Can Madison Avenue step up to the social plate?

2011-03-01T15:12:16-08:00

At MediaPost's Online Media, Marketing and Advertising (OMMA) Global Conference yesterday, the website's Editor-in-Chief Joe Mandese led a panel discussion about whether ad agencies are positioned to "tackle the opportunities and challenges" of social media.

At issue was whether the big guys can stave off competition of specialist agencies - something the industry failed to do during the first stages of the digital revolution which witnessed the birth of pure-play digital agencies and the created a major fragmentation in the way that clients' marketing and advertising needs were managed.

Moderator

Joe Mandese, Editor in Chief, MediaPost

Panelists

Bant Breen, CEO, Reprise Media

Marita Scarfi, CEO, Organic

Joshua Spanier, Director of Communication Strategy, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Antony Young, CEO, Optimedia International U.S., Inc.

Play nice!

Antony Young argued that agencies must partner to adequately navigate through the social space - whether that is with their clients or other agencies.

“Social media isn't just this land grab that one agency ought to own. Everyone should contribute to how to expand social platforms. One important thing to not do is to say 'this belongs in one agency's court'. Every agency should bring a social prospective to their discipline.”

In regards to whether it is the agency's or the brand's role to manage the presence in social media, Young thinks clients and all their partners all have a role. “Everyone's got to bring a social lens to their role in communications – it shouldn't sit with one person or department.”

Marita Scarfi agreed that social is pervasive within an organization. “This is not just a marketing issue. This is a sales issue. This is a retail channel issue. It touches every part of the organization. We as a single agency can't solve all those problems...You have to partner. You need to know what the best strategy is and then partner with others [on behalf of] your client.”

Learn from the past

Big agencies were slow out of the gate in terms of integrating digital into their core offerings. Many struggled - and still do - with how to fit digital into their corporate structure and processes. I also believe that many agency teams become myopic and spend too much time focusing on the immediate needs of their clients, or the brief that just crossed their desk, rather than spending (unbillable) time learning about new technologies and trends that impact their industry.

“If you look at the creative agencies, they were slow to jump into the digital world. That's why a lot of digital agencies found their footing,” Young pointed out.

Scarfi feels that “it was a big mistake for agencies to separate media and creative into separate agencies...We shouldn't separate media and creative - they inform each other too much.”

Young countered that “collaboration is important [between media and creative agencies]…but you don't have to be sitting in one building.”

Challenges

Brands face more challenges than just figuring out how to manage social media internally (covering the needs of sales, customer service, marketing, etc.) and how to manage their marketing programs across sometimes multiple agencies.

With so many people trying to get a piece of the pie, and everyone from their customer service reps to Board members asking why the brand hasn't tried tactic XYZ with the latest flavor-of-the-month social media channel, brands need the confidence to stay the course.

“Brands have to be fanatical about sticking to their strategy and plan,” noted Joshua Spanier.

Scarfi agreed. “You must start with your brand experience. A lot of tactics get out there and it just makes things worse.”

Creating the right content is a challenge facing agencies.

“Creatives today are not good at coming up with long-form programmatic ideas," according to Spanier. "They are trained in short forms [banners, etc]. That is a challenge for creative agencies.”

“Long-form content is really key to social. That is the big shift for most of us...You have to understand that it's a relationship more so than it ever has been,” added Scarfi.

It's complicated

So CAN the big agencies integrate social? Joshua Spanier's opinion sums up the agency point of view nicely: “It's so complicated, we don't need more silos.”

Photo credits:
Lousy photos taken with my iPhone.
It's Complicated image courtesy of Wikipedia.

. You must start with your brand experience. A lot of tactics get out there and it just makes things worse.

Social media over 30

2011-02-16T16:35:19-08:00

In response to my blog post “OMG! Can only young people do social media? The Levi's Guy thinks so”, I got a lot of feedback from people in the field who are (gasp) over 30.

At a Social Media Week panel, Levi's Social Media Marketing Manager advocated putting young digital natives at the center of a brand's social media efforts.

While a few thought that a brand’s social media team should include people of all ages, some thought age should not be a factor at all.

What’s age got to do with it?
“Age has nothing to do with it,” according to Candace Kuss (@CandaceKuss), Interactive Creative Planner at Hill & Knowlton.

“Digital native is a lazy term. Handling issues in the real world is actually quite an edge when things heat up online. At my agency, we advise clients that the right Community Manager is one that naturally exhibits the same personality and values of the brand itself."

"To me age ain't nothing but a number," added Mike Street, (@streetforce1) a Senior Digital Strategist at Syndicate Media Group.

"I want people with experience, who can work outside of the box, and who love the digital space...Age has no effect on experience.”

The dangers of inexperience
"Too often we have placed in the hands of the relatively inexperienced too much responsibility and the end product suffers for our clients," reported Global Marketing Executive Barbara Kittridge (@kittrdg)

"We see staff struggle with strategy or with just plain old selling ideas into clients. When met with resistance guys like [The Levi's Guy] say 'Well, they just don't get it.' I say that's B.S. - it means that you didn't do a good enough job explaining and selling in your ideas."

My guess is if you asked him how to monetize and determine the ROI of social media to rationalize any budget investment his jaw would probably drop and he would start to mumble."

Indeed at the Social Media Week panel, when asked about ROI, The Levi's Guy said he thought it was too early to measure the ROI of social media. The other panel members didn't agree.

Talk to ME
Blogger Mike Cliffe Jones (@mikecj) thinks it’s an advantage to have someone IN the target demographic managing a brand’s social media.

"My message to companies is to forget the medium - anyone can be taught how to use it - and focus on the marketing.

If you want to market to twenty somethings, then maybe the person doing your social media marketing needs to be a twenty something. But if you want to market to me, you'll stand a much greater chance of success if the person doing so is a peer.

It goes much further though - in order to even begin to market via social media, you need to strike up a real one-on-one relationship first, unlike using conventional advertising. That becomes much harder if there is a huge disparity in age and outlook between the two parties."

Brands should hire based on expertise, not age
"Chronological proximity to the start of a phenomenon doesn't mean expertise. Expertise means expertise," argued Jay Ferrari, Vice President of Content Marketing & Creative Services for PeakTwo.

So if you're looking for someone to manage your social media, ask them what they've done for other brands. Ask them how they think social media should fit into the big picture for the brand. Ask them how they would go about measuring ROI. But don't ask them their age. It shouldn't be relevant. Besides, as any lady over 30 will tell you, it's impolite.

Below the Line

Can Madison Avenue step up to the social plate?

Social media over 30