I just returned from NYC to attend the first AAAA/AAF Supplier Diversity Trade Fair.

The Next Wave is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business, with HUB (Historically Underutilized Business Zone) zone certification. If you are a big agency that’s doing work for the Government, those certifications are very important- it’s Federal law that 3% of your budget be allocated to working with SDVOB and there can be other requirements mandating HUB zone participation.

The Next Wave has been listed in CCR (the Federal data base for eligible contractors) for over 10 years. We have been called by exactly 6 different businesses over those years- either as a last minute effort to include us in a list of “possible subcontractors” in a bid (Leo Burnett for the Army recruiting contract- which went to McCann, and Burson Marsteller on an unnamed project) and a whole bunch of times by the diversity master of the moment at SBC/ATT. It seems that SBC/ATT has very high diversity goals- but very poor follow through.

The list of great ad agencies attending the event was impressive:
Arnold Worldwide
BBDO New York
Leo Burnett, USA
Campbell Ewald
DDB New York
Deutsch
DraftFCB
Element 79 Partners LLC
Euro RSCG Worldwide, New York
Grey Worldwide
GSD&M
JWT New York
The Kaplan Thaler Group
Lowe Worldwide
Merkley Partners
MediaVest
McCann Erickson
Ogilvy & Mather
Publicis New York
Saatchi & Saatchi
TBWA\Chiat\Day
Y&R

and then there was us: The Next Wave.

Since ad agencies don’t typically like to admit to hiring either freelance creative, or another agency to do work for their clients- we took a different path to approach them in partnering for diversity goals: we only talked about helping them understand Web 2.0 and Search Engine Optimization, Direct Mail fulfillment (pimping for a local SDVOB who is also a member of VOB108.org with us) and video production- which we can do in-house, or partner with others to deliver product that qualifies for SDVOB participation points.

Our promo piece included the an analysis of how each of the above agencies compared in number of actual pages indexed by Google. The results were astonishing- of the 22 agencies in attendance, The Next Wave beat all but 4 for accessible, searchable content. Here is what we found:

The Next Wave's handout for AAAA/AAF diversity trade fair2 from mccann.com
4 from greyny.com
4 from saatchiny.com
24 from deutschinc.com
29 from element79.com
37 from tbwa.com
39 from leoburnett.com
52 from kaplanthaler.com
58 from bbdo.com
58 from mediavestww.com
94 from publicis-usa.com
114 from gsdm.com
152 from loweworldwide.com
161 from arnoldworldwide.com
193 from yr.com
212 from merkleyandpartners.com
230 from draftworldwide.com
244 from campbell-ewald.com
260 from thenextwave.biz
480 from ddb.com
577 from ogilvy.com
621 from eurorscg.com
2,220 from jwt.com

Note: Crispin Porter Bogusky, the agency that is known for their viral video and “web and new media expertise” only returns 1 page.

Presenting proof that 82% of the Agencies in attendance have interactive departments don’t understand Google isn’t always the best way of making friends, but most of the representatives there seemed genuinely interested and surprised by the results- and the implications for them.

If you work at one of these big agencies, or others, and want to learn how you need to build websites that have content (including your ads) that the general public can find- and interact with, we are available for consulting.

If you want to find out how to tell how many pages Google knows about in your domain do the following:

  1. Go to Google
  2. type: site:yourdomainname.tld in the search box
  3. it will return the numbers of pages it has indexed and what each page is about and it’s title (if your title says “untitled” or “home” and the “about text” is the same for more than one page- you need to call us ASAP).

We believe “Search Engine Marketing” is voodoo, however, we are sure that if your customers can’t find your content in google- you don’t exist for most of the market.

If you are looking for a way to meet your Federally required SDVOB participation for contracts- we can help you with the following NAICS Codes:
54143 Graphic Design
541810 Advertising agencies
541613 Marketing Consulting Services
541511 web development
518210 web hosting
512110 video production

Will this trade fair generate diversity in advertising? Probably not. But it was a step in the right direction.

Some suggestions for future trade fairs: Supply a database of vendor attendees and their services and qualifications to the Agency buyers- and include that information on the name badges. It would be a huge help.

The other suggestion: Hold it in a place that has a history of supporting diversity, instead of the NY Athletic Club- it seemed almost like blasphemy to be in a place that didn’t have African American Members until the 80’s and was so concerned with a dress code.