Who is in control of your brand?

New Media Beers (#NMBMelb) is a low key get together for anyone interested in digital, online or mobile to catch up.

The event’s all about getting together, talking, networking and drinking. Designers, SEO, Recruiters, Developers, Games, Journalists, PR, eBusiness, Media – anyone is welcome.

No formalities, name tags, speakers or sponsors.

Next Event Details

Date: 9th April 2010
Venue: Lagerfield, Crown Casion
Time: 5:30pm-10:00pm

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This event was started in 2009 by myself, Zac & Lucio.

It’s been some weeks since my last blog post, all I can say for myself is within 2 months my team has doubled in size from 2 to 4 and two more are in the pipeline… So I’ve been busy. Oh, and I’ve started doing some posts at the Visual Jazz Blog.

Back to the point at hand: Can digital agencies LEAD planning & creative?

It’s no new debate, however, I think it’s still unclear how it will all fall. Two opposing articles on AdAge argue for and against the topic.

Jacques-Herve Roubert summarises his views nicely:

Perhaps the synergy and balance between exploitation and exploration is off kilter for digital agencies, but more and more we’re starting to see the agency structure itself change with new hires in technology and social media. And marketers are noticing:

• According to Media magazine, AKQA was named the lead agency for Nike India earlier this year.
• Precor named Ascentium its agency of record in October 2009. According to Forrester’s Q2 2009 Interactive Agency Wave, Ascentium “received the highest client satisfaction scores in this year’s review.” The assignment with Precor includes strategic planning and execution of all offline and online campaigns.
• McAfee hiring Tribal DDB as its agency of record in 2008. This assignment included all TV, print, outdoor, and digital.

Jacques-Herve’s post is in response to the opposing view earlier last year by Ana Andjelic

If digital agencies excel at exploration, traditional agencies thrive on exploitation. A traditional agency is risk-averse, accountable and systematic. It knows its business inside-out. It knows its clients’ businesses and executes campaigns reliably. Its people hang out with the CMOs. A typical traditional agency has decades of experience.

This, too, comes at a cost. A traditional agency, organized around exploitation, ends up doing the same thing over and over again. For every marketing challenge, their solution is “better creativity.” This is not surprising: If an agency spends all its time making sure that everything goes efficiently, that leaves it with little time to experiment. And then, even if it wanted to do things differently, it would be met with its own organizational inertia.

In my opinion they’ve both got valid points, however, having the name Jacques-Herve Roubert makes him sound just that little bit more intelligent.

In all seriousness, I’ve seen media, digital & traditional agencies all work in various magical and wonderful ways together, and sometimes pretty poorly, I believe some traditional agencies will adapt, some digital agencies will become more strategic, media agencies will continue to grow in size and more nimble strategic media agencies will appear on the scene. At the end of the day, the advertiser has a big say in who leads who, sometimes they’ll organise their agencies based on what’s right & logical, sometimes they’ll do it based on what they’ve done before.

Wow! On the surface I thought Paul Boutin was a guy with a new spin on something, then I realised he was a bitter ‘old media’ man.

…Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge….

Paul works for Wired, and clearly he/they don’t understand the world of ‘new media‘ (not really new) based on an article I read from the 20th of October.

It reads like a bit of a rant, hissy fit and general garbage that makes no sense. But of the key points he covers, which are mostly accurate, it show’s that things have changed, not DIED!

It’s in human nature to be attracted to drama, and polarisation is one of the best ways to create more drama than Bold and the Beautiful… (maybe not too difficult)

It’s Paul’s job to create attention, readership and reach, so WIRED can sell advertising dollars – doesn’t that sounds like a traditional media mindset?

Matthew Wingram sarcastically responds

Wow — that’s pretty persuasive, isn’t it? You can’t miss with a great environmental metaphor like that. I guess I had better stop blogging then.

and Bob Warfield comments

Blogs won’t really be over until there is another medium where people can express themselves in a little longer format than Twitter that’s as easy as blogging.  That’s not to say it won’t improve.  There is a lot to be done to further evolve blogging platforms.  A lot is underway already in terms of facilitating the conversation that is comments, for example.

I disagree with Bob, as its not about the technology – humans, by nature like connect in different ways, we still watch TV, listen to radio and have coffee (in person remember that?)… Medium’s don’t DIE, they simply change.

Part of Seamus McCauley’s post wrap’s up my post well

This is really just the old Radio Will Kill Books, TV Will Kill Radio argument – “oooh look, a shiny new thing. Everyone will use the shiny new thing and stop using the thing we had last week, and here are two (two!) whole examples of moderately well-known people doing just that very thing so it must be true for everyone”.

Just got off the plane from Melbourne to Adelaide and realized that there are 9 people watching each TV screen. The airline knows lots about those people and which seat they’re sitting in.

Imagine the level of targeting and control you could have to deliver ads to specific people throughout the flight.

Just a thought. Just needs some smart technology and a good business partnership.

I use Twitter as a news service, its all about in-the-minute, you check in every now and then, look back a couple of pages then move on.

search.twitter.com is great for market research on your brand or category…

Have to agree Mitch, the uptake of Twitter is absolutely tiny… once you’re in it it seems big and busy.

Traffic has tripled (according to Hitwise http://www.hitwise.com/news/au200809.html) to 0.015%… although  of overall internet traffic its like a drop in the ocean.

Based on this blog (http://twitterfacts.blogspot.com/2008/02/first-state-of-twitosphere-in-australia.html), that would mean total users is up to around 9,000… 0.4% of Australia’s population…

All considered, its a great by the minute news service for me