microsoft is taking notice see this FT article "A revolution is taking shape").

The Newcomreview.com just posted on a report from TNS media intelligence/Cymfony that found 50% of Marketing Executives Believe Social Media Is a "Vital Component" of Corporate Communications, that's a pretty huge shift if is really representative of marketers across the board.

I really like the way they seperated between "wait and see" folks who are just dipping their toe in with social media and and "revolutionaries" who have embraced the change.

The survey reveals that the early adopters ("Revolutionaries") are more advanced in their understanding and execution of social media marketing initiatives than more cautious marketers ("Wait-and-Sees"). First, nearly five times as many Revolutionaries are already implementing social media in their organizations and three times as many Wait-and-See companies are only at the learning stage. In addition, Revolutionaries are far more optimistic about the future of social media with 81% saying it will grow in significance over the next five years. Only 33% of the Wait-and-Sees agreed with this outlook.

When asked about how they would use social media to influence their marketing initiatives, Wait-and-See companies put more emphasis on using social media for new types of marketing campaigns such as viral marketing and videos, while Revolutionaries focus more on listening to consumer and bloggers' points-of-view. One area where they were in accordance was that both Revolutionaries (95%) and Wait-and-Sees (60%) are eager to connect with other colleagues to study consumer feedback and learn from
In other words the wait and see folks are still hooked into the "campaign" big bang fire and forget model, and the revolutionaries are "participating in the conversation" and building deeper relationships with their customers. Hmm, I wonder what has a better ROI.

So which one are you? Wait and see? or a revolutionary?