why you need to change the way you work

Transcription

why you need to change the way you work
THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE
WHY YOU NEED TO CHANGE
THE WAY YOU WORK
Agency edition
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Change or die – what are you waiting for?
3
Agencies remaking themselves as AOR model changes
4
The impact of industry consolidation on how agencies work together
7
The state of agency-client collaboration9
How the transition to digital affects agencies’ current processes 11
Eight scary stats about your email habits
13
R.I.P., FTP?
15
Cloud collaboration is saving agencies money – a case study
Don’t stop now !
16
CHANGE OR DIE–
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING
FOR?
From the biggest behemoth to the tiniest specialty
shop, agencies have to adapt and change the way
they work in order to survive.
Old business models – like AORs – are
crumbling. Clients no longer accept archaic
work processes or “that’s just the way we’ve
always done business” as an excuse for
lackluster communication and collaboration.
Failing to involve and empower clients will put
an agency on a sure path to lost business.
What are agencies to do? How can they foster
a deeper relationship with its clients and try
to end the fickle cycle of continuous churn?
We investigate herein – and hear from a
number of forward-thinking agencies that
are finding the answers. §
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STEVE HALL IS A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL, PUBLISHER, WRITER, COMMUNITY MANAGER,
PHOTOGRAPHER AND ALL-AROUND LOVER OF ADVERTISING.
AGENCIES REMAKING
THEMSELVES AS AOR
MODEL CHANGES
Back in the day…actually not so long ago,
clients would choose an agency, dub them
agency of record, sign a contract, pay
a monthly retainer and the partnership
would last for years. Everything was
“hunky-dory” to use a term from back
when things in the advertising business
were, well, “hunky-dory.”
Both sides trusted the other would hold up
their end of the bargain. The agency would
live up to its promise to deliver campaigns
that worked and the client would reward
that dedication and success with business
commitment to the agency.
Then a few things happened. CMOs begin
changing jobs every 12 to 18 months.
Hoping to make a mark at their new
company and impress their bosses, they’d
promptly fire the agency, hold a review and
choose a new agency.
Agencies unbundled splitting off services
which begat media agencies, creative
agencies, interactive shops and, today,
social media agencies. Each offshoot had
specialized skills to offer brands and brands
liked what they saw. Specialization became
the name of the game and the mentality
that no single agency could possibly handle
every client need became prevalent.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever return to the glory
days of the AOR landscape –at least in a
world where agencies are perceived as
vendors versus true business partners .
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AGENCIES REMAKING THEMSELVES AS AOR MODEL CHANGES
To a certain degree, this was true. With
the advent of the internet, the myriad
opportunities it added to the plate and the
speed at which business was now able to
move, a fickle, “shiny new object” mentality
set in. Couple that with the aforementioned
18 month CMO tenures and, perhaps
even more paradigm-shifting, the rise in
importance of procurement and its balance
sheet-heavy mentality, and a lowest bidder
model versus a trusted relationship became
the standard.
Of these monumental changes in the
agency-client relationship, CAHG Project
Leader Mona Heggem said, “We just
celebrated our 50th anniversary, which is
a huge milestone for an agency to achieve.
We’ve had long-standing clients – one for
50 years, another for 30 years, another for
22 years. We’ve always worked under the
AOR model, but now we are seeing that
procurement is taking the lead on finding
agencies. We have to pitch for every single
job now. We’re investing so much more in
our new business efforts because we have
to pitch for everything; the clients are no
longer going with the AOR model because
procurement is running the show.
We’re pitching up against 18 agencies
to keep business that we would have
normally gotten from the AOR model.”
Now, some might argue the continuous
fight to determine the best agency for
any given job at any given time is a good
thing. After all, why wouldn’t a brand want
the best work for every campaign? Others
might argue that continuous change never
allows for the two entities, agency and
client, to form the kind of deep relationship
that fosters trust, dedication and loyalty.
The kind of relationship committed
humans have with one another. The kind of
So what can an ad agency do to foster
a deeper relationship with its clients
and, perhaps, end the fickle cycle of
continuous churn? One such agency
(and we’re sure there are many others)
thinks it has the answer.
relationship in which one can complete the
other’s sentences.
OK, so businesses aren’t people, but there
is certainly something to be said for a
relationship in which both sides innately
understand each other’s needs before they
are expressed. Alas, cyclical as things are,
it’s unlikely we’ll ever return to the glory
days of the AOR landscape – at least in
a world where agencies are perceived as
vendors versus true business partners.
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AGENCIES REMAKING THEMSELVES AS AOR MODEL CHANGES
Boston-based Winsper has recast itself
within the management consultant space
and is touting a focus on enterprise
marketing ROI. Winsper Founder and CEO
Jeff Winsper says marketing organizations
“must use the language of the
boardroom.” To Winsper, campaign ROI in
a vacuum is, for the most part, irrelevant.
What is important are hard business
metrics such as sales, revenue, inventory
turnover and geographic sales volume.
This Enterprise Marketing ROI offering,
as Winsper calls it, aims to directly tie
advertising spend to financial performance
on an aggregate basis.
In Winsper’s mind, “soft KPIs” such as
leads, likes, retweets, direct mail response
rate, CTR, pins, reach, frequency, CPMs,
GRPs, awareness, recognition, preference
and other marketing KPIs are meaningless
if not tied to “hard KPIs.” It’s simply not
the language of the C-Suite. The C-Suite
speaks the language of the hard KPI,
factors directly tied to the financial wellbeing of the company.
Winsper’s goal is to position itself as a
company that can examine a business’s
many data stores such as enterprise
resource planning, sales automation,
customer relationship management,
marketing automation and point of sale,
pull it all together and provide the insight
a brand needs to run its marketing
department like a business.
In this way, the agency becomes more of
a business consultant. An entity that can
directly map a spend to the bottom line.
For Winsper, their success doesn’t depend
on whether or not a campaign worked or
not. It depends on the ability to answer a
question that is always there and will never
go away: what effect did my marketing
budget have on revenue?
This, of course, has been the unattainable
Golden Egg. However, with the rise of Big
Data and affordable business intelligence
tools to make sense of the data, tying
marketing ROI to business ROI has become
much easier than ever before. §
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STEVE HALL IS A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL, PUBLISHER, WRITER, COMMUNITY MANAGER,
PHOTOGRAPHER AND ALL-AROUND LOVER OF ADVERTISING.
THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRY
CONSOLIDATION ON
HOW AGENCIES WORK
TOGETHER
With (now denied) rumors swirling about the advertising industry that giant advertising
holding company Publicis Groupe would swallow up Interpublic Group, the notion of agency
consolidation has become almost comical. It wasn’t so long ago that independent advertising
agencies ruled the industry. Today behemoths like Publicis, MDC, Interpublic, Publicis WPP
and Omnicom now control the lion’s share of ad agencies.
This consolidation has wreaked havoc in many areas of agency operations – not the least of
which are the numerous client conflicts that arise when one agency buys another and then
the two realize they now handle competing brands, a no-no in the ad world.
Almost losing a
client isn’t a place
you want to go
just to find out
you need to get
a handle on your
workflow.
But an area of concern that receives much less press and attention is agency operations –
the plain, old, boring notion to how an agency gets work done. It’s not sexy but, believe me,
the fastest way to lose a client is complicated and confusing operational methodologies.
As account director at an agency that had just been bought by a much larger agency, I once
lost an account because the account planner (who came from the acquiring agency) was
having separate conversations with the client that ran contrary to the conversations creative
and account service were having. It’s not that the content of the conversations were wrong,
but it made the agency look stupid.
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THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION ON HOW AGENCIES
WORK TOGETHER
Don’t worry, I won the client back with the most concise analysis of
the brand’s business (basically doing the account planner’s job) along
with a huge promise internal communication errors would never again
lead to an agency that spoke out of both sides of its mouth.
But the important point to note is that the process got away from
us. Oh sure, we had processes and procedures in place, but they
weren’t good enough. And they were at odds with those processes and
procedures of the agency that acquired us. And almost losing a client
isn’t a place you want to go just to find out you need to get a handle
on your workflow.
We patched things up, but that’s just one small example of what’s
going on in the advertising industry today where, conceivably, one
holding company could, suddenly, own another. You can just imagine
the procedural headaches an acquisition like that would cause, let
alone the ongoing procedural headaches that exist within agencies
that were acquired years ago and are still trying to figure out how to
work together seamlessly.
With agency consolidation, most attention and headlines center on
client conflicts and the dumbing down of originality. It’s my humble
opinion far more attention should be paid to figuring out (and fast)
how to work seamlessly together because, as we all know, a well-oiled
machine works much better than a bunch of chickens running around
with their heads cut off. §
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LINDA SOUZA IS CENTRAL DESKTOP’S VP OF MARKETING.
THE STATE OF AGENCYCLIENT COLLABORATION
We all know relationships are hard, whether personal or business.
And the agency-client relationship can sometimes be contentious.
I know – I’ve lived it.
While I’ve mostly been on the client side of marketing, I dabbled
briefly on the agency side many years ago. One of the big challenges
I’ve seen and experienced first-hand is just the day-to-day struggle
of working together when we’re coming from two different angles:
speaking the same lingo so we come to an understanding (the
same understanding) on the goals and needs for a specific project,
knowing where a project stands at any moment (long periods of no
communication = you’re busy creating brilliance for me or you’re off
to another project?), keeping everyone on track (sometimes agencies
have to become client-wranglers…I admit to being an offender). And
that’s just the start.
So it was no surprise to me when looking through the results of
our recent survey on the state of agency-client collaboration that
communication and difficulties working together would be a major
theme. What did surprise me, however, is how much pressure clients
like me are applying to agencies to get collaboration tools in place
to help deal with those problems. And apparently, clients are hitting
agencies where it counts most – their wallets.
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THE STATE OF AGENCY-CLIENT COLLABORATION
A few of our findings...
•
71% consider it a
competitive differentiator
over other agencies if
an agency has a single
collaboration system to
manage project work online.
• 4
1% of agencies have had
a client or prospect require
them to have a collaboration
system to keep or win a
major account.
of brands have not
awarded business to
an agency for lack
of adequate tools for
managing work and
communications on
the account.
Click for the infographic. . .
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STEVE HALL IS A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL, PUBLISHER, WRITER, COMMUNITY MANAGER,
PHOTOGRAPHER AND ALL-AROUND LOVER OF ADVERTISING.
HOW THE TRANSITION
TO DIGITAL AFFECTS
AGENCIES’ CURRENT
PROCESSES
When I was working for a high tech and B2B
ad agency that was experiencing growing
pains caused by the transformation from
small to mid-sized to large, I developed a
aspects of the job, due dates, production
specs and, if lucky, the creative brief.
traffic and production management system
using a Mac and FileMaker Pro. Prior to
that system, there were nothing more than
memos and email to convey information
from account management to creative
to production to traffic and back. It was
inefficient, and many times information
was lost in transit.
rife with the limitations of early-stage
FileMaker Pro. At other agencies I worked
for, trafficking jobs and managing
workflow ranged in sophistication from
a simple phone call to a handwritten note
to typed, four-part forms to email to
clunky dumb terminal antiquation.
The FileMaker Pro system introduced job
tickets and a workflow that, to the best of
FileMaker Pro’s limited capabilities, aided
in making sure the right people saw the
right information and that the process
was properly documented. This included
a listing of those responsible for various
It was far from a perfect system and
Sadly, even to this day, few agencies
feel the need to invest in systems that
would vastly improve the efficiencies and
performance of everyone at the agency.
Agencies are famous for making bold
promises, touting cutting-edge strategies,
hyping the latest and greatest shiny object
and generally promising they can do just
about anything at all.
THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE WHY YOU NEED TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU WORK
Sadly, even to
this day, few
agencies feel the
need to invest in
systems that would
vastly improve the
efficiencies and
performance of
everyone at the
agency .
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HOW THE TRANSITION TO DIGITAL AFFECTS AGENCIES’ CURRENT PROCESSES
But when it comes to noting what they
need internally in terms of advanced
thinking, most fall short, don’t feel
the need to invest and generally think
Dropbox and Evernote are all they need.
Not to knock those products, but they are
far from the full-fledged solution most
agencies need.
the creative process. When an agency
shifts to digital collaboration and/or
workflow management, they must be
sure whatever solution they put in place
doesn’t completely supplant the human
element.
With much of the industry’s work shifting
to digital, managing non-physical assets
including their location, approval status
and transition to outside vendors becomes
ever more important. There are no
physical “job jackets” any longer and
While agencies are far more conservative
than their dress, office space, liberal
mindset or advanced strategic thinking
would lead one to believe, they need to
wake up and drink the Kool Aid they’ve
been shilling their clients since Don
Draper made his Carousel presentation
to Kodak in the early sixties. OK, so
holding onto that antiquated system (many
agencies still do by – believe it or not –
printing out digital assets) will leave those
agencies in a dust cloud of their more
digital-savvy competition.
that never actually happened, but you
understand what I’m saying. Times have
changed. The work product has changed.
And it’s time agencies adopt processes
suited to those changes. §
However when shifting over to digital
communications, agencies must be
mindful not to eliminate the all important
human touch that is ever so important in
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ADAM MCKIBBIN IS CENTRAL DESKTOP’S CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER.
EIGHT SCARY STATS
ABOUT YOUR EMAIL
HABITS
Are you at war with your inbox? My Facebook and Twitter feeds regularly
contain friends commiserating over email avalanches, celebrating alarming
milestones (“only 1000 unread emails to go!”) or gleefully announcing that
they’ve done the digital equivalent of sweeping all their piled-up papers off
the desk and into the trash.
Email isn’t going away any time soon – rumors of its demise are greatly
exaggerated – but there are new ways to make it a more efficient part of your
life, particularly for those of us who rely on email in the workplace. By 2014,
Gartner estimates that 20% of business users will switch to enterprise social
networking as their main method of communication.
Overreliance on email leads to lost time,
lost documents and even lost IQ points .
Of course, the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.
Not convinced? Check out these eye-opening stats and studies...
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SOURCES
1. research.microsoft.com
2. news.bbc.co.uk
3. journalstar.com
4. blogs.atlassian.com and radicati.com
5. radicati.com
6. newsroom.accenture.com
7. lifehacker.com
8. mckinsey.com
g as they think. It typically takes
People aren’t as good at multitaskin
.
ject following an email interruption
10-15 minutes to refocus on a pro
Email distraction docks your IQ by
10 points.
t workers an hour of lost time eve
On average, email interruptions cos
ry day.
36 times in an hour,
The average worker checks email
per day.
sending and receiving 105 emails
19% of that email: spam and grayma
il.
able information every
59% of middle managers miss valu
it or never see it.
day – simply because they can’t find
ee times less efficient
Email folders and folder rules? Thr
than a simple search.
makes high-skill employees
Failing to implement social technology
ductive.
and management 20-25% less pro
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ADAM MCKIBBIN IS CENTRAL DESKTOP’S CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER.
There’s no going
back. Files aren’t
getting smaller.
R.I.P., FTP?
If you’re relying on FTP for large files or
sensitive information, you’re keeping one
foot planted in the past.
FTP was born in 1971, the same year
as Mark Wahlberg and Jon Hamm.
Technology, unfortunately, doesn’t age
quite as well as Hollywood stars. What’s
more: FTP hasn’t had a significant
overhaul in decades; the guts of 2013’s
FTP are identical to 1985’s FTP.
Remember what computers looked like
in 1985? That’s basically what FTP would
look like if it had a body. It’s a little
clunky, a little past its prime. You’ve
almost surely never met someone who’s
enthusiastic about FTP; it’s a sequence
of letters that elicits about the same
response as “IRS.” The phrase “I hate
FTP” returns 21,900 results on Google.
So why do we keep entrusting our large
files to it?
FTP is flawed, but functional – and,
perhaps even more importantly, familiar.
If speed and security aren’t major
Bosses and clients
concerns, FTP still gets the job done.
Again, it’s not going to win any popularity
or efficiency awards, but it will get you and
your files from A to B.
But what if speed and security are major
concerns? FTP, in its defense, was never
designed to transmit massive files or
protect confidential information; in
1971, a gigabyte would have sounded
like something out of a sci-fi novel to
most people. With a solution like Central
Desktop’s SocialBridge, users benefit
from serious security – the same kind
of encryption used by banks.
aren’t getting
more patient.
Security risks
aren’t getting
less severe.
There’s no going back. Files aren’t getting
smaller. Bosses and clients aren’t getting
more patient. Security risks aren’t getting
less severe. As technology continues to
evolve, a wait time that once seemed
reasonable will become intolerable.
Previously unavoidable risks will become
unacceptable. FTP had a good, long run –
but, again, some things don’t age as
well as others. §
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CLOUD COLLABORATION
IS SAVING AGENCIES
MONEY – A CASE STUDY
When Engauge formed via acquisition, bringing together three agencies from different
disciplines and different cities, Raj Choudhury knew it would take a little time to standardize
processes across the agency. When it came time to audit the systems in place, he found a
dizzying number of tools in place – working in tandem and sometimes in conflict. For file
sharing alone, employees were using SharePoint, Box, Dropbox, FTP and YouSendIt.
“With that amount of data replication, it’s hard to know where to find things and which
version is correct. And that makes it hard to produce the best product for clients across
disciplines,” says Choudhury. “My goal was to make Engauge an easier place to work.”
Central Desktop’s SocialBridge is helping him do just that. Originally considered just as a
client-extranet solution, SocialBridge replaced more than 10 different collaboration tools,
cutting software licensing costs in half. Download this case study to learn:
• H
ow Engauge designed its intranet to bring people together and streamline operations
• Which features are most popular
• How the agency uses SocialBridge with clients
SocialBridge
replaced more
than 10 different
collaboration tools,
cutting software
licensing costs
in half .
Click to download the case study . . .
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ABOUT
CENTRAL DESKTOP
Central Desktop helps people work together
in ways never before possible.
Our social collaboration platform connects people and information in the cloud,
making it possible to share files, combine knowledge, inspire ideas, manage
projects and more. Our SocialBridge collaboration solution centralizes the way
people work, teams collaborate and managers lead.
Central Desktop serves half a million users worldwide. Key Central Desktop
customers include CBS, MLB.com, Harvard University, the Humane Society of
the United States, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Javelin
Marketing Group, Upshot, Engauge, WD-40 and Workday.
Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company with
headquarters in Pasadena, California.
Learn more about SocialBridge . . .
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