Building a Premium Brand…..Ad Agency

We slave our days debating, theorising, writing charts, crafting presentations, scamping creative work again and again, re touching, presenting I could bore you and go on, but all of this to work towards making their clients the most competitive brands in their sectors. Some agencies are better than others at it. But many fail to put all that energy back into the bricks and mortar from where it’s born.

Why are agencies or advertising not regarded as premium brands or as an industry (if we want to talk about broad strokes). You take the finance industry and it’s regarded as premium, you take management consultancy and again premium. The Saatchi bros tried to add value to the way agencies operate back in the 80s, they tried to buy Midland bank which really was a PR stunt but they were also toying with the idea of adding a management consultancy branch to the famous Saatchi & Saatchi network. It didn’t work. For one thing the market drivers didn’t require ad agencies to offer differentiation at that time but also they were ahead of their time structurally speaking but weren’t clued up to how this would work alongside their core competency – creative communications. One would need to feed off the other and back then there was no to little way this would work. Furthermore adding in this commercial consultancy arm was going to be bought in, just shoved in, no cultural birth from inside the Saatchi brand at all, so again, it was bound to fail.

So there’s an example of an agency trying to elevate itself above its lowly known industry. But what now? Well, McKinsey will chuckle at us by informing the ad industry that we are considered a low ranking and low paid industry because of what we give away…for free. In particular pitching is our biggest sin. We hand over a fully fleshed strategic and creative approach to a brand’s business for the total sum of sweet fuck all before we even have their business. This can’t be helped anymore, if one agency holds back another will bend over screaming ‘over here over here’ with bells on, of course they’ll get the business.

Let’s not get bogged down in structural differentiation right now, no client gives a shit how we work, that’s really about an internal process that can produce better work. What we’re talking about is about lifting this slow and often clumsy industry off its knees and having it recognised for the actual ROI it creates, therein lies value, therein lies premiumisation.

Well, whilst we continue to give away so much we need to develop other lines of offering that aren’t as face value/obvious as creative communications. So this means agencies taking all that stuff at the top of this blog and putting it into their own revenue streams. This means agencies stepping up to brand creation level. Why can’t an agency create the intellectual property for a new brand – either to launch it themselves or to sell it to another brand? Why can’t an agency be content owners and develop TV programming ideas to sell to both networks and clients? Why can’t agencies build up quant and qual research offerings so that can provide fully justifiable segmentation studies (for example) when at pitch level and to a degree brand consultancy level. Why can’t agencies also have a NPD/packaging arm, and one that really does operate as one?

All the above can be seen in parts dotted around agencies in London, but usually these divisions have been bought in and therefore operate as separate PLCs, therefore they’re working towards their own agendas, therefore they don’t work together, therefore this will more than likely end in an in-cohesive mess. Such a way of working really needs to be born from the outset, grown internally so that agendas move together not individually. This as a way of working will of course be slow burn to see the results but it’s my reckoning that here lies value and here lies the premium brand ad agency. The account management led, political, department driven and structured agencies are moving towards a dooms day, FACT. Whilst some may say that it was never the job of large agencies to change the way the ad industry looks is pretty much hiding from their responsibility. It is of course large agency’s role to morph, adapt, grow internal new business lines and structurally shift regardless of upheaval. The apathetic who sit back and watch their shareholder’s cash fall are those who simply don’t understand how to make these changes or aren’t empowered to do so. They’ll fail. But how exciting to see some make these changes, be brave to implement them and enjoy premium status.

Anton xxx

Woo hoo, we're gonna take down the established

Like the sun will rise in the morning advertising has at last woken up to something that was said by myself and Sam, oh, some 4 years ago.

This was that the current working model of AD and CW as creative teams is a bit pony these days and that teams of a creative and a planner is a certain way to getting better solutions. Both are required to be seasoned and by that I don’t mean the old school ivory tower kind of creatives and I don’t mean the planners that will spend lots of time making sure everyone is aware of how considered they are. No sir.

The creatives I’m talking about are young enough to have grown up with digital being integral to how they see communication and old enough to be able to stand up and defend work in the face of a client that they are passionate about.

The planners…..well….are pretty much the same but where they come in isn’t to over complicate and confuse the beautiful mind that sits of opposite them but to make their life easier. It is their role to paint the picture of what’s going on in market, in sector, in segment and in target. This doesn’t mean massive charts and graphs, this means a chat. This means having a crazy wealth of knowledge on the topic that when asked by the creative it pours like Sangria in Magaluf.

This isn’t to say that the planner is the total and utter gimp of the creative. Far from it. They are a crucial part of the stimulus which gets to the idea. What I am saying is that we trade on creative ideas we don’t trade on bureaucracy, schmoozing and doing exactly what we are told. That leads us down the dark path of mediocrity which surprise surprise many large clumsy networks are in. It’s only a matter of time before these clumsy dinosaurs are exposed for their total lack of creativity and that no amount of regular lunches will save them from their inadequacies.

So in comes the dawn of a new shape of agency. It isn’t digital screaming how traditional has it all wrong and is so out of touch with its one way dialog. It isn’t a creative team locked away in an office with a closed door, waiting for someone to walk in so they can throw their one award at them from 1999 ‘pfft, don’t they know we’re THINKING’. It isn't the standard start of TV when planning integration.

It is a meeting of two minds, both colourful, both commercial, both rebellious the only differing bit is that one prefers to be called a creative and one prefers to be called a planner. One has spent more time mocking up their ideas into visual manifestations and one has spent more time mocking up their ideas as evidenced stories.

This creative force will of course out manoeuvre any traditional setup. That and the old structure is fucking dull and limited. The problem though is that this model can’t be just ‘imposed’. Because it is quite free it can’t exist in the larger nertworks, they would just ruin its purity anyway with process. Nope, this needs to be the culture of a small agency, it needs to be integrated slowly because the importance of the two that make up the team is ridiculously crucial. You can’t just nip down to Watford and pick these people off the shelf, they need to be discovered having wanted to work like this, have already thought like this, have tried it out maybe.

So, there you go, another structure rant over, next will be about how you go about getting the ball rolling on it. I’ll wait until I’ve caught my breath before I start on that one.

Anton

xxx

p.s. This model was the topic of my dissertation (written June 2004) and that the structure of ad agencies needs to change. If you want a copy let me know and I’ll be happy to send it

The difference between.....

So what’s the difference to working in a branding agency (TV, Press and Print) to a marketing services agency (DM, POS, Digital etc) to a content marketing agency (TV programming, Events and Publishing )?

Well, quite a considerable amount. Whilst in a traditional ATL setup you’ll find that rigorous data that substantiates an agency’s recommendations is quite hard to obtain and manipulate in order to stand up in court. As a result creative recommendations are based on research such as forums where ad concepts are tested on a small group of consumers in order to gauge a positive or negative reaction. This is usually conducted by a research agency which have been instructed and overseen by an ATL planner. Results are summarised and then feedback to the client with the agency’s point of view on how such concepts will create a particular image for the brand. However, client’s are now starting to view ATL agencies more as production houses where original ideas are then amended by the client in order to meet how they wish the advertising should look and feel. Some argue this is right considering that the client knows their brand better than any other and others feel this is wrong whereby the agency is the creative consultant and understands how the science of advertising works on consumers that and at the end of the day what agency wants to produce creative that doesn’t work? Therefore the work in ATL agencies is heavily reliant on ideas based outside of data and then are tested.

In terms of the work what you’ll find in the marketing services/BTL agency is that you micro manage projects. There is significantly more detail to cover and much more data to comprehend which is far more reliable when substantiating an agency’s recommendations. What I mean by this is that when on an account such as one in the retail sector your team is not only working towards creating new campaigns based on a client’s brief (pro active servicing) but you are also managing day to day client’s needs (re active servicing) such as maintenance of your client’s website which mainly consists of copy changes. The plus for the client is that they can brief an agency to change the copy on their homepage and this can be updated within a matter of hours. Outside of this you naturally gain a closer understanding of your client’s consumer and this is through heaps of data from footfall stats, to offer redemption stats to website traffic stats. So whilst it is therefore only natural that whilst going through the motions of your day to day activity you pick up a sharper picture of a client’s business along with the environment in which they touch consumers – the retail experience and what kind of POS they use i.e. where purchases are actually made.

The new trend of content marketing is quite an exciting industry sensation right now. With heavy restrictions on TV advertising and the risk of ill targeted BTL mediums (blanket DM drops, pop up digital banners) brands are now considering developing their own media platforms. What better way to get closer to your consumer than providing them with entertainment and have that media platform pay for itself? To elaborate, lets take publishing. You advise your client Levis to develop a monthly magazine. You bring in writers for articles in your magazine that are close to the brand so you develop content based around fashion, music and other youth trends. You can then approach other brands in line with yours (Apple for i-pod, Peugeot for the 206, The Tate Modern for innovative art etc) so they have an opportunity to advertising in your magazine….and they pay for the media space in exchange for your distribution channels of that magazine. So after printing and distribution you have a business model that not only creates a new platform for your brand (Levis magazine) but also it pays for itself through media sales. Furthermore, you control the access to your media platform so only brands that have a positive association are used in your magazine, this also means keeping your competitors out. If done right this is pretty much a huge area to exploit in the marketing service tool box. In terms of working, it’s creative, it’s entrepreneurial and it requires you to have your ear to the ground to what consumers are doing in their day to day life and where their interests lie. Other examples of content are events such as Innocent smoothies holding Fruit Stock in Regent’s Park.

So there is vast difference in what these agencies do and how they do it. The question now faced is how do you bring these together? How do you tie this offering under one roof and hand a client over the table a fully stitched together proposal of recommendations on every level. Will the agency of the future have account handlers, planners and creatives that are able to converse in all these mediums rather than having a specialist over here and another over there?

Anton xxx

You're only human after all

Hi all, hope all is going well with interviews etc. Do let us know either here or on Facebook. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about different agencies and their different approaches to advertising. I had lunch yesterday with the extremely clever Paul Edwards and discussed the opposite ends of the spectrum. At one end you have the very logical, very academic and very craftsmanship agencies. They usually produce some great work but it takes them a long time to get there. You then have the young energetic agencies at the other end who work quicker, with more excitement and base their work on instincts and gut feelings. These usually operate in the very creative realms. You then have some that fall in the middle, have little identity and struggle to be one or the other. They produce safe, uninspiring and vanilla advertising. Isn’t it strange that considering agencies are meant to be the master of branding that some are actually pretty poor at it. However, one thing that will mark your success in either of these places is the fact that you’re human.

Being a consciously aware human that craves collecting cultural references I think is very important for those moving into advertising. Your job is essentially to understand other humans so the more you observe people interacting with one another, brands, events, music, art, travel everything and anything. Whatever agency ‘type’ you decide to go with the one criteria that I think will unite you all is your love of people watching. I’m also a big believer that the simplest strategies are the most potent and engaging. Therefore understanding what turns you on, your friends is great material for entering ad agencies. So, after this long winded brain dump I would encourage you to keep your thinking as honest, simple and articulate when you start having your interviews.

Good luck

Anton xxx

Lowering The Boom On Round 2

Always, always, always..

Raineys round 2 is tomorrow, and I couldn't leave y'all out in the cold without a post. So, with some help from Anton here's a flavor of what to expect in final round interviews. And we have a post about other ways into the industry sitting on my laptop waiting to be unleashed, so don't worry - it's time will come.

Sam.

So you’ve made it through to round two. You’re wondering what it’s going to be like, what’s going to be expected of you and what is the competition going to be like. Well, if there is one word that sums up how agencies frame the second round it’s teamwork.

The thing about these final round assessment days, is that you'll all encounter people off the charts in the try-hard factor, they'll wanna tell you every joke they've heard, every strategic idea they've ever had, and well...you get the picture.

Get some decent shut eye before you go into the bear-pit of showmanship. Don't let anyone intimidate you into not saying anything, make sure that you do yourself justice and put your personality and thinking on show, they picked you for being you at round 1, so stick the to your guns. If you're crazy stay crazy, if you're not then don't try to be, it gets messy. Man that must sound boring us going on about being yourself, but it's true. If you fit in then you fit in, it’s really that simple and there isn’t really that much you can do to prepare for this type other than keep reading up on the industry from Brand Republic, visit4info and Campaign. And the agency's website, look for the ways they describe themselves, the way their offices look, the colors on their website, this is all their personality, so study it well.

Some you'll be successful at, others you won't. So what kind of things do you have to do?

• Together build a bridge from this point to that point using these materials.
• In a group present to us the perfect Graduate Trainee.
• You’re given 30 items listed, pick 15 you would take with you to a desert island and why and tell us why you dropped the remaining 15.
• Speed interviewing (this is when you’re all in a line sat opposite a member of the agency, you then have 3 minutes to answer a question and then whistle is blown and you rotate to the next, much like speed dating).

The standard diet of individual questions will come at you as well, so read up on our first interview post, and re-read your application form as well.

You get the picture. Once you’re over the guard up phase and you all collectively realise you’re all in the same boat it can actually be good banter, especially if you feel you’ve done well. We highly recommend spending time with your counterparts afterwards as these could be the people you spend the next year training with….

All in all, keep calm, be yourself and always be witty and reasonable, which I’m sure most of you are anyway.

Watchy'all think about that?

The 1st Conversation

Would you hire this guy? Probably not...(weird eyes courtesy of bad red-eye reduction)

Something I say quite often is every first conversation is an interview. Now I don't know where I got that from but we are now officially in interview season with Raineys interviewing people as I type this up (in the middle of a finance lecture).

So you have an interview, how do you prepare? Let's talk about some general things first, like appearance. More specifically, what do you wear? For guys a safe bet is either the suit/shirt look or a combo of trousers/blazer (and shirt please). But we'd say no ties, this ain't a banking interview y'all. Girls have it easier (or harder, depending on who you ask) with the general 'look smart' mantra.

Now we know how you look, what's it going to be like? Generally first round interviews will be conducted by 2 members of the agency and they'll last between 30 minutes and an hour. You might get a good cop / bad cop routine, you might get no cops or you might get we'renotreallysurewearecopssolet'sseewhatthisfoolknows. But you can't control that.

What you can control is your research. This is where I go to numbers:

1. Read your application form at least enough times for you to virtually memorise what you wrote. And remember why you wrote what you did.
2. Have some answers to these questions ready
• Why do you want to get into advertising?
• What's the coolest / most iconic thing in your world and why?
• What advertising do you admire and why?
• Which brand's ads aren't doing it justice?
• How do you see the futures of TV and digital advertising?
• What is a brand?
3. Be ready to have to sell an ad to your interviewers, think about:
• What the brand is trying to say, what are they trying to achieve with the ad?
  
• Who they should be talking to? Are they talking to them?
• How effective is their conversation with the person paying attention?
• Why does it work? Is it funny? Is it totally removed from the competition?
• Is the idea transferable across different channels?
  
• How will it build upon where the client is right now business-wise? Do they want to create market share? steal market share or maintain their lead?
  
4. Watch their showreel on their site, soak in as much as you can about their site and head over to visit4info to watch ads they've created that may not be on their showreel.
5. Give yourself an hour's margin when traveling long distance, it gives you time to compose yourself when you get there, rather than crapping yourself that you're late.
6. Have some questions for them. But don't ask questions for things that are on their website or you'll get shot down. Ask them about what they think about one of their questions, or about how they see advertising changing in the future. Having a well thought question could be the thing that makes you stick in their minds when it's time to make the cuts (Thanks to Alex for this point).
   

And finally, the most important, crucial and underlying thing that will dictate your success in your interviews is being yourself. Try to relax and answer the non-advertising questions as normally as possible (obviously there are some boundaries, if you swear like a sailor put a sock in it, or use replacement words). And be yourself. Be confident that being yourself will get you the job. Seriously.

It’s well known that individual agencies have individual cultures etc, but that by no means means (how many times can I use means in this sentence?) that you should try and conform to a type. Go in and do your best. Chances are if you’re well informed, enthusiastic about ads and able to back up your opinions you’ll get through.

And if you don’t? It's the agency’s loss. So don’t mope around, ring them up and ask for feedback, if it’s something wrong with the way you delivered your answers, you can fix it. But if they say you're not the right type, move on. Don’t try to be their type - because eventually you'll find out it's hurting you and them.

This is the part where I'd like to end up on something profound. But I'll defer to Anton who told me a while back: 'Don't be a lemming'. That pretty much says it all.

As always comments/criticism/abuse are welcome.

Sam

If You Ain't Got Grit, You Won't Add Up To Shit

Probably one of my worst attempts at a rhyme but lets move on. Will covered off the nice stuff on empathy but lets get to the nitty gritty of getting you in. You first of all have to love to compete and more to the point love to compete when you’re confident that you’ll win, why else bother? Remember that this is all about you, your future career will take about 70% of your life away from everything else so it has to be right. Also, don't you dare be intimidated by ad agencies whether it's calling them for an internship, having an interview or just thinking you're not good enough. In Paul Arden's words you're as good as you want to be so it'll be survival of the hunger (and witty). Also, ad agencies like a bit of attitude, it's what creative people generally have in advertising, don't be an all out know it all wanker (like I am) as you'll get slapped down very quickly, but it's okay to be playfully cocky which I'll come to later. This post really is about a level of self confidence, having a total disregard for the competition when trying to get into advertising and (although not really mentioned in this post) also when you do get in don't you ever let anyone talk to you like a piece of shit ever ever ever no matter what you've done or forgotten to do. Pick your fights wisely but at the same time don't allow some insecure twat to take out their inferiority on you. Sorry about that, was getting a bit ranty.

When applying for your grad schemes there will be approx 5 places for new grads. There will be on average about 300 initial applications. You would think that most of these will be at a high standard, wrong, the majority of applications I’ve sifted through are nothing short of being proper shit. However, that’s no excuse for you to take this as notion of comfort. Oh no, this is really an opportunity that can’t be missed. While your counterparts will be answering questions regarding their favourite ads with examples such a Transformers for Citroen or of course Sony Balls you have to think, maybe I should be different. Why not go back in time to some of the classics, Hamlet advertising for example or Iguana for Benson & Hedges, YouTube it, then google it and research it, get a few insights, facts into how they were made, what they did and then bullshit a rationale as to why you love it. You may of course like them in reality but this is application time so will require some verbal sugar around it. Always, always think of what the chump in front of you will be saying and working out how you can come across smarter.

Have any of you read Paul Arden’s 2nd book? ‘It’s Not How Good You Are It’s How Good You Want To Be’ was his first book but his second is ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’. I don’t care what anyone says about Arden claiming the obvious, the guy is a fucking genius and is so right on pretty much every page. You should get a read of it really if for no other reason that it’s quite motivating.

Anyway, back to the original idea of this post and my next comment may sound quite controversial so apologies in advanced. I really don’t believe you will have that much success in advertising unless you have (or harder to do, but develop) a slightly dark and cynical side to you. For one thing it allows you to cope with the everyday knocks and falls you have when you’re a grad. Secondly, it’s the currency of banter in the upper circles of ad agencies. The guy or girl with the slightly sick sense of humour seems to either have better ideas or gets more laughs and either of those two are what essentially advances your career. I don’t subscribe to a twee, lovely, sweet and oh so joyous outlook on life (like some of those famous for blogging do) and prefer to think of the inappropriate. I wont insist that you do this, it has gotten me into trouble more times than I care to remember. The very very very very long winded point I’m trying to make is that humour and colloquial verbalisation of natural thought are often key in this industry. It’s okay for you to maybe have fun in a dark way with some of your questions in applications, remember, these are colourful people, they have to sift through 299 other applications that usually say the most mundane tripe in a really dire way. Like a planner think of your audience, think of what state your reviewer will be in when they read your application, usually pissed off they've been given this job, hating the guy from Cambridge who thought it would be creative to write everything upside down, more than likely looking at emails whilst trying to care what you've written. So take artistic license, this isn’t an exam and this isn’t a job at a bank, enjoy writing them. Listen to nasty electro while you write them, whatever it takes. Anyway, I’m off, sicko night at Turnmills awaits. Speak soon.

The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth

So I guess it’s my (Anton’s) turn to write something, not that I mind writing or that I consider myself ‘too busy’ to do so, just an insecurity that I’ll bore you really.

So I won't fuck around or try and bullshit about advertising being great, spew lies about lunches, intellectualise what a planner’s role is or hide from you the fact that the first year or two is quite demoralising. Sorry, that’s all bit rank really isn’t it, but it’s honest. So what is there to celebrate about thinking of a career in advertising? Well for me what is really key are the people. Sounds quite twee actually, but harps back to my original declaration, it’s honest. The people I’ve crossed paths with in advertising are (Sandstorm by Cast has just come on and I can’t help but recognise that it’s a class tune, anyway) funny, dull, clever, shit, fantastic, egocentric, generous, inspirational, de-motivating, helpful, harmful, indulgent, bullies, grateful…I could go on, my point being is that no where else in a work environment have I come across such a colourful group of people.

So yeah, you have friends who provide all these things but what you want is a rock solid career I guess. Well, the thing is, in my humble opinion, unless you have an intrinsic interest in people you’re going to be pretty shit in advertising. Further to that if you have an issue with being honest you’re going to (despite popular belief) have an even greater issue with a career in advertising. The only way I can think of communicating an analogy for this right now, due to a fuzzy head (another good thing: in no other work place are you celebrated for rocking in looking like you had a nastier evening than the other guy/girl) is when you were a kid and lying to your parents would come out all incoherent, disjointed and generally transparent as opposed to being a teenager when you believed in your angst driven convictions and could argue and argue and argue…because essentially you believed you were right. My long winded point being that by being honest and presenting the truth as you see it is a pre-requisite; the day of the bull shitter is long gone. Having said that I’ve managed to escape Account Management and now work in utopia that is strategic planning which essentially is based on understanding humans and being honest so my view is most certainly skewed, however, it makes me look better if you share it obviously.

I need some water, a sandwich and 2 ibuprofen so I’m going to cut this short. Umm, yeah I love it really, I love the people I work with, I love how I respect/aspire to be my bosses and don’t think they’re dumb c*nts, I love learning about people and how they behave and how they click with products and I love the fact I’m paid to do so. I’ll write more intelligibly next time I promise.....and it’s okay by the way to romanticise working in advertising (if you're passionate about the above) along as you aren’t out to network, I hate networking and the future of this industry depends on you to hate it in its traditional form also.

Anton, Unmasked

Anton started out at the funky hot shop that was Leonardo for part of his university placement year. After which he went on to experience life at Leo Burnett working on McDonald’s loving the return to his home town, Newcastle and getting into arguments with ‘alternative’ friends in fields on the topic of global fast food brands. When not holding a shield with a phat yellow M on it he was contributing to the launch of Salads Plus and Maccy Dee’s Euro 2004 Sponsorship.

Wanting to finish his placement year on a high note Anton applied to the Saatchi & Saatchi Summer Scholarship Scheme. Not happy with his brief to take an A4 poster with ‘Nothing is Impossible’ and put it somewhere ‘interesting’ he and two friends convinced the industry that they had hacked M&C Saatchi’s website and animated the poster over its homepage. Anton attracted attention from M&C’s lawyers, a Gold DMA Award (2004) and a place on Saatchi’s Summer scheme working on Visa. Returning to University for a finale of studying and indulgent abuse he applied to numerous agencies for graduate recruitment, accepted 1 of the 3 offered for reasons such as ‘greater training’ and ‘a more integrated approach to a heavily fragmented media space’ but we all know it’s because they offered him more money.

Anton is now a Planner getting filthy in traditional and non traditional media, can’t stand networking but loves to bore those who he finds natural and good with his visions of how to fuse TV with digital and theories of restructuring agencies.