Sears Catalog

After speaking at the New England Mail Order Association Spring Conference and having conversations over lunch and dinner with talented marketers from brands like Sony, Hyatt, Gardeners Supply, Home Shopping Network Interactive, Stony Creek and L.L. Bean, I pondered the future of the printed catalog. Print catalogs will not die, but they must evolve.

Media Modality

We’ve been working on a concept called ‘media modality.’ Our hypothesis is basically this: people consume content in a variety of modes often defined by the medium used to deliver the media. So, if you use the right medium with the right kind of content you’ll capture the consumer (audience.)

Here’s a quick example:

If you want me to read a 6,000-word feature story (listen up Boston Sunday Globe) don’t put it online. At about 1,500 words in my web browser, with all the additional links, images, videos, ads and other crap you insert into my experience I give up reading your feature story – no matter how good it is. I print it out. Put it in my briefcase and forget about it. However, if you send me the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, I sit down with a cup of coffee, close my laptop and consume the content – all of it. It’s a wildly different experience. That’s media modality at work: same content, different mediums, wildly different experiences.

Catalogs, what mode are you in?

When I received a print catalog in the mail twenty years ago, I was elated. I could shop from the comfort of my own living room. I could sit in my pajamas and browse through hundreds of products from my favorite brands. Here’s the problem: catalogs deliver a ‘browsing’ experience. Even in the previous sentence I used the word ‘browse.’ If you ask your friends and family what they enjoy about a catalog experience they’ll use a word like browse 90% of the time.

Let’s face it. The web is better for browsing. It is called a web browser. This means that we should provide consumers with browsing experiences on the web and we need to define a new expectation for consumers receiving catalogs. Meaning, as your catalog evolves you need to understand that consumers are in a different mode when they consume printed content. If they want to learn more about your brand or ‘browse’ your product catalog they can do it online.

I don’t want to browse products in a printed catalog anymore than I want to read a novel on a billboard. When I pick up a catalog I want to be in ‘reading’ mode not ‘browsing’ mode.

Here’s my suggestion. Try something new. Deliver some valuable content in print that’s meant to be read, not browsed. Print is becoming a refuge for people trying to experience things not best-suited to an interactive experience. That means if you can remind them that your brand isn’t just about ‘browsing’ their products they’ll go online and, well, browse your products. Of course you should still display products related to the articles in print. Remind them to go online and ‘browse.’

Reinventing Branded Content

If we look into the crystal ball and imagine what the ‘catalog’ of the future might be, I think it’s a printed magazine delivered to you by a variety of brands that define who we are. The magazine might be full of great content and augmented with product information that’s related directly what I’m reading. For example, L.L. Bean and Gardeners Supply might be found in the same ‘magazine’ teaching gardeners how to fish and vice versa.

If big brand print catalogs continue to rely on browsing as their modality of choice I think they will die a slow and painful death. But don’t blame the customer. It’s their understanding of the customer that needs help.

Product design and development is marketing

If your marketing department and the agencies it’s hiring are not taking a deep and genuine interest in your product development team and their methodologies, you’re headed down the wrong road. Your messaging around a product cannot be spun on some “me too” approach to a product. Marketing needs to be genuinely rooted in the problem that your product development team set out to solve.

For a ton of ideas and examples on this topic go read Bogusky and Windsor’s Baked In – Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves.

The post-purchase experience is marketing

How are you communicating with your customers post purchase? Whose job is this anyway – customer support, marketing, sales? Define ownership of this space and seize the opportunity to engage with the most important people on the planet – your existing customers.

Don’t just email them one-way marketing spam featuring the next product you want them to purchase. You know what product they bought, so provide them with valuable content that will help them use your product better and more frequently. Share tips on use and care. Invite them to submit photos, text, or videos in a contest. Invite them into an invitation-only community of consumers or power-users. Solicit their feedback and then make sure they know that you listened when the next generation of your product hits the shelves.

Customer support is marketing

Don’t miss huge opportunities in strengthening your relationship with your existing customers when they need your help. Remember that when a consumer experiences a problem with your product, good brand experience is not about what went wrong and why, but how quickly and painlessly you can solve that customer’s problem. Are your telephone and online support experiences robust, efficient, and helpful? Good customer service equals good word-of-mouth and good word-of-mouth is the best marketing out there.

There’s lots of hype around big brands (like Best Buy or Comcast) using Twitter as a customer support channel. Is it? Really? It may be a first step in connecting with a customer who has a support issue or even one that loves your product, but Twitter is not the best place to resolve a complicated support issue. You need to build an entire support ecosystem that allows you to channel conversations to the right place. Maybe you identify an issue on Twitter, direct users to GetSatisfaction where you’re working on solving the issue, and when it’s resolved maybe you send them to your revised documentation online.

Twitter is not a customer support tool alone anymore than it’s a customer acquisition tool alone.

Reviews are marketing (and product development )

Since we’re thinking about word-of-mouth, let’s turn our attention to reviews. No eCommerce site is complete without them. There are a number of popular review and problem-solving sites (see Epinions, Reviews.CNET.com, Yelp, GetSatisfaction, or Fixya). How is your customer support team (or anyone for that matter) engaging in these online ratings and review spaces? Are they seizing opportunities to set the record straight when an unfair review is posted? Do they have great text, photo, and video content to share that refutes an inaccurate review?

Every employee is marketing

Every employee within your organization is a brand ambassador. They have the power to influence a huge network both on- and offline. Do they believe in your brand and its products and services? If not, you have a staff or brand problem that marketing is not going to fix.

They are already engaged through any number of social networks – have you provided them with guidelines for participation? The worst thing to do is to ban them (sorry Man U) – you want to empower them to participate and let them know that you trust them. If you believe in your brand, your workplace, and your employees, then you have nothing to hide. If you do have something to hide, fix it, because no amount of marketing will. Intel and Cisco are two companies that have gotten a lot of praise for their social media policies for employees (you can find them both here). Both companies clearly believe in their culture, as both policies essentially boil down to “Don’t be an idiot.”

Every employee … particularly your CEO or visionaries

You know you’ve got them – they may be C-level execs or someone on your human resources or sales teams. They are visionaries; they’re always the smartest people in the room, and they drop gorgeous nuggets of wisdom without even realizing it. Elevate them! They should be blogging and Tweeting daily. They should be speaking at conferences. Your PR agency should be serving them up as experts for any media that might take them.

But don’t make them just shill for the brand. Let the head of human resources talk about human resources in general. Let each visionary use examples of best practices from other companies as well as from your own. In the long run, everyone will know where that individual came from, and you’ll have the type of marketing that money can’t buy.

Now what?

Take a good look in the mirror and engage internally. Invite your entire company to do the same.

Distribute surveys and ask everyone: Who are we? What do we do best? What’s our elevator pitch? What’s our best product? What’s our worst product? What opportunities are out there for us? The insight that your own employees can provide will put just about any high agency to shame. This does not mean that an agency can’t help – this soul-searching may reveal the need for a overhaul of your brand, or at least a more articulate definition.

Deploy a company social network, using a platform like Ning. Invite discussion and debate – you’ll need to practice internal transparency if you expect to let the outside world in. Share ideas, YouTube videos, and insightful articles. Give the most junior member of the customer support team a vehicle to share his ideas with the product development team.

Through your surveys and community, particular employees from any department will float to the top – they’ll be engaged, insightful, and excited. These are your new marketers. This is your new marketing.

On the web, you’ve got to embrace the fact that syndicating content (using these traditional models) isn’t a great idea. That’s why even Wikipedia distinguishes between broadcast, print, and web syndication. They are entirely different.

Let’s be clear– syndication online doesn’t work

Look, traditional syndication of content online doesn’t work. There are lots of content producers, ranging from custom publishers and traditional content creators (magazines and newspapers) to search engine marketers, that will offer to license you content they’ve licensed before. One of the best examples of this concept gone awry is published by EBSCO. EBSCO offers all sorts of high-quality content. It’s great content, well-written, from experts in the industry. What’s the problem then? Well, they syndicate the EXACT SAME content all over the world, literally. Thousands of hospitals and medical organizations license and syndicate their medical content alone.

Now, I don’t know much about EBSCO, but I can tell you that if your organization is syndicating content like this (see the iFrame?) you’re adding literally NO value to your audience.

It’s not just about SEO #FAIL, it’s about adding value

In the online world, duplicating content (syndicating it in the traditional sense) devalues the content completely. There are plenty of articles from SEO experts about how Google deals with duplicate content. The short story is that the more often Google finds the exact same content on multiple domains, the harder it hits your score and the lower your content ranks.

But I don’t think this is the only reason traditional content syndication does not work. We believe that if you can’t offer anything unique from a content perspective, you’re not adding value to your audience. Better yet, you’re not adding value to your brand. As a consumer, I can find reliable, credible, and informative information from a series of trusted content sources on the web. Your syndication of trusted content doesn’t build your brand, it borrows another brand’s power. Why bother? You’re not differentiating your products or services; you’re just delivering the exact same content I could get from the source.

So, if you’re syndicating content (or offering to syndicate content) you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Three ways to ’syndicate’ AND add value

In our world there are ways to syndicate your content and actually add tremendous value to you and your syndication partners. But you have to work hard to redefine the connotations the word syndication drums up. You can’t just duplicate content; you have to have a real content syndication strategy designed to add value in the right ways.

1. Real Simple Syndication

AllTop HR Category

There’s a reason that RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s really simple. Syndicating content (not duplicating it’s distribution on multiple domains) using an RSS feed and giving your partners in niche markets the ability (or even paying for the ability) to display an RSS feed on a relevant domain, adds credibility and value to both websites. RSS is specifically designed to format your content correctly, give credit where credit is due, and ensure that the ACTUAL content resides only on one domain: yours. That’s really simple syndication that adds value to your customer base and your partner’s brand.

EXAMPLE: AllTop is a great place to find content that’s curated from specific users or around niche topics. This kind of content syndication is becoming more and more commonplace. We believe paid access to specific syndicators who provide human edited content will become more and more relevant and reliable as the information overload continues.

2. Re-Contextualized Content Syndication

Even more effective, intimate, and valuable in our world is the generation and distribution of content designed to be embedded and re-contextualized by your distribution partners. Using content distribution and creation platforms, like YouTube or Vimeo for video, Flickr or Picassa for images, or Scribd for documents (as just a few examples) you can create valuable content and build a content syndication network that invites your partners to re-contextualize and re-distribute your content to achieve overwhelming success.

A quick example: Let’s say you’re a B2B company selling products through a series of channel partners. You create a video that delivers your message to your channel’s customers for a new product release. You distribute the video on YouTube and create a series of ideas for your channel partners to re-distribute that content on their own platforms and invite them to embed the video in an e-mail blast to their customers. That approach gets your content syndicated to your end audience while you add value.

EXAMPLE: Here’s a great example from the gang at Espresso. Marta Kagan, created a wonderful presentation that helps educate potential clients and partners about the virtues of social media. She distributed her presentation via SlideShare and to date it’s been re-contextualized and viewed more than 62,000 times. That’s powerful content syndication that’s measurable.

3. Curated Content Syndication

Food Finds on Foodthinkers

As the amount of content generated increases, our ability to consume that content  does not increase at the same rate. What does that mean? Well, it means that one of the most effective ways to syndicate valuable content is to set your brand up as a valuable syndicator of relevant content in an organized way. This means you can build a distribution network of content partners that value your ability to focus on a niche, sift through a sea of content, and find the gems.

There are tons of content curation engines out there: Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, and Delicious to name a few. All of these sites allow you to curate content you find valuable and invite your distribution partners to syndicate your feed on their site. This is valuable content curation that allows you to appropriately give credit to the content creator while it strengthens your brand and enhances your reach.

EXAMPLE: Okay, so I’m using a Tippingpoint client as an example of this, only because I don’t see enough people doing this well. Josh Cole and Brett Virmalo on our team have started curating a set of ‘Food Finds’ for Breville’s FoodThinkers. This is a perfect example of curated content syndication that adds value to the Foodthinkers platform and has been successfully positioning Breville’s brand as a high-quality source in social spheres like Twitter.

The bottom line: redefine syndication

At the end of the day content syndication is changing. The print media and their online outlets, the unions, and even talent agents are struggling to understand how to syndicate content and manage it’s usage online. But if you’re going to really be successful offering content syndication to your clients, partners, or affiliated brands start by redefining content syndication.

Then ’round about 2004, this thing called Web 2.0 showed up.  It was fired by a new breed of start-ups that built sites driven by the creation of user-centric content. They engaged the user and constantly iterated their site to change with their user’s expectations.  In fact, they even allowed users to create and share their own content. Board meetings were filled with new words like “beta,” “mash-up,” “blog” and “wiki.”

Think different. (Now expected by everyone!)

by Smithsonian Institution

Maybe you can blame it on Apple. After all, they first asked the world to “think different.”  But asking us to change our thinking was just the beginning. Apple actually fulfilled much of this promise by building software driven consumer products that created a whole new consumer expectation: that a product should continue to get better as a consumer owns it.

The Web 2.0 movement extended this paradigm to the web.  Just as with consumer devices, users now expect a web experience that gets better with time. It has to be up to date in design, structure, and content. Or, at the very least, it must be perceived to be so.

So what does this mean to you?

1. Iterate, 2. Iterate, 3. See #1

At Tippingpoint, we preach the perpetual creation of content. This goes a long way toward the perception of newness. Content should be a large part of your strategy, but it can’t the the only part.  Your site needs to be a part of this strategy and the simplest way to make it a part is to treat it like a product.

The first step in product-tizing your website is a site audit.  Ask yourself what you want your users to do. Do you want them to come away with a feel for your corporate culture?  Do you want them to buy something?  Do you want them to create content?  Boil it down to  one sentence, then ask yourself if your site accommodates that now. If not, it’s time for a re-do.

Now create a product road map. Be sure to avoid check-box mentality. Instead of cataloging all of the stuff your competitors’ sites have and checking them off as you implement on your own site, take a good hard look at what your competitor (and other sites you like) has and ask yourself if it adds any value.  Do your users get anything out of a twitter feed on your site?  Does a Facebook fan page actually help drive your bottom line? If the answer is “no,” then don’t do it.

Next, prioritize your road map against a calendar. Put your features in order of bang for your buck.  Put resources against developing these features.  Group the features into monthly releases. Can your team pull them off in that month?  If not, change your road map.

And … go!

Start your team moving forward toward completing these features on your road map.  Release new features on your site on a monthly basis according to your road map. If something slips, move it to the next release (but don’t make a habit of it).  Take a look at your road map quarterly under the lens of  your users’ needs. Things can change a lot during a year, so take things off the road map that seemed like a good idea at the time, but no longer make sense. Add new features that do make sense.  Now re-prioritize and keep releasing.

“57 Channels and Nothing On”

Via Flickr(Drl)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 18 years since Bruce Springsteen first lamented that there was “57 channels and nothing on.“  When the song was released in 1992, such a huge cable lineup was unfathomable. The frustration he experienced trying to navigate the sudden increase of content caused the Boss to write that he bought a .44 magnum to blow away his television, Elvis style.

When you consider the explosion of content online today, 57 channels seem as limiting as choosing between french fries or mashed potatoes. Consider the statistics offered by social media think tank, Socialnomics.

• You Tube hosts more than 100 million videos.
• Users post 153 articles to Wikipedia per hour.
• There are over 200 million blogs and more than 54% of bloggers post new content or tweet daily.
• Hulu went from 63 million streams to 373 million total streams in one year.
• Facebook users share more than 1.5 million pieces of content every day.

Navigating the Deluge

So how will we navigate content online in 2010 and beyond? The same way we do in the offline world, with personal referrals. We’ll rely more and more on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Posterous to share content that our trusted contacts suggest. New API’s like Facebook Connect and even URL-shorteners like tinyurl, along with bookmarking sites like Delicious & Digg, will continue to emerge and seamlessly integrate content sharing and curation into our everyday web browsing experience.

Even search engines, which have been the #1 website referrer in the past, will soon be eclipsed by referrals from social media sites. Large engines like Google and Yahoo will never know our likes and dislikes as well as our friends and colleagues. The effectiveness of paid search and SEO tactics will continue to plummet as the success of producing frequent, relevant, high quality content continues to drive traffic.

Forget the fold, let ‘em scroll (vertically)

Back when the world was all print, we knew the best pieces had lots of white space and clean, concise copy.  After all, there was finite space to work with – 8.5 x 11, usually – and filling it meant sure death of the message. The client, however, usually had different ideas that started and ended with the more copy, the better. It was a user experience problem. A good designer could make a page full of text sparkle, but he also knew no one would read it, so the message was lost.

With the web, we’re in the same boat.  We know that more white space is best, because it allows us to focus user attention where we want it.  Recently (and historically) we’ve turned to paginating, tabs, content sliders or accordions to deal with this.

The accordion of Magento's one-click checkout is a great idea, focusing user attention where it needs to be. Problem is, it adds 4 additional clicks to a process that should only need one and makes it overly complicated to change info in a section the user has passed.

As a result, we’ve added an extra click that will lose readers. We’ve lost sight of the fact that the web page is no longer finite.  Don’t get me wrong, tabs and their ilk have their uses, but hiding important content shouldn’t be one of them. Sure, you need to have thoughtfully organized, lean copy and primary actions where a user can see them, but when confronted with more than can fit “above the fold,” use white space to its fullest by letting the text run. Users are well equipped to deal with this; they have a mouse wheel that makes it easy to scroll vertically.

Make the primary action of the page look like the primary action.

With the dense button and link interfaces of today’s web, it’s important to put things in perspective for your users. I always thought this was a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many companies large and small get this wrong.

This should be easy. Just think about what you want every user to do on your page and make sure it’s obvious.  The most basic way to do this is to make the primary action look like a button and make it bigger, brighter, and better positioned then any other button on the page.

Twitter, for example, does this well.  They want people to tweet, so the top of my home page has the headline “What’s happening,” a  large text box, and an obvious “update” button.  Facebook looks spastic by comparison. I’m not sure what they want me to do. There’s so many similar looking boxes and blue links that it’s not at all apparent.  I would think they’d want me to share “what’s on [my] mind,” as sharing content is the key to their site’s growth, but it’s in light gray text in a light gray box that makes it blend into the page.

Of course, this lack of UX 101 hasn’t taken a toll on Facebook’s popularity, but it’s no excuse to do it on a site, especially one that’s less popular.

Think about it

User testing, heat maps, and analytics are great ways to see if users are getting the most out of your site.  Frankly, though, you shouldn’t need to go that far to know if it’s working.  Instead, use common sense.  All you should need to do is think about the primary objective of your site (Is it buying something? Sharing something? Reading something?) and how the page you’re looking at fits into that objective (Checkout page? List of posts?).  Now ask yourself, is this obvious?

A more strategic approach to digital marketing is required this year – but often  a firm’s ability to acknowledge this necessary change occurs only after months of failure, pain, and anguish.  To the exhausted and bloodied, there is indeed a better way.  And to the ones just getting into the ring, learn from those who have fought before you …

by The Library of Congress

Anyone that has read Bryce Courtenay’s Power of One will appreciate a good boxing analogy for digital marketing.  In the book, Peekay learns to perfect an eight-punch combination in order to defeat his opponents.  A punch combination is simply a number of punches thrown in consecutive order which takes advantage of knowing the opponent’s reaction to the previous punch – i.e. a right hook forces your opponents hands up, which opens the opportunity for a second punch to the abdomen, which … you get it, the fun continues.

The overarching logic is that you strategically create your opportunities, as opposed to waiting for them to present themselves.  Case in point -  social media “listening” strategies. (really, is that what your SM agency is suggesting?)

In 2009, marketing budgets were  slashed and  agency turf wars ensued, resulting in digital brand tactics whose execution resembled feeble duck and jab maneuvers – not a lot of foresight, and a ton of wasted energy:

• Polishing and updating a static, flash-website … shuffle, shuffle, duck, jab
• Creating print brochure copy that is “integrated” on both your website and product literature … shuffle,shuffle, duck, jab
• Setting up a valueless Facebook fan page and tweeting corporate comm. product updates … shuffle,shuffle, duck, jab

At year end, the bell rang, you returned to your corner, got sponged off, and awaited the next bell.  All the while, your mind was spinning, telling you that your pitty-pat punch tactics were not adding up, and that if you continued with the same fight plan into 2010, you would be in for a world of hurt.

Listen to your swollen eyes and tired arms from last year’s fight!  They’re begging you to find a more effective way to win the digital fight this year.  Time to dig deep – time for a real fight plan.

The Fight Plan: 2010 demands that both brands AND agencies stitch together a lethal three-punch combination to be executed and iterated on throughout the year.  The three crucial punches are:

1. Quality Content – the perpetual production of targeted, quality content that is elevating the conversation around your market
2. Platform Technology – cost-effective, quickly deployable, and ever-evolving technology platforms that underlay ALL of your content
3. Online Wisdom – comprehensive understanding of the channels, mediums, and expectations online that enables the proper participation and promotional capabilities to support your content

Move fast, punch with foresight, learn, and repeat.

The Result: The fluidity of your movements online will be noticed – not only appreciated by your customers and feared by your competitors – but most importantly, the digital influencers in your space will begin to engage you as a trusted source of valuable information and content.

The Key Factor: This is not a 10-20% digital check-off box that is stapled onto a traditional marketing campaign budget.  This is where every marketing investment should originate from, not end with.

So, if your marketing team member has a social media channel suggestion without understanding the platform and content ramifications, tell him/her to dig deeper.  And if your agency cannot explain the value of this 3-punch approach to digital marketing, get another agency.  Your market and your customers, both present and future, will demand nothing less.

1. Strategic
2. Tactical

Their specific definitions in our business world are hazy. However, I’d describe them like this:

1. Strategies involve activities that serve an overarching and specifically-defined goal.
2. Tactics address and fix perceived needs and problems.

The distinction is minimal, but very crucial to engaging relevant audiences in new media in an effective way.

Beware the snap bracelet of the web

Photo by jllyfish

Something I’ve realized recently is that you can make yourself look very smart by writing an article that predicts the demise of ANY new media channel, no matter how long it’s published before the actual demise. ALL channels will eventually fall from favor. Heck, I once did an entire week’s worth of research into building a comprehensive Second Life presence. Doors never opened though. The Second Life fad had just about passed in that one week … kind of like snap bracelets.

A strategy would have addressed the exodus from MySpace to Facebook. A strategy would have armed you with the tools you need to create content for a new channel in any phase of its life-cycle, provided your strategically-defined audiences are in that sandbox.

1. MySpace 2. Facebook 3. Twitter 4. ????

In my experience, tactical engagements usually begin with something like, “We need you to build us a Facebook fan page.”

We can do this. No problem. We have a talented team of developers, writers, and designers in house that can provide you one heck of a Facebook fan page in a matter of hours. But what then? This is tactical. You’re addressing a very narrow and poorly defined “need” that may or may not be beneficial to your business at all.

Facebook v. Myspace

In fact, Facebook is another example of how tactical engagements yield little value. Three years ago, brands were building up their MySpace profiles. How does that look now? Perhaps this graph will give you an indication.

Now, I know you’re thinking, “Brad, it wasn’t the user-generated content that dethroned MySpace, it was poor corporate decision-making. It’s not our fault, really.” True. Double true.

The point is, companies that bet on channels as a social media strategy are ill-prepared for the future. In other words, if you bet on MySpace, you’re only prepared for MySpace. So, when that site fell from favor and became simply the realm of striving bands and gamers, brands like Aquafina were left with a static page that hasn’t been updated in about a year and offers little value.

2010 will be the year brands start realizing that they can’t achieve any meaningful business goals with a MySpace strategy, or Facebook strategy, or Twitter strategy; they need a web strategy.

2010 will see the idea of tactical engagement and “I need to get on [INSERT SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE DU JOUR HERE] now!” change into higher-level and thoughtful questions like, “What can I provide to new media channels?” This kind of thought makes your web marketing more future proof. When Twitter falls from favor, and all of your social media “experts” turn out to be “Twitter experts,” those with strategies defined by clear goals will be ready and able to distribute and promote the right kind of content on any platform to any audience.

The birth of the Micro-Proposal

Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls

When agencies know that each job is contingent on the last positive result, they might be more likely to go above and beyond for their clients. “Clients are getting a great value from each and every project. Micro-proposals can be negotiated and inevitably the scope can shift in order to fit the appropriate budget or time line. This creates an environment where ongoing pitching is necessary as is over delivering on the expectation,” says Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder and CEO of Mavens and Moguls, a Cambridge-based marketing company.

If clients are more inclined to “date their agencies” throughout the life of the relationship, at what point should the agency start hinting at a ring? Perhaps never.  Arnof-Fenn believes there are benefits to the project-based approach. “Scope creep is much less when there is a specific project with specific tasks and deliverables. With a retainer, the lines can get muddied and often the agency is pulled in multiple directions without being able to focus on any one initiative.”

The project-based approach offers constant opportunity to engage potential clients.  Without a formal pitch process, infused with a number of agencies vying for the coveted Agency of Record title, the decision to work with an agency is often generated and won through the development of long-term relationship building.

Let’s get serious

The building of relationships is a part of OTW Advertising’s development strategy. Cindy Hale, president:

“We carefully target businesses we believe need comprehensive work, but only tackle one project at a time. By the middle of the project, our clients are already invested and wondering about the next step, the next phase and how we can continue to push them forward. Then, we build projects based on priorities and budget.”

Arnof-Fenn revealed that she spoke with a client on and off over 4 years before any money was exchanged. And what was the difference after 4 years of talking? A simple cup of coffee, over which Arnof-Fenn shared some business updates and continued to showcase the value she brings to her partners. “If you are well-networked, have been at it for a while, and have a good track record, that bodes well in this environment. You’ll have a seat at the table.”

Does the ring really matter? Do you have a different relationship with partners that do long-term projects versus shorter-term ongoing projects?

Nowadays, these long-term engagements are few and far between, partly due to the tenuous state of the economy.

Risk vs. reward

The pitching business is a risky business. After a very short interaction with the prospective client, the agency is given one shot to develop ideas to dramatically and positively affect the clients business. The resources and time dedicated to a new business pitch often dramatically cuts into the profitability of the job (if it is won). If the agency is not chosen, all that work is likely to be forgotten and buried in a dusty server file.

The pitch is shifting

“Pitching is the nature of the beast,” says Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder and CEO of Mavens and Moguls, a Cambridge-based marketing company. “However, the balance has shifted away from long-term retainer engagements to more discrete projects that have a defined beginning, middle and end.”

Although Arnof-Fenn recognizes that 2010 has potential to be stronger than the last couple of years, she believes that most companies now have a comfort level with starting with smaller projects and continuing that trend through the life of the relationship. Even if, at the end of the year, the dollars spent are comparable or even more than what would have been spent had the client signed a retainer, many businesses prefer this hopscotch approach, tackling one box at a time.

Spreading projects out

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The Board of Directors could get involved in decisions if the contract dollars are large enough, and rather than schedule time at a Board meeting to discuss marketing, CMOs and CEOs skirt the issue, and the red tape, by agreeing to multiple projects for smaller dollars, spread throughout the year.

Building relationships

OTW Advertising in Winchester, MA was operating on 75% retainer at the start if 2009 and by the end, it was 35% of the total revenue. “Figuring out the new way to acquire business took time,” Cindy Hale, president, “I had to find the balance between new sales, ongoing client support and family. As a rule now, we do not respond to RFPs.

Putting agencies in a black box and asking them to design creative in a couple weeks is not the best way to judge the fit. I suggest companies spend time with prospective agencies and their teams, talk to clients and then make a decision. It will prove more successful in the long run.”

Next time …

If companies are not requesting formal RFPs from multiple agencies, then how is agency business generated? And is there a benefit to companies and agencies to multiple smaller jobs as opposed to one longer-term retainer? That is the focus of my next story. What are your business outreach techniques and how are they evolving?