I’ve spoken before on the need for agencies to become more agile in developing digital solutions for clients. As the velocity of change continues to accelerate, clients are going to insist that their agencies rise to the occasion. A second consideration is that, in the main, client’s expect the agencies they appoint to be unencumbered by internal corporate governanence that slows innovation down.

Earlier this week my agency had an external talker put forward the view that there will no longer be a need for long term strategic thinking by planners because the world will have moved on. Granted you can never say never, and indeed the role of the advertising planner may evolve into something more or something less. Indeed it has been suggested that it’s highly likely that our children in school today will perform a job or role that hasn’t come into existance yet.

But far from powering down Powerpoint or keynote for one last time, I do believe that having a long-term plan does have a valid place going forward. Jon Steel, in Truth, Lies, and Advertising, credits planners are being:

…the architects and guardians of their clients’ brands, the detectives who uncovered long-hidden clues in the data and gently coerced consumers into revealing their inner secrets, and the warriors who stood up and fought for the integrity of their strategic vision. They had the logical, analytical skills to consume and synthesize vast amounts of data, and the lateral and intuitive skills to interpret that data in an interesting and innovative way.

Being the voice of the consumer as Jon Steel says is the key distinction. There is a certain scientific creativity at work within the planners role that develops advertising and keeps it relevant. Be it digital or non digital. Applying a more Agile methodology within the planning discipline should still have the end-consumer in mind when it comes to the output that makes them compatible regardless of looking through the lens of long-term or short-term thinking.

In my last post, I wrote about the changing dynamic between brand, agency, and consumer. The old model of brands employing agencies to sell their stuff to consumers is no longer a win-win proposition for all parties concerned. The notion that that television continues to be the “Drug of the Nation” no longer holds sway in the developed world and that a consumer-centric model, grounded in our online habits, has taken hold.

It continues to be the case that the vast majority of agencies will, enter into a devil’s pact with the client, to produce something which seeks to be neither inspiring or engaging for fear that it alienates the client’s core audience. As Martin Weigel puts it:

It results in the sort of work that aims squarely at the middle. And thus caution and anxiety further feed the oversupply of crap.

It is almost as if brands have been caught in the headlights of the internet and it’s impact on consumer attitudes and behaviours. The majority of agencies have been quick to fill the vacuum with endless powerpoint case studies to show to clients that they should do ‘An Old Spice Man’ or some such derivative. Going down such as path leads to a simple executional existence at the expense of any creative strategic vision.

The problem is how do agencies define their strategic credentials in the face of rapid social and technological change that has now put the consumer first? A new framework is required that is flexible enough to cope with these changing forces and yet have the efficiency to deliver.

There’s been a lot of good dialogue around Lean Thinking and around Eric Ries’ Lean Startup publication. I do believe some of the core themes in both apply to planning and have a place within ad-land.

Lean thinking: a Philosophy

Before evaluating the principles of Lean Thinking, and whether they can be applied to the world of advertising, you need to understand the historical context with which the thinking developed and evolved. Toyota is widely credited with applying a lean thinking philosophy in it’s manufacturing business in the 1950′s. Essentially it’s focus was to design a process that eliminated waste (muda), inconsistency (mura) that leads to overburden (muri). Especially important in post-war japan with the entire economy still in recovery.

What it achieved was a process rooted in:

1. Continuous improvement in terms of people, process, and products/services
2. Respect for people and partners to produce the right results
3. Sticking to a long term vision
4. Embracing a culture of learning

It’s no wonder that the philosophy was adopted so readily by the next wave of tech start-ups after venture capital funding was pulled or incredibly hard to secure after the dot.com crash of 1999/2000.

Building solutions with the consumer in mind

So why should ad-agencies look to apply such as a philosophy as Lean Thinking? It’s clear that agencies push the boundaries with what the consumer can do with the internet. So it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith that agencies will begin to produce a sticky platform that is consumer centric. To some degree this has already happened with the 50/50 project that I mentioned in my last post.

Neil Perkin neatly summed up an ideal world in which planners take a lead role in helping business solve problems:

…as products and services become ever more digitised, and messaging becomes experiences, perhaps the one group of people best positioned to lead agencies into a new relationship with clients are those that can help businesses find the right problem to solve, truly understand customer need and work back: agency planners.

Agencies planners are well placed to put consumer centric design at the forefront of any product or service they ship. Through the application of Lean Thinking all the phases of concept, build, test, and deploy put the emphasis on the consumer, whilst embracing a culture of learning to reach that goal.

Ghetto testing

Part of that continuous learning philosophy and the need to eliminate unnecessary waste may be along the lines of testing employed by games company Zynga. They employ a form of A/B testing to assess what new features have the greatest demand from the consumer. This is done by creating a range of online ads, with each individual ad acting as a pitch for a new product or functionality for their games. Depending on the amount of traffic the ad gets, determines whether that functionality has been validated by the consumer.

This approach effectively flips the entire concept for using online ads for acquisition purposes to one in which validates a business’ course of action. Such an approach should be used more readily within ad-land to determine a strategic course as being valid without necessarily expending the time and effort to build it only to see it fail.

The End in Mind

I overheard a project manager lament the fact that there were too many senior planners in the agency and that this was causing him problems with his budgets. But what if an agency could deploy their best planners to create something truly brilliant and consumer centric, whilst eliminating waste using lean thinking? Being smart with the long term vision whilst cultivating an environment of continuous improvement can be found in most successful businesses regardless of the sector.

Planners are in a unique position to cultivate this philosophy within the agency environment, and bridge the gap between testing assumptions and executing against them with the minimum amount of waste. Regardless whether Lean Testing, becomes another dated buzz word, the underlying principles have universal appeal and may effectively deliver in a world of complex change.

 

Some of the themes expressed are explored in some detail by Neil Perkin’s series of Firestarters workshops #1, #2, #3.

To set the context, I recently pitched for an sCRM approach to a large UK/US brand with an established heritage. Building upon a great article by Olivier Blanchard I set a broad and comprehensive sCRM strategy to the potential client.

Now the problem was assuming that the client agreed on the definition of sCRM. To paraphrase Esteban Kolsky (via Olivier Blanchard) sCRM is defined as:

… a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interaction in a business environment.

It quickly became apparent that agencies and businesses alike all have different ideas as to what sCRM means to them. In the case of the potential client, they had a very fixed view of sCRM. After initially questioning them it became clear as to what the actual problem was. Reversing the trend of declining email open rates.

So I set about providing a top line summary of what I believe to be an approach to implementing a sCRM strategy but with the client’s focus on email at its core. Here is that edited response.

The challenge for any email campaign is connecting with an apathetic audience bombarded by messaging. Knowing your audience and connecting with them has been a marketing mantra in recent times.

This summary aims to provide a clear rationale for a strategic sCRM approach with email at its core. Moreover this outline will suggest how this will be achieved when partnering with Agency X.

You (the Client) know your audience and how they are currently segmented. The approach of Agency X is to map those segments to the online space. By taking into account the multiple touch-points and interactions your customers engage in online (email, banner ads, social media) a 360-degree picture can be built up.

The insight that this fully rounded perspective brings to an email campaign is the ability to serve up content at the right time to the right people. As a result there is a shift from the broadcast messaging model to a more personalised and engaging experience.

But any successful sCRM strategy must be aligned to a clear set of business goals with agreed KPI’s and measures.

The recommended way Client X should measure performance is to tie it to the underlying business objectives. Whether it’s acquisition, retention, conversion, or win back, each goal should be measured in the right way. Agency X will partner with Client X to define the appropriate metrics behind each goal and set up a test plan to benchmark success. The results of those metrics will be tailored into a summary dashboard to be sent to Client X on a recurring basis.

For example, conversion rates will inevitably be a key part of what success looks like in an email campaign. The best way to measure conversion is by conducting analysis of the mix, type, and frequency of emails a customer has received over time. But the key differential is that Agency X approach is to apply it within the broader context of other channels. Only then can you begin to see the efficacy of a targeted email campaign.

Presently, Client X’s email can only reach as far as the inboxes that your subscriber list allows. Those inboxes hold the promise of opening to many more impressions. By facilitating the social sharing of emails, Client X can tap into the rich potential of their subscriber’s social network.

Traditional measures of email performance cover the classic metrics like: delivery, open, click, and conversion. The impact of email can reach beyond the inbox. When expanding reach to social channels, you open a whole new world of performance measurement. In social networks, you can track things like key influencers, sentiment around your brand or campaign, and your extended overall reach. When combining these new social insights with your email campaign metrics, you will get a new perspective on which campaigns and offers are really converting, as well as which content is most important to your influencers.

Knowing your audiences propensity to purchase is an important part of the solution. Collaborating with Agency X we can help build that understanding of the key touch points, from a position of somebody having no awareness right the way to loyal customer.

But it’s when you factor in level of engagement that the strategic model comes alive.

It’s by knowing and plotting the engagement touch points, and attributing a value to each activity can you begin to apply a scoring model for each audience segment identified.

Once these axes are combined and activities plotted can you make tactical decisions on moving users from bottom left to a more engaged top right.

 

So there you have it. The lesson learned was firstly not to assume definitions are mutually agreed upon, rather I used the meeting to make sure I fully understood the brand’s problem.

Secondly the real eye opener was seeing the client have that eureka moment when setting the scene of what sCRM means (in my eyes).

Thoughts and opinions welcomed on what is a tricky and ambiguous term.