This post is by Anton Buchner, a senior consultant with TrinityP3. Anton is a lateral and innovative thinker with a passion for refocusing business teams and strategies; creating visionary, data driven communication plans; and making sense of a more complex digital marketing environment.

CMO’s struggle to harness content marketing yet 61% are increasing the investment in it.

The dichotomy.

Top Australian marketers are finding it difficult to allocate budget and resource to content marketing. Yet they’re wanting to get it onto the C-Suite’s agenda, and know that it now encompasses social, search, website, email, blog, e-zine, and other key digital content areas that already sit in their existing plan and P&L.

This was the dichotomy that the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA) and Australia’s leading content marketing agency, Edge, unearthed whilst facilitating a recent roundtable.

You can check out more insights in the joint whitepaper here

Other key points:

1. No vision or documented plan
2. Lack of alignment throughout the business and clear senior ownership and governance
3. Distribution challenges due to the proliferation of content marketing options
4. The dilemma of managing in-house with existing resource or outsourcing to specialists
5. Measuring the value in return

Jodie Sangster, CEO of ADMA says, “Content marketing is on a path of significant growth—in terms of the level of investment made in content-led marketing strategies, and in the extent to which organisations have embraced the ‘engagement’ model in place of ‘sales’ communications. Content marketing is here to stay, and the organisations doing it effectively will reap the rewards.”

Fergus Stoddart, Commercial Director at Edge says, “The congruence of new data and CRM technology, changing consumer media consumption habits, social media and digital distribution means that the business case for content marketing has never been more compelling.”

I say….take a read of the white paper here and let us know your thoughts. It definitely is a blurry topic. Content has been around for decades, and distribution channels have different terminology, but at the end of the day I believe that it should be a powerful weapon in a marketer’s armoury if it’s planned correctly, aligned, owned, implemented and measured.

Love to hear your thoughts on this one.

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

Running an agency review is time consuming and disruptive at the best of times. But imagine you want to not only review your media agency, but also your creative agency and your digital agency? And you want to do it all at the same time.

Why?

In this case, and now in several since, it was because the brand was undertaking a significant strategic change. In one of these situations they were introducing a more interactive one-to-one strategy, another client was moving to a heavy content marketing strategy and the third wanted to engage a more direct response strategy. In each case the incumbent agencies were seen to:

1. have a vested interest in preserving the status quo
2. not have strengths in the new core capability areas required
3. not be particularly collaborative with each other or the marketing team

It was time to Spring Clean the agency roster and make a fresh start.

Working with new agencies is like moving into a new home – a fresh start but has teething problems

In each case the marketers discussed with us the pros and cons of undertaking the agency reviews concurrently versus consecutively.

Consecutive Pitches

To undertake one review at a time would certainly require less resources on any day and would cause less disruption initially, but the process of three agency reviews could possibly extend over a period of 6 – 8 months, during which time there would be constant disruption.

There was also the consideration of the transition process. If all agencies were replaced as an outcome of the process, how would the brand transition from one agency to the next?

Would this be best consecutively or concurrently?

Concurrent Pitches

But would running three pitches at the same time stretch the marketer resources to breaking? And would there be enough time in each pitch to really investigate and interrogate each agency’s capabilities to the depth and detail that would ensure the best outcome?

It was then that we suggested that rather than thinking of it as three pitches at once we manage a hybrid solution that had three distinct stages, with each stage investigating a particular aspect:

• Stage 1 – Market search, credentials and chemistry (Separate)
• Stage 2 – Strategy workshops and financial proposals (Collaborative)
• Stage 3 – Creative alignment and negotiations (Collective)

We call this a Collaborative Concurrent Pitch as the process is highly collaborative in establishing a collective relationship between the successful agencies involved and the marketing team.

Stage 1 – Market search, credentials and chemistry

This stage looks at each category of agencies individually, being media, creative agency and digital. A search brief was prepared highlighting core competencies, along with cultural, competitive, size and geographic considerations.

From the market search brief, a market report identified those agencies that suited the profile in each category. From this list, six agencies were identified in each category and approached to provide a detailed written response to a credentials brief.

This credentials brief requested information on the agency structure, client base, key staff and case studies to demonstrate core competencies. It also asked the agencies to list the agencies they currently worked with in the other categories being reviewed and to provide feedback on these agencies. eg. Media agencies listed creative and digital agencies with whom they currently directly worked.

Once all of the credentials documents were reviewed, all agencies attended a one hour chemistry session where they were requested to answer the question “Why we would be the ideal agency partner for the client” and be open to answering questions arising from the credentials documents they had supplied previously. They were also quizzed on the agencies in the other categories in regards to their preferred working partners.

Stage 2 – Strategy workshops and financial proposals

This stage was focused on testing strategic thinking and collaboration between the various agencies.

On completion of Stage 1, the marketing and procurement team had a very clear perception of the eighteen agencies and began the process of shortlisting these in each category. The challenge was to shortlist a maximum of three in each category meaning the list was reduced by half.

With three media agencies, three creative agencies and three digital agencies eventually short-listed, it was then a process to mix’n'match the best alignment, based on chemistry and culture of each agency and the agencies own preferred partners and experience. It was interesting that even agencies within holding companies did not necessarily recommend their own agency partners within that holding company. A final mix of three was determined, with a different media, creative and digital agency in each team.

The agencies were informed that they had been short-listed and informed on their team partners for the strategic workshop process. Each agency was given the opportunity to object to the team they had been allocated, but because of the process of obtaining their input previously all agencies were happy with their team. Each agency was also told that their success was not determined by the team they were allocated and that the client reserved the right to appoint agencies from across all three teams to make the final composition.

I have written about the benefits of the strategic workshop previously, both for fostering internal alignment and also testing alignment with incumbent agencies, therefore I will not labour the point here.

Needless to say the key benefits of running strategic workshops with three agencies from different categories or disciplines demonstrated:

1. If there was a natural lead agency or if they agencies managed the process equally
2. Which agencies naturally collaborated with the other agencies and which did not
3. Where the strategic leadership and thinking was coming from across the three agencies
4. How each of the agencies interacted with the marketing and brand team in the presence of the other agencies
5. Which agencies and personalities were inclined to dominate and which were inclined to be dominated

It was interesting to note that these combined strategic workshops can have between 12 and in one case more than 50 participants. Interestingly it did not matter how many people participated across the three agencies and the marketing team, it was still very easy to see and assess the dynamics that developed across the day in each workshop.

During this process we provided all three agencies in each category with a financial proposal template to be completed and these were benchmarked and reviewed with the marketing and procurement teams.

Stage 3 – Creative alignment and negotiations

The final stage was to then select the preferred media, creative and digital agency. Interestingly, in the times we have undertaken this process, we have never had a marketing team select all three agencies from the one group. There is no particular reason that is evident at this stage, but it does demonstrate that ultimately the selection is driven by a best team in each category and the demonstration of how they collaborate with others is secondary.

With the composition of the preferred agency structure in place and with the agency financial proposals benchmarked and reviewed, it is then possible to commence developing the financial model and negotiation strategy. One of the benefits of this approach is that you can negotiate a performance and value based remuneration model that aligns the three most strategically important agencies in the roster to the marketing strategy.

The other benefit to note is that the process is much more collaborative than the usual agency selection pitch or RFP and this establishes the basis of the relationship going forward.

Key Benefits

1. Disruption is shorter than if the agency reviews were held consecutively
2. Requires less resources than holding three separate pitches as there are significant economies in the combining and alignment of the process
3. Allows marketers to build business ready agency teams and relationships
4. Collaborative process creates a collaborative foundation to the agency relationships
5. Allows the marketers to build and apportion resources and negotiate across the agencies during the selection process to suit the needs of the marketing strategy
6. Marketers can test the level of collaboration and the way the various agencies can work together in the workshop process

While advising a marketing team to take on three reviews at once may seem like a nightmare, the fact is that if the purpose is to have a complete refresh of the agency relationships currently on the roster, then the Collaborative Concurrent Pitch process is definitely the most efficient and effective way to achieve this that I have seen.

What are you thoughts?

This post is by Jodi Randall, senior consultant with TrinityP3. Jodi is an ATL & BTL production management specialist with extensive experience and brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into production efficiencies and effectiveness across the breadth of production services.

With many campaign schedules seemingly running close to the wire nowadays having time up our ‘production’ sleeve is no longer apparent. Creative rounds, research, amendments to brief etc. all increase the pressure at the important production phase.

Given the pace of business nowadays, the pressure to approve estimates is further evidenced by a schedule that often sees progression to pre-production and location recces immediately after estimate approval.

Time crunching or making up lost time is one of the key reasons affecting a budget blowout. Through all these variable effects, what is becoming increasingly apparent is the need and pressure for clients to immediately approve estimates. To accommodate the urgency around estimate approvals, here are 5 ways to assist in having the dotted line signed and all parties in agreement.

Racing against the production timeline is no reason to not fully assess production estimates prior to approval.

1. Estimates are the sum of one

Indeed they are. Production estimates are a sum of many parts, being a range of external 3^rd party suppliers. These include film production, post production, music, audio and voice over, talent fees, casting and the list goes on; all required to submit their estimates to the agency.

All these components take time for an agency to brief and collate together as one summarised estimate. Juggling what needs to fit to balance within the overall production budget requires having to negotiate with some suppliers to cater for other suppliers – it’s the balancing act of managing budgets when producing.

Agencies need to allow additional time within their timing schedule, source competitive estimates and establish engagement early in the campaign with all suppliers.

2. Respect client’s evaluation time

Whilst an agency may have rightfully required more time than scheduled for briefing and estimating, presenting an estimate to a client with the expectation of a signed approval either that day or the following is neither efficient nor methodical.

A client has the right to take the time to review the estimate thoroughly, discuss within their internal teams and possibly even have top-level management approval, before signing on the dotted line. More often than not, this step in the process of production is now absent; and needs to be respectfully considered. Why?

3. Clients right to query

Production budgets are not an agency’s money spend, it’s a client money spend. “Why are we being charged $xxx in producer fees? Why are the talent fees so high? If I sign this estimate with a music allowance ballpark cost doesn’t that then become a firm fixed cost?”

Questions pertaining to the detail within an estimate are sometimes not particularly welcome by agencies; the indignation of the query creeps in a little, the time to justify and respond to queries is niggling and the added delays can also create tension. So how to avoid?

4. Supply the detail

Third party estimates? Internal head hours?

Provide the detail – be transparent.

Whatever the remuneration agreement between agency and client in relation to third party costs mark-ups – yes or no – either way provide the suppliers estimates as supportive documentation with the agency estimate. This should include all external suppliers – those invoicing through another supplier.

For example casting and post-production are commonly included within the film production house estimate. The cost onus at the end of the day lies with the client. The objective is to prevent situations like a phone call where the agency representative says ‘We left off the xxxx cost’. E&OE are not placed on agency estimates for no reason.

5. Revisit the budget

Just as Creative need to revisit the brief when it’s edging closer to final creative presentation, so too is the requirement for the Producer and Account Service personnel to revisit the initial production budget when finalising estimates.

If over budget then an alternative estimate that fits the budget should be presented. It may well be that you’ve ended up over budget due to further creative extensions from the initial brief – these may have evolved as agency proactive suggestions or client requests. However these came about and whatever the reasoning, having a supportive estimate that is within budget to present, is often effective in having the over budget estimate approved.

In summary, consideration to these 5 steps within the planning schedule ensures that the production process is not unduly delayed and all concerned can progress confident that the project is correctly budgeted and approved.

I’d be interested to hear your views. Please leave a comment.

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

My wife Cao She, recently shared the story from Chinese history about Bian Que, who established the basis of Chinese medicine as it is still practiced today. It got me thinking about the way we work with our clients.

The story is from the Spring and Autumn Period in China (about 770BC). King Wen of Wei asked the most famous doctor Bian Que “You and your two brothers are all very good at medicine, but who of the three of you is the best?”

Bian Que thought carefully and answered modestly “My eldest brother is the best, my second brother is the second best, and I am last”.

King Wen was confused and said “If you are the least then why are you the most famous one?”

Bian Que answered “My eldest brother always cures people before the disease has a chance to attack. Therefore people do not appreciate he has cured them, so nobody realizes how good he is, except my family of course.”

“My second brother can cure people when the disease have not become a serious problem, so people think he can only deal with very minor illnesses. Therefore he is only famous in our home town.”

“I, on the other hand, only see patients once the disease has progressed and has become a life threatening illness. People can then see me perform surgery, so they all think I am the best because they believe I can perform miracles. That is why I am well known across the whole country”.

Crisis Management

It got me thinking about the way we work with our clients. In the majority of cases, and especially the first time a marketer calls us, the marketer or the procurement team have hit an insurmountable problem – typically something like the agency has fired the client or the negotiation has failed or the production costs continue to be significantly over budget, all requiring immediate intervention and often some significant action – like Bian Que’s surgery.

It is this situation which reinforces the perception that I am the ‘Mr Wolf’ for the marketing industry. We are engaged to assist in sorting out the resultant mess and to get things back on track.

Therapeutic and Preventative

But this is not the only work we do as increasingly marketers and especially those more enlightened procurement professionals are realising that rather than waiting for something to break, it is worthwhile looking for ways to improve and repair issues before they become much bigger issues. Typically this includes remuneration benchmarking and modelling, strategic supplier alignment and marketing process alignment, which are as much preventative as they are therapeutic.

The implementation here is rarely as disruptive or as difficult as the more interventionist processes required when addressing major issues with the marketing process or relationships.

Prevention Rather Than Cure

The biggest opportunity I see from this story is for marketers to embace a more preventative approach to managing and optimising their marketing process and relationship management – this typically is relationship and collaboration management using either Evalu8ing or Hainsight, developing more aligned marketing processes with the Engagement Agreement process or Production Management – all preventative and collaborative in their approach and delivery.

I believe that many marketers think that the day-to-day process and management will simply look after itself and that any steps to manage this are only required when problems arise. The issue with this is that often many of these complex relationships and systems are riddled with problems and inefficiencies which do not become obvious until the system is under extreme stress and yet daily rob the organisation of budget and time.

If only more marketers and procurement people were less focused on how to spend the marketing budget or reduce the marketing budget to see that there is a powerful opportunity to make the whole process work more efficiently.

Until that day, like Bian Que, we become more famous for fixing the major issues faced by marketers than we do helping prevent them in the first place.

This post is by Michael Smith. Michael is one of the UK’s digital veterans and is Managing Partner and Digital Director of Media and Communications consultancy, ID Comms

Digital media trading used to be simple. There was a time; eons ago, when all anyone had to worry about were banners, buttons and click through rates. It was so simple inventory levels could even be tracked by scribbled numbers on pieces of paper! Of course at that time we thought it hugely complicated and cutting edge. Little did we know but fast forward 18 years and those humble practices seem like child’s play compared to the current complex digital trading eco-system.

However, for all the complexity, digital media trading has never been such a fascinating journey, full of exciting opportunities for advertisers, agencies and media owners. Keeping up with the pace of change and having an informed view about how to navigate through the multitude of decisions is a challenge faced by all modern marketers. The important thing is to always have a clear view of your destination and the measures of success along that journey through the digital eco-system.

Of course it is easy to be distracted. No self respecting conference, forum, trade mag or blog can resist in some shape or form, talking about automated buying, real-time bidding (RTB), demand side platforms (DSPs), Ad Exchanges, Data Management Platforms (DMPs) and Agency Trading Desks (ATDs).

Boy, we’re an industry brilliant at creating acronyms!! All of this is rather long-hand for the simple process of buying, serving and tracking an advert that’s targeted to a particular audience based on a number of targeting filters. And that is what marketers need to keep in mind, is the core process is the same, just the eco-system is much more complex than before.

So for all the complexity let’s not forget that this is just about buying the right ad at the right price, serving to the right person, in the right environment at the right time with the aim to encourage them to perform the right action / outcome.

Thankfully there are masses of material and opinion that can be found online that explain in graphic detail about the role of each of the innovative tech platforms within the new eco-system. The ANA whitepaper on Agency Trading Desks is a terrific map and a must read for those wanting to understand the role of the trading desk, the origins, benefits and crucially the questions to ask of your media agency.

So whilst there’s no shortage of material explaining the changes to the eco-system, it’s difficult for marketers to get to grips with the decisions and actions that they need to make to ensure continued value from their media investments. We’re not talking small scale either. Google predicts that the future digital display market will be worth $50 billion dollars and perhaps as much as 50% of future trading will be conducted through a real-time bidding process.

In one paragraph let us explain that $50bn landscape!!!

There are now more people online, spending more time looking at an increasing number of websites and as a result there are more available ad slots to sell, not all of which are sold – supply exceeds demand. At the same time an increase in data collection, targeting abilities and technology that allows buyers to bid on and buy individual impressions rather than buckets of impressions, has created a new type of marketplace where advertisers can have greater control of where their ads are shown and whom they’re shown to.

To facilitate trading within this new marketplace ad-exchanges have arisen that provide the hub where buyers and sellers can trade ad slots in real time. The role of the Demand Side Platform is as a technical layer that allows for buying across multiple ad-exchanges, at an impression-by-impression level, in real time with targeting filters enabled. All within a single interface. Still with us? The agency-trading desk as the name suggests resides within an agency and is a centralized, service-based organization accessed by agencies within the group to buy ad slots via a DSP on behalf of the agencies clients.

This all sounds pretty sensible, if not a little complex (trust us I’ve hugely over simplified).

If only things were that simple. However, no great surprise a multi-billion dollar business with multiple layers of technology is going to attract some challenges and fiercely raged debates. That’s by no means a reason to ignore the opportunities offered but rather by understanding the debate, informed decisions can be made.

The hot topics as they current stand fall into the following themes:

Transparency

A combination of trading and new ad technology provides equal measures of lack of transparency and mistrust over trading practices. Perhaps much of that mistrust is unfairly levied at media agencies, or perhaps not!!

What’s up for debate is the perception about the way that agencies make their margins from their client’s media dollars. Agencies will argue that they’re often blind when it comes to buying through ad-exchanges, which in turn does little to repair already fragile relationships. The issue of ‘Arbitrage’ also adds a degree of opaqueness that many agencies will argue tarnishes them unfairly.

Rather than get hung up on transparency, the advice has to be to neutralize the debate by developing remuneration models that both incentivise and reward. Models that galvanize all sides to strive for effective and efficient outcomes are clearly the winners in this space.

Verification

You only have to look across the much-publicised Lumascape Digital Display Ad Tech landscape to appreciate that ads don’t always appear where they should. At times innocent at others potentially reputation damaging, the problem is so toxic it warrants its own set of logos on the Lumascape landscape.

The solution is not an overly simple one and is debated at an industry trade body level. Nonetheless it is one that the modern marketer needs to be aware of irrespective of whether trading is handled by a media agency partner or handled in-house. Which leads to another hot topic.

In-house vs. Out-source

I’ll come onto one of the big reasons why ‘In-house’ is becoming a very real option for a growing number of advertisers but the fact remains that trading through a media agency partner is now not the only option.

The advent of exchange based trading and ad tech platforms have given many advertisers the environment and tools that they require to maintain control over their media investments. The decision to move digital trading is not to be taken lightly and can be a disruptive force within a marketing department. A decision not to be taken lightly especially given the myriad of costs / disruption / pros and cons to be considered.

However, one of the primary reasons for advertisers exploring in-house trading, aside from control of costs and margins, are business decisions based on controlling customer data.

Data

Try as we may to avoid using the ‘D’ word it’s nigh on impossible when reporting on the developments within the digital trading space! Whilst we won’t go down the ‘Big Data’ route, the fact remains that data is playing an increasing role in the decision making process of how digital media is bought, served and tracked.

Those advertisers who have brought digital trading in-house have data high on their agenda and not only want to control the use of their customer data but also don’t want to find themselves with the real threat of losing invaluable data as and when they decide to move their media buying account from one agency to another.

If only there was one solution to suit all needs… there isn’t. Understanding the implications of where digital media trading is going is fundamentally crucial for all advertisers who currently spend in digital, or have any aspiration to spend on digital in the future.

Questions and opportunities…

Let’s remind ourselves that for all of the complexity surrounding the new digital trading ecology, there are many fantastic and exciting opportunities that will benefit clients, agencies and media owners alike.

This space will only become more complicated but as it does so will advertisers understanding of how to navigate, assuming that is that they start to ask the right questions now and make informed decisions.

Here are the three most important considerations to help you navigate this eco-system:

• Decide whether digital trading remains within your traditional media agency, whether you appoint an independent or take the step to bring digital trading in-house.
• Don’t squander the valuable opportunities by obsessing on cost and transparency. Take control of the situation and implement remuneration models that incentivize and reward.
• Crucially, have an ambition for digital media and clear vision for how it will drive business growth – this will inform what technology is right for your business rather than technology dictating what direction your business takes.

This post was the basis of the Trendsetters article published by The Internationalist on April 4, 2013