Why Social Media Is the New Agency-Client Relationship Builder

We've looked at many ways in which giving importance to social interaction and integration of online and off line leads to better engagement with customers -- new and existing. Social is also inspiring many to move away from campaign-focused thinking to ongoing relationship-building.

There is a set of relationships brands engage in that may need revisiting in view of this game changing dynamic -- that of the company and its agency(ies).

Is the new spot that social media gained in the PowerPoint reports to executive teams in many companies causing marketing and communications teams to revisit their relationships with agencies and third party providers?

From separate buys

With the decline of big TV, radio and print buys, many businesses started atomizing their budgets to specialized agencies to make media buys, creative work, digital interaction, public relations, lead generation, email marketing, and so on.

Add to that building or identifying communities and brand evangelists, providing content marketing support, data analytics, and so on and you see how you could be working with a dozen or more agencies.

To one conversation

However, for conversation strategies to be successfully implemented all of those pieces of the marketing communications mix need to be integrated with each other and with a mechanism the business can use to uncover new opportunities to make what it learns in interactions operational.

Are we seeing a consolidation of those relationships? From many service providers to one agency? Given the rush to becoming that lead provider, there seems to be a trend in that direction. A recent AdWeek article termed it the great race between traditional and digital shops to win the brand account. This is a bigger conversation than traditional/digital.

One agency, still many areas

What about PR, media buys, monitoring, community building? Is there any one agency able to handle all of this well? Many PR and communications agencies are moving aggressively into digital as well.

If you think some of these activities should be handled by companies in house, you're correct. Some companies are hiring skilled people in these areas. The challenge is how to scale activities quickly to support them effectively and provide business results, fast. Isn't this how the world operates anymore?

This information scales for the small business owner as well. While you may not be able to afford hiring a big agency, there are many consultants who partner with other providers to support your business.

It sounds to me like social media is bringing back the need to have one key entity -- person or agency -- leading coordinated efforts. It's a kind of resurgence of the agency concept at the times of large TV and media ad buys, except for now the buys are a combination of content, relationships-building activities, and packaging for different channels and tools.

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Are you looking to consolidate your relationships into one lead company or consultant? Why/why not?

[of course, you could argue, that agency situation reflect corporate situation. Thanks to Tom Fishburne for clarifying that.]

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Blast from the past:

3 Trends and Top Ten Reasons to Work with a Smart Agency

© 2006-2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Jack Hadley]

Thanks, Valeria. Advertising Age just talked about this very thing in an online article and video entitled, “Social Media Upends Ski Resort Marketing”. Social media is dramatically changing the nature of ski resort advertising and Vail’s CEO talks about the way in which they have moved million of $$ in magazine advertising to a dynamic blend of PR, advertising, marketing and branding. Here is the link to the AdAge Digital article, if you are interested: http://adage.com/aboutdigital/article?article_id=140710

[Tom Kasperski]

I agree there is a real need for a person or agency to lead coordinated efforts. Unfortunately too many brand marketers see themselves or their traditional ad agency as that entity.

The truth is most brand people don't have the experience, expertise, or time to wrangle agencies, let alone design and manage an exceptionally effective marketing communications strategy. I doubt any one person does either.

Traditional agencies (they typically use the misnomer "full service") also lack the strategic and implementation expertise in all these areas. And there's one other problem. Agencies are compensated for execution, and because traditional agencies have the most experience in TV and print media, you can pretty much guess where their strategic recommendations will lead clients.

Marketers need a new service provider - the marcom strategist/agency wrangler. This entity would be prohibited from doing execution and be compensated based on results. They would bring strategic thinking, account planning, analytics, and agency coordination skills/experience to the table. They should also be idea catalysts, integration specialists, and agency advocates.

Brands don't like the idea of managing multiple agencies - they also see it as inefficient. The warm and fuzzy idea of a full service agency still has great appeal to them. Unfortunately the level of expertise required to excel in all these disciples is beyond the capacity of any single agency. And because each agency has a financial bias linked to execution, brand marketers will continue to pay for sub-par marcom strategies.

[edward boches]

Valeria:
I speak about this very subject quite a bit. Ad agencies make messages. Digital agencies build platforms. But both of those are things that go between a brand and a customer. Conversation brings them close. But ad agencies don't get it and neither do many digital shops. PR is best suited to handling conversation. But that isn't enough either. To attract a community you often need a creative idea. To earn their interest, a digital platform may be essential. But then what? They'll leave if there's no conversation, or abandon the platform if it isn't totally essential to their lives. My prediction is that we will have (since we need them) entirely new roles, whether on the agency side or client side. Those roles? Curator and choreographer. Maybe the same person. The former aggregates the best of breed resources. The latter makes sure they are working together, not at odds. We're trying to do that at Mullen, but in some cases the world isn't totally ready. Though it will be soon.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Jack - thank you for the link. If I were an agency today (I wrote a post a while back titled this way), I would be thinking about that role and what that means, in the same way Edward below here commented.

@Tom - it depends on what's comfortable for the marketer in charge on the client side. As I say in many of my conversations with agency people who get it, I have not been impressed by many agencies over the years. Managing multiple agencies on the brand or client side means holding lots of hands. To the agency types, you know it and I want to confirm it: having a strong account manager is key. In the absence of excellence in that role, the client ends up doing all the work and then it becomes easy to justify not having the agency in the first place. That is the real problem from where I sit, and the reason why programs end up being sub par.

@Edward - that, or something to that effect, is exactly what is needed. Curator and choreographer -- I fancy myself as having the ability to get and fill that role comfortably, and I have on multiple platforms. That's what conversation agent is all about :)

[Girlie]

Social media can be an effective channel for agencies to communicate with their audience if done properly. Someone from the agency should monitor this and ensure that they provide fresh content on a regular basis to give followers more reasons to come back to them. They should maximize the use of social media by sharing ideas, interacting with people in the community, and building strong relationships.

[Hubertus von Lobenstein]

Thanks Valeria, for opening up again that can of worms called "who should lead the marketing efforts". When thoughtful people like you get back on this issue it clearly seems unresolved. My problem is, that the responses to your post reflect the same old, same old of past attempts to answer it. So let me give you my take on it:

Lee Clow, the creative mastermind of TBWA(my old agency) was part of the team, that was responsible to create the new Apple building in New York. Did Steve Jobs choose him, because he was TBWA? Or because he was such an expert in architecture? Or because he was so creative? Or because he was an adman? Definetly not! He was chosen, because Steve Jobs wanted the team to come up with ideas for a building that would embody the brand idea of Apple. So he chose people who were experts in the areas of brands, brand ideas and how to turn this into brand behaviour. And he thought Lee Clow was one of them. He could have come from a PR agency, an online agency, from a marketing consultancy: As long as Steve Jobs would have been convinced, that Lee Clow would be able to contribute the above mentioned expertise, he would have been in that team no matter what his "profession" is.
The point I´m trying to make is, that this discussion is not about inhouse vs. agency, PR vs. admen, one guy vs. team. It is about finding this seemingly very rare species of brand professionals, that are able to help define a strong brand idea and then look at everything between the brand and its intended audience as potential space to express that brand idea. Those experts can come from anywhere. Companies/brands just have to find them and hire them as employees or "consultants".
Does that make any sense to you? (BTW: Thanks for all your great posts/inspirations!)

[DaveMurr]

Thank you for sharing this breakdown. This makes a lot of sense. Question, do you feel the client -agency relationship can be built on the foundation of what make the social web work? By that I mean, there appears to be this big movement of jumping on the social media ban wagon. And in this process that includes both agencies and clients. My concern is that when we mention relationships, we are referring to nothing more than and introduction via Twitter. That isn't a sustaining relationship, and I fear that some agencies, though with good intentions, either 1) don't really understand this value and 2) are passing this along to their clients. The end result of course, is their overall digital presence may fail. I'm curious what are your thoughts on the responsibility agencies have in this process.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Girlie - these sound like all points that have been repeated quite a bit already. We're getting past this advice phase and getting more into what exactly needs to change and realign. Do you have ideas on that front?

@Hubertus - your comment is on point. My feeling is that we need more leaders and visionaries who get that. Until we keep having executives who reward only those who follow best practices, copy others and go with t he flow and punish those who come up with untried ways to solve challenges (without listening to them or trying them) we will continue to solve the problem with the same mindset that created it. I'm coming to the conclusion that we need a brand new entity to drive the conversation forward. In my experience, when companies hire exceptional people, they often spend the rest of their time beating them down to become average, or discount their vision because now they're employees. I say remain a consultant and charge a lot.