Today is my last day at Mediacom.
It's my last day of running an account team, my last day media planning & buying and my last day within a big organisation.
Today is also new beginning.
As of Monday 29th June i will be joining the team over at The Population for what promises to be a bit of a radical change!
I started working in digital media in early 2003 when i joined a small start up search marketing agency based in a shoebox office situated above a carpark entrance, opposite a busy railway station in Surrey (UK).
Each time the carpark lever was raised to admit or discharge a car the loud, creaking, crashing noise would bring the office to a halt.
All conversations, both face to face and phone, were forcibly overpowered by the painfully slow rise and fall of the mechanical monster that ruled our working days....
Then there were the 'fast trains' which would come powering through the station at supersonic speeds shaking our desks and collapsing our flimsy filing systems within seconds, not to mention the foghorns that were sounded to announce their arrival (as if the minature earthquakes were not enough).
But apart from the noise, i do have fond memories of the shoebox.
Such as the hilarity that would ensue should someone want a toilet break (think Tetris but with human bodies and swivel chairs) and the team effort put into redecorating our 'environment' with a group shopping trip to Ikea to pick out a painting for our one bare wall.
After 6 months of success we upgraded from shoebox to stable-sized offices where we expanded from a team of 4 to 7. Now everyone had sufficient elbow room and we could go to the toilet without the need for others to abandon their tasks to aid us in our need for a synchronised exit (although anyone eating curry during the weekdays was not easily forgiven for it...)
For 2.5 years i watched the company grow from strength to strength and felt i had played a significant part in the achievements and advances we had made.
But alas, it was inevitable....London was calling.
So, with a feeling akin to chopping off a limb, i left for the bright lights of the City and i never looked back.
I joined a big full service agency within the digital department and called Carnaby Street my place of work and play.
I moved to Sydney late 2007 and continued working within a big media agency (Mediacom) as an account director across key finance and automotive clients. I worked with a wonderful team and learned a huge amount in a short space of time. I was also bitten by the social web bug and started to become interested in new communications strategies above and beyond what has always been done. Mediacom fully supported me in all avenues of interest and i was able to spearhead the social web movement internally with great success. My new interest drove me into research and i became a voracious reader of all new-media blogs, news and innovations. These new blogs led me to The Population and the rest, as they say, is history.
So now i'm back to a start-up agency from whence i came which is both comfortingly familiar and bizarrely nerve racking at the same time.
The Population, in my view, are at the leading edge of the digital space and openly embrace new solutions to traditional problems and non-linear thinking. To top it off they've got a great team of super-intelligent people.
So i'm switching from a big organisation in a high-rise in North Sydney to a team of 7 in a studio in Surry Hills.
I'm also leaving behind the comfort and process of a big company and downsizing to a non-heirarchal structure in a non-siloed environment.
It should prove to be a BIG change for me.
I'll miss Mediacom but the excitement of a new challenge is spurring me on....
So, naturally, i'm going to document it.
I am going to write a bit of an on-going journal about the differences between a big media agency and a small start-up strategy agency.
It will cover my personal experiences learning new approaches, being with a new team and it will hopefully de-bunk some of the smoke and mirrors which many people assume is part of a strategy agencies repetoire...(contrary to popular belief they don't all run on bravado...)
So Monday is my first day and i'll let you know how i get on!
Over and out.
Diary of a transition: New Beginnings
HSBC need to concentrate on customer segmentation....
WOW - thanks HSBC, i just have a one question...
Who or what are the Hawks and how or why should they be relevant to me?
On further investigation i have discovered that they are some sort of sports team (football, rugby?...i don't care).
This cements the fact that this is not relevant to me, in fact it's utterly irrelevant....I am not a sports fan whatsoever.
I would suggest that they start to do some customer segmentation to ensure that they hit an audience who actually gives a shit about the Hawks and start to become slightly more efficient with their EDM (and DM for that matter).
The sheer fact that they have mentioned my name in the email doesn't make it personalised or customised to me, in fact i would call it spam.
Just a thought.
Advertising doesn't create advocates
Buzzword #17,327: 'Advocacy'
Everybody talks about it, every brand wants it and every marketer claims to be able to deliver it.
But what is advocacy?
There thousands of differing definitions but specific to brands and consumers we can describe an advocate as:
A customer who has favourable perceptions of a brand who will talk favourably about a brand to their acquaintances to help generate awareness of the brand or influence purchase intent.
Sounds good right? What brand wouldn't want that?! Having a brand advocate is invaluable. Someone who will promote your products, personally recommend them to friends and colleaugues and who, in all likelihood, will be a repeat purchaser...
Therefore creating advocacy within your customer base is nirvana for all brands, and the best part is that nirvana is achievable, just not via one avenue.
Ad agencies, media agencies, social media consultants, PR executives and mediaowners are all spouting 'miracle grow' strategies for creating advocates for their respective clients.
To be honest, a few months back, i was spouting the same rubbish which went something like this: "social web", "jump in", "dialogue", "be part of the conversation", "creates advocacy" blah blah blah.....
Having actually stopped talking and started listening, learning and understanding i've realised that there is no 'miracle-grow' strategy for advocacy.
Advocates must be earned, and cannot be bought via advertising or by one or two online conversations on Twitter.
If we go back to the definition of advocacy we can break it down into what it truly means to be an advocate.
There are 3 key defined areas which are outlined below:
1). A customer who has favourable perceptions of a brand
2). who will talk favourably about a brand to their acquaintances to help generate awareness of the brand
3). or influence purchase intent.
Translated, the above points mean:
1). I like what the brand stands for, i understand their positioning and messaging and it is relevant to me and resonates with me
2). I like their products and the experiences i have had with the brand, so much so, that i am comfortable recommending them to friends
3). I would buy from them again as they are reliable and deliver on the brand promise they defined in point 1
So where does advertising fit in?
In my view, only really point 1.
We have the ability to convey what the brand/product is, what it stands for, what message we want to get across and where people see the brand and how often...
We do this via creative messaging, media placement, social web interactions and PR....
But to be clear here, we are not creating advocates, we are merely facilitating an initial connection, a lead or a sale.
We're only one third of the advocacy journey (i.e. we can't take them the whole way).
Points 2 and 3 are outside of the control and influence of advertising and/or marketing.
They are about the product or service itself.
Advocacy is built on the basis of a good experience and an experience can be had with multiple touchpoints, all of which can have a bearing on brand favourability.
Some examples are below:
Touchpoint 1: The website - is it easy to navigate and clutter-free with short forms and little demand for personal details?
Touchpoint 2: The shopfront - is it easily accessible with friendly staff, clear pricing and a simple purchase process?
Touchpoint 3: The call centre - are there short waiting times, easily navigated choices and helpful people to speak to?
Touchpoint 4: The product - does it meet expectations, is it good value for money and does it deliver on the original promise made by the advertising?
To create advocates, brands must deliver a good experience (preferably a GREAT experience) in all of the above areas plus advertising and marketing messages.
So who does this well?
Brands deliver on the above promises in varying degrees of success but perhaps one of the most accomplished in this area is Apple.
Apple deliver on all of the above at either a good or great level.
* They create innovative and exciting advertising and messaging which resonates with their core audience
* They have shopfronts which are seductive with big white spaces, funky music, fancy gadgets and super-helpful staff
* They have an easily navigated website which remembers you and your preferences adding a personalised, customised edge to your experience
* Their version of customer service is cheery, fast and individual
* Their products are leading edge, aesthetically pleasing and dependable
So they have brand advocates and a gold star from me.
Apple have achieved nirvana....but not via advertising and marketing alone.
They delivered a 360 degree brand experience.
Now lets take a look at CBA (Commonwealth Bank Australia)....
In early 2008 they released a daring new ad campaign, something which had never before been attempted by a bank in Australia. It recieved mixed reviews, but the point of the advertising was to push their new tagline: 'Determined to be different'
So the advertising said one thing but what about the other touchpoints?
Now CBA didn't go out will the sole purpose of selling more products (at least not overtly), they went out with a brand message which was to dictate who they were and what they stood for.
They didn't have a great track record when it came to customer service but then not many banks do....
With the new 'determined to be different' tagline there was a pressure to deliver on the new brand promise across all areas, otherwise the threat of empty words could result in more harm than good for CBA.
They didn't turn around their customer service overnight but they looked to 'determined to be different' as an aspiration which became an internal mantra for staff and, bit by bit, CBA delivered.
They altered their customer service, they changed perception and they achieved their goal of slowly creating advocates (or as many happy customers as they could considering they're a bank).
Once again, they didn't create these advocates solely through advertising.
They used advertising to position themselves but then carried through on the promise across multiple customer interfacing touchpoints.
Ultimately our job is as the initiator of interactions, we can also have a role in CRM but mostly we create and place messaging, however, the age old saying that "we can lead a horse to water but we cannot make it drink" is especially relevant here.
We can lead a potential customer to a brand but we can't force them to like the product, or buy it. We can't ask them to turn a blind eye to crappy customer service or to recommend a shitty, unreliable product to their friends.
I think we should reframe our promises of advocacy creation to our clients and start to put some of the responsibility back onto them.
We're marketers, not miracle makers.
Do you wanna be in my gang?
Today, a colleague of mine asked me for a recommendation on which blogs she should be reading to learn about social media and the social web.
As she's just getting into this space i wanted to make sure that i'm giving her good suggestions with easily digestable content which helps her to understand the space and the latest innovations as well as help answer any questions she may have.
......and i made a quite shocking realisation...
Why is this? For the simple reason that the blogs, the content and the authors are really quite cliquey in many cases.
We've been preaching about the decline of critical mass and the rise of niche, in-depth relationships between brands and consumers but i fear this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many of us now move in small 'social media' circles, spouting the same 'social media' arguments and lingo and we're losing touch with the outside world and what it means to be a strategist or a planner or a marketeer.
I, for one, am going to try and broaden out my content and make it more reader-friendly...
I may fail miserably but it matters to me that i keep an open mind and don't fall into the social web trap of running around in opinionated, ego-driven circles....
A brilliantly simple video about the strength of advocacy
This video is excellent.
It simplifies the process of the creation and value of brand advocates.
Show it to your colleagues, show it to your clients, show it to everyone.
What happens to your Myspace page when you die?
According to Yahoo Answers, the microchip in our heads turns it off!