February 29, 2008Newsflash: When it comes to Social Media, Agencies don't it
Filed Under: Fixing the Ad Agency Mess
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It's almost too easy.
Where's the catch?
Strike 1: A new study from TNS Media Intelligence and Cymfony (n=60 marketers in North America, France and the U.K) reveals that when it comes to social media, traditional agencies view "social channels like blogs as traditional media".
Strike 2: ...their (agencies) ideas are not backed up by practical skills in the area.
Strike 3: ...agencies have little of their own experience using social networks or video-sharing sites for themselves.
This, compounded by the rising importance of social media, makes for somewhat of a perfect storm:
- Nearly 50% of marketers said social-media efforts needed to be handled at an executive level with "significant" resources.
- Another 30% agreed social media is a "revolutionary opportunity."
The data/findings are consistent with the research piloted in association with SNCR and TWI Surveys for my book, "Join the Conversation."
Sidebar: I look forward to sharing some of this research when I keynote at the SNCR Forum on April 22nd.
To be sure, it is (as I opened up in this post) almost too easy to lay into the agencies. They pretty much deserve it, don't they? Still, it takes two to tango and I think this quote from Super Bowl loving FedEx
"I think traditional ad agencies have very little contribution to make," Bryan Simkins, a marketing specialist at FedEx, told TNS. "They are mostly driven by their compensation models which are made for closed media. Those models don't apply in open media."
This, coming from the company that put Jose Avila and his furniture on the map.
Marketers, if you want your agencies to survive and thrive, you too will need to adjust the way you source, compensate, reward and respect your agency partners.
...but yes, the agency model has to adapt, adjust and evolve and agencies are going to need to restructure the way they do business in major way if they are to survive.
To help you in your quest, here are 3 pieces of advice:
- Stop being so damn arrogant and deluded to think you can do this yourselves. You can't. This is all about humility.
- Stop trying to automate the whole process and solving your problems by a quick technology acquisition fix. You're drowning in your own data and laziness. This is labor intensive.
- Stop trying to scale the whole process and replicate your old bad habits. This is about planting seeds and sticking around long enough to reap the rewards of care, consideration and hard work.
Questions?
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Comments
A better question would be--does anyone really get it...
Posted by: Jason Peck
There's another big factor stopping agencies from "getting" social media, which I wrote about last week.
In a nutshell, social media doesn't engage the creative department. Or at least not the creative department's traditional strengths. And since social media programs aren't going to win awards at Cannes this year, no one is exactly chomping at the bit to start one.
http://tangerinetoad.blogspot.com/2008/02/creativity-is-relative.html
Posted by: Toad
This really is about entering into a conversation. It takes time, energy, effort and money. It's not something you just launch and then walk away, moving onto the next ad or the next initiative. It's about engaging with the audience -- basically a one on one approach. Agencies better get used to it if they want to move forward.
Posted by: Mark Cork
Every time I hear this issue arise, it's because the Channel in question wants to make money from marketers.
Three counter-points to the Agency Compensation/Arrogance arguments:
1. Social channels don't have business models that agencies or marketers can easily "buy".
2. Conversations are expensive investments no matter how you conduct them.
3. And, as with research, no marketer can simply base massive decisions on outliers - the pissed or the exuberant - which permeate most social channels.
Some of us remember when websites first came out. (Or cable, or outdoor, or movie theaters, etc.) To participate, marketers and agencies had to deploy lots and lots of media buyers (labor) to figure out and track the how, when and where; and, creative executions (even higher cost labor and production) in countless forms and formats had to be generated just to experiment. All the while these channels talked about how they were lower cost and more effective, and droned on about how agencies were too attached to TV because of old compensation models.
Eventually all of these "media" evolved. But that evolution has had more to do with the outlets evolving their business model based on what marketers and agencies tried and learned, than it did on changing compensation models or attitudes. (Anyone that looks deeply will see agency compensation models HAVE changed a great deal.)
In the new social channels there are no simple ways to do things - it's another labor intensive option in the long history of media evolution. Whether it's better or not doesn't help make it real.
I'd argue the bleeding edge types are trying things. Sometimes they fail (like Edelman doing fake blogs) and other times they shift quickly because first mover advantages fade fast (seeding YouTube postings come to mind).
But I don't see many of these social channel developers who beg for "monetization" doing much to listen to marketers or really help their own evolution. C'mon, incorporating Google Ads? These continue to be little more than a slicker, targeted version of the yellow pages and they're all sharing pennies...does anyone really want Google or Microsoft search to become the "network" buys of the future? If not, who is working on a better solution?
My point is we should stop blaming agencies for being arrogant or labeling the old compensation systems as the problem. From my view that's just lazy, navel-gazing. Agencies are middle-guys.
Let's push the platforms and developers to devise products in which marketers can invest, to collaborate on standards that make it easier to "scale" social efforts, and stop pretending that easily consumable media are a panacea for marketers.
And, if you think these early social channels are messy, just wait until this conversation goes mobile.
Posted by: Edward O'Meara
