“So what?”, you say…

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Well, sometimes we forget – the iPad was only launched in 2010 – just 3 years ago.
Now, just 3 years later, tablets are in 1 in every 3 Australian homes.

Given how big some companies/clients are, it can help put it in perspective that a lot of our clients aren’t anywhere near having their head around building for smartphones or tablets yet. When product cycles, or marketing plans, are in the range of 12 month-long…

Yet consumers are undoubtedly there, now and ever more in the very near future.

I thought it worth sharing 3 things that have drastically reduced the interruptions that email make into my working day.

• On MacBook: MailPlane – a Gmail interface. Has a few good features, but the best one is the easy way to turn on/off a “do not disturb” function.
• On iPhone: Gmail – turn alert style over to “none”. It means you won’t see the constant interruption on your lock screen of new mail, but can still easily see how many new msgs when you want to look at the unlocked screen.
• On both: Gmail’s new tabs. Turn them on now (under settings, when on the desktop browser) to easily handle social notifications and other bacn. (Don’t know what bacn is?)

These are projects that would particularly take my fancy. Think of it as a living wish list of things I’d like to do.

Some because they’re interesting intellectual exercise, some because they would raise the level of the industry, some because they are in specific areas that would result in impactful work for businesses.

I’ll update it periodically – adding to it, and marking the ones that come to fruition in some way.

If any of the below sound like things you & I should discuss in more detail, drop me an email.

Research :: on agency models

• Either to share publicly as a whitepaper, or to use internally for your own agency’s product development/strategy.
  • Why agency models? To start to formalise, and codify, all the experience and all the views, about the best way to structure a business, to best serve business, brand, and people.

Conferences :: that are about quality & depth

• Something along the lines of Defrag & Gluecon. These are in-depth conferences on concepts & tools & taking data & turning it into intelligence, & cloud/mobile/data specifically for developers, respectively.
• They are not just about attendance & revenue & soundbites, but about practionining, and detailed case studies, and so on.

Short events

• Curation of less formal events, similar to Firestarters from Neil Perkin & Google in the UK market. Their purpose is not to provide answers, but simply to stimulate the grey matter.
  • (I need a more complete description for this as a project type)

Data analysis

• Specifically, analysis of a gym’s membership base: namely around visit frequency, lapsed members, predicting end of memberships, etc. The output would be a testing programme of comms, with the ultimate goal being improved retention (and/or cross-sell, and/or improving member-get-member programmes)

Training

• Decoded Co-type training. Beginning to teach the basics of coding – the principles & the ideas – to snr mgmt, and suits, and suits, and media sales. Not to make them developers, but to make them more equipped to talk to developers in their respective organisations.
• Broad digital skills base: people have had me talk ad nauseum over coffees & in meetings about this – shape to be defined, but something that helps genuinely help raise the level of digital understanding in the marcomms (Melbourne) market.

But it’s only fair that when they do things right that I acknowledge that.

There are have been two examples from the past few days:

1. This B&T article where they have spotted that Airlink is no longer being used, and have publicly called Fairfax on it.
2. The comment on this AdNews article from editor David Blight on his own story, where he tries to help clarify the bigger context of his article/quote (scroll down to the bottom of the article for the comments).

They are the type that are heavy fwd’ers of industry news articles; the ones that think spending time sending 5 AllFacebook.com articles to the client is helping everyone out immeasurably.

From least to most value, below is the hierarchy of client information.
Want to be more useful & impactful to your client? Make sure you’re not falling all into the first bucket.

1. Product development / news  (“factual”)
2. Interdependencies of product development on other streams of work
3. Frameworks for thinking about same
4. Roadmaps/frameworks for strategy
5. Bringing strategy to life.

But an article in yesterday’s AdNews (read it here; possibly a subscription required) is an example of a different type of huge distraction.

Based on one single quote, probably taken out of context, it has taken up the time & energy, of agency heads quoted in it & agency staff who read it & discuss it.

It has taken the time & energy & focus, that should be being used to truly shape the industry in the mid-term, and help our clients in the short-term.

Below are 5 broad reasons for why someone needs to create ‘the retention agency’.

1. It is outcome or goal-led, not channel-led.

• ‘Channel neutrality’ is still a core element of any *good* marketing services agency (or comms planning team, if talking about a strategy function within a broader agency). This needs to continue to be the case, and baseing everything the agency does around a clear goal, achieves this straight away. It also straight away elevates you above many biases, and political issues and so on that are – knowingly or not – entrenched in existing agency models.
• It also helps you future-proof. Being goal-led the agency is not susceptible to any 1 particular media or channel shrinking in usage, or in favour, or in economic return. Businesses* will also always need to retain their clients.

2. It clearly, & strongly, differentiates you from the sea of competitive agencies

• It is a unique positioning, that defines what you care about compared to other agencies. And it defines it clearly, in a way that everyone from the marketing director to the customer service head to the CFO can immediately understand.
• It stands for something(s). What is that something? For one, that an existing customer has value.
• It lets you exploit the current buzz around talent types, of T-shaped (or pi-shaped) people. You can promote how you have T-shaped people as the bulk of your team. Why do I say this? Because for the agency to produce effective work, it will need all the various specialities, covered by people from differently skilled backgrounds, but smart people to tie it all together.

3. It sets you up to reasonable have a remit across many possible different parts of a brand’s business*

• Retention is affected by many different touch-points, when looking from a consumer perspective. This means as an agency, you have justification to go beyond just the brand’s advertising, or just their main website, or just their PR, or just their prospecting CRM programmes, or just their in-life marketing comms.

4. It also serves as a roadmap, both for how to build out your agency service offering, as well as for each client.

• When looking at what your agency service offering should be: start in the specific areas that the founding principals know best. But, from there, quickly spot where the lowest-hanging fruit, is around the next discipline to start offering. And build out your execution capabilities in that area(s).
• When building each clients’ roadmap: paint the overall vision for the high-level contacts (marketing director or business lead). But be able to do project work in the individual components, starting with where there’s no existing (competent) agency provider. Or where there is no defensive internal stakeholder.

5. It helps with recruiting the best and brightest agency talent

• It will be a clear thing to communicate to those strategy types who are sick of being told “great master plan, but that’s not your/my/our remit”
• It will be appealing to those specific discipline experts who want to see their work contribute to a bigger movement amongst the clients’ business

What do you think? Pipe dream & folly, or something worth pursuing? Drop me a line if you think we should make this happen.

* note the deliberate use of the term ‘business’ here, and not just ‘marketers’ or ‘advertisers’

I’ve assembled a Google Doc available for anyone to view that lists (where public) revenue and staff counts, as well as in some instances profit measures & client counts.

View the Google Doc here.

At the moment the two main sources are the AdNews Agency of the Year entries/issue, and the BRW Fast Starters 2013 list. (Both sources are public, albeit subscriber-based. Consider this list a literature review.)

I’ll add figures as I find them elsewhere (note the table makes it clear the source for each row, and therefore each figure). If enough people express an interest, I’ll make the Google Doc editable by all, but in the meantime if you’d really like have editing rights, send me email me with your Google account address: andrew@andrewpascoe.com

It’s where I grab various inspiration, quotes, and other things that grab my eye in all the reading I do.

Visit it here.

In days gone past, a planner (in agency-world) would rely on a mix of two things: past experience, and gut feel.

These days though, increasingly (good) planners are adding a third thing to the mix: data & figures. For some planners, they’re more about the data then the gut feel and past experience.

These days, it’s dangerous to assume that just because someone is good with numbers/data/Excel/analytics that they are an analyst. The chances are just as likely they’re a planner for the digital age.