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The Future of Agency Relationships: Is it Time to Rethink Your Agency’s Role?

In the latest issue of Marketing News, Josh Bernoff (VP, Forrester Research and coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies) asks the question—Is Your Agency Relationship Past Its Expiration Date? He says it’s time for marketers to rethink your agency’s role, and then rethink your own.

Based on a new Forrester report titled “The Future of Agency Relationships”, his premise is that in a stable media era, agencies can specialize. As a result, many marketers have a silo-driven approach to their agency relationships—an advertising or creative agency, an interactive agency, a direct marketing agency, a PR agency, etc. While this approach creates additional effort for brand continuity oversight and often some internal squabbling, it is the price you pay for getting the best experts in each discipline.

According to Forrester Research, that approach works fine for a world where channels are relatively stable, campaigns have a beginning and an end, and customers respond to messages pushed at them. But that stability no longer exists. The number of channels continues to explode – today its Twitter and phone apps, but what will you need tomorrow? As word of mouth becomes more important and push marketing less effective, marketers will need a consistent, long-term relationship with an agency model that is more adaptive and understands the need to think more broadly than the current specialization model provides.

The new Forrester study concludes that with the rise of social media and digital proliferation, we are entering an Adaptive Marketing era. In this era, mass media is no longer the foundation of marketing communication, and will force a change in the expectations of what marketing agencies can and should deliver. Marketers will need agency partners that are more agile, can build long-term relationships with active customers and communities, and can use data to drive real-time decisions. The key needs marketers will require from their agencies are ideas, interaction and intelligence.

Agencies must think about ideas that not only build the brand, but will work across every appropriate platform. Instead of creating an idea and leaving it to the silos to plan and implement, creativity has to be collaborative so that all possible communications get considered at once. And as customers change, marketers and their agency must change along with them.

Agencies must develop a framework for a new level of interaction with customers. Agencies have always been good at outbound messages, but have not played a similar role with inbound interactions. Smart agencies will need to adapt their approach in order to listen to online discussions, identify and connect marketers with their online social community, and build brand experiences that allow for interaction.

Finally, agencies must find ways to monitor and assimilate customer intelligence from multiple channels and be flexible enough to respond quickly to this information. Marketers and their agencies will need a more comprehensive view of quantitative and qualitative information and insights in order to react in real time and across channels to maximize efficiency. The resultant need for even more data than marketers currently have will require a shared role in evaluating and recommending strategies and tactics.

The Forrester report predicts that these changes will have consequences for both parties. Specialty agencies will need to rethink the depth and breadth of their service offering if they expect to meet this new level of need based on ideas, interaction and intelligence. As interactive channels multiply and interactivity and the intelligence it generates become more available, metrics like gross rating points and clicks may go away in favor of more esoteric measurements like energized customers and share of influence.

At the same time, marketers will need to reconsider their own role and a new level of marketing collaboration with their agencies and this will surely require a re-evaluation of the current compensation model. Forrester predicts that successful marketers will need to focus more on long term relationships and on speedy, adaptive actions that take advantage of the fluid nature of consumer attitudes and responses. And if agencies continue to only deliver silo-based expertise rather than ideas, interaction and intelligence, they will soon be replaced by a new agency form that meets this need.

What do you think? Are you satisfied with your current agency service offering, or does this new model sound more appealing to you?

—From the Sound Marketing blog of the Pugent Sound Chapter of the American Marketing Association

Healthcare Branding Week: Why a “Traditional” Agency Makes Sense For Healthcare Marketing

Part 5 of 5

Too often today, corporate marketing will look to “specialists” to solve problems. A design firm may be hired for logo development, a website company will be hired for an online presence, television may end up getting station-produced, and the list goes on. The risk with this approach is mainly waste and inconsistency. And too often, messages lack both strategy and integration. As a result, the organization finds itself having spent a lot of money only to end up with misdirected and mediocre communications.

How does this happen? Sometimes the problem is lack of or conflicting strategies. Without a clear, concise and written strategy that applies to all communications, efforts will flounder, be ineffective and could even send conflicting messages. Strategy is essential in developing a competitive position. It will provide a summation of the impression that you’re trying to leave your audience. It also provides good direction but doesn’t demand that you go only one specific executional route.

Working with a written strategy is also an important discipline because it requires the intense study of: product/service benefits, target market needs/wants and competitive positions in order to seek a solid foundation for creating difference. And importantly, it should be looked upon as a long-term document. What do you want your target audience to believe about your product/service after years of advertising?

Integration is important because a planned process will ensure that all brand contacts received by your customers or prospects are relevant and consistent over time. An integrated approach will consider every imaginable way your organization will interact with the audience. It may be traditional or non-traditional media, and it may be online or offline.

Not only is integration important to advertising messages, it extends to sales, customer service, direct marketing, social media and public relations. Integration becomes a unified force. If different companies and departments are working separately—independent of one another—the potential for brand alignment greatly decreases.

Traditional advertising agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

So, how does all this apply to marketing for the healthcare industry? Healthcare needs to be viewed as a unique business model. Not only is it complex, highly competitive and constantly changing, the virtues of a healthcare organization must be completely understood to be accurately reflected. And healthcare decisions for the consumer involve so many propositions on so many different levels—from the quality, to the value, to the emotional connection.

When searching for an agency, rather than seek out “specialists” in services, find an agency that has a proven track record in healthcare marketing communications. You may just find that broad range of services you need under one roof. And finding an agency that has a broad base of clients, not only in the healthcare industry, will help avoid a myopic view on communication solutions.

A Traditional Agency

by Glen Peak

In a recent blog article, What Kind of Agency Are You, an ad agency owner observed his struggle with how to “categorize” his agency, e.g. digital, creative, branding, etc. Lots of varied services and talent no doubt led him to describe such a struggle.

I was struck by the author’s observation that they never use the word “traditional” to describe the agency and wondered aloud if even “traditional” agencies use the word. Well…we don’t currently put the word “traditional” in the descriptors of our 4A’s advertising agency but this discussion prompts me to think that we should proudly include this word in our messaging. Perhaps someone would actually ask: what does the “traditional” descriptor mean?

I don’t believe that many of today’s clients understand that ad agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

If “traditional” is about being generally recognized, customary and even long-standing, I really want to incorporate this label into the characterization of our agency.