by Next Wave Team | Mar 19, 2007 | Ad Agenices in Dayton, OH, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Great Ad Agencies, How To Select An Ad Agency, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, Search and Business, Web strategy
In our effort to bring you the best, most useful, and interesting insight into advertising, ad agencies, and getting the most for your marketing dollar- we stumbled upon this post by “Gerry McGovern” in a non-web 2.0 site- but was right on:
Web design: never let an ad agency near your website: January 19, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern
The average advertising agency fundamentally doesn’t get the Web. Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO Worldwide, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy are great advertising agencies. When it comes to managing their own websites, however, they are rank amateurs. They bring their print and TV thinking to the Web with embarrassing results.
Well worth a click over - where he rants about the stupidity of the Flash intro, and the innane copy which makes every agency sound- well- alike. He doesn’t actually give your real stats on why big ad agency sites suck (we do that quite aptly here: ad agencies seek diversity) but he does describe some sites- that when you visit today- will realize haven’t changed or updated content in 3 years (we just went to LeoBurnett.com the other day- only to leave totally frustrated with the most worthless web navigation ever- and no search function).
We’re not saying that all big advertising agency sites are boring, or ugly- just that most of them aren’t actually useful.
Here are some key ways to evaluate an ad agencies web competence:
- Is the text selectable- and copyable- so you could easily put together their brilliant ideas for marketing into a memo for your boss on why to hire them? (This also means you can read the content with a text-to-speech reader for blind people- and that the site will be indexable by google).
- Are there separate pages for each piece of content- in other words- can you send a link to the exact spot that you think is relevant to your boss- “Hey, look at this brilliant marketing strategy” - I think it applies to our company.
- Is the content current- and changing? Google rewards fresh new ideas and content. If thy don’t update their content, how can they suggest you do it? Practicing what you preach is important on the web.
- Can you view the site without having to turn off noise, or have video start without you telling it to? Good for not disturbing the boss- or letting him know that you are secretly looking for a new ad agency because your current one isn’t very web-savvy.
- When you go to Google and type in: site:bigagency.tld you actually get more than one page. Try it for this site- site:thenextwave.biz and look at how many pages are indexed!
- Another key to finding out if your prospective agency is web 2.0 compliant- look for links out, and links in. Although not perfect- going to Google and type in link:thenextwave.biz will show you a smattering of what links to us. We know many more link to us, because we watch our web stats- a very informative tool to gather information about who is saying what about you.
There are a whole bunch of other questions to ask before hiring an ad agency- but we try to cover that in our topic “how to pick an ad agency”- as opposed to here- where we’re just talking about web 2.0 web skills.
If you have questions on how to analyze your ad agencies web competence, feel free to give us a call.
by Next Wave Team | Mar 2, 2007 | Advertising, Creativity, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Great Ad Agencies, How To Select An Ad Agency
Hey, it’s good to know that The One Club (those cool cats who hand out Gold Pencils- at around $600 per entry) has discovered advertising can be done by agencies smaller than 3000 people.
Writing in their “One. a Magazine” they say:
One Club / One. a Magazine > Recent Issues/Articles
There’s a new wave of regional creative shops coming to prominence these days, in cities that have never before been associated with strong creative ads: Indianapolis, Madison, Orlando, New Orleans, and a dozen other small-to-midsized markets.
What’s driving this “second regional revolution?” Part of it seems to be the fact that clients, in an age of new media explosion and wide-open marketing possibilities, are looking for fresh thinkers who can experiment and adapt quickly—and they’re finding that, increasingly, by going off the beaten path.
The only thing they got wrong was their first line: There’s The Next Wave, a prominent agency doing strong creative in Dayton OH.
They must have missed that part about you can say anything you want about us- just get the name right…
Now- to be totally serious- the article is a step in the right direction. Great advertising can come from anywhere. Many small agencies would rather invest in their people, instead of high dollar award show entry fees.
by Next Wave Team | Mar 1, 2007 | Ad Agenices in Dayton, OH, Brand Relevancy, Change the world, Creativity, Differentiating Your Brand, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Great Ad Agencies, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Secrets of Great Advertising, Web strategy
Went to the Dayton Ad Club today- yeah, the people who continually threaten to throw us out- to hear Clint! Runge from Archrival speak.
Very cool insight into the “Millenials” or “GenY”- and a nice presentation. I was excited to go and check out their site- which would of course be web 2.0 to the hilt - since these guys “got it”- well, no joy:
Archrival / We Help Brands Attract Young Consumers
Sure- they have RSS, and a “blog”- but so little content that is actually able to be spread.
Just like the Burger King site- or so many other agency sites, if I find something interesting on the site- I can’t mail it to you. Too bad, because the work they did on the TipTop upscale apartment building is something I’d want to share with others. Luckily, they built the site for the client better than they built for themselves- so you can check it out: http://www.thetiptoplife.com/
Clint! must have seen the branding campaign by Hamilton! Ohio a few years back- which map makers refused to acknowledge. In the days of Google, it’s a cool way to get your google rank up.
Some key concepts that struck home about the millenials:
- Give them experiences to talk about- not products.
- Be optimistic and positive- the days of sarcasm are fading.
- It’s about we- more than me.
- Computer/phone first lines of communication- forget traditional media.
- Recommendations from peers are more powerful than anything you can try to ram down their throat.
Also loved his comment about “Entertainment debt”- where you feel that you are behind when there is too much stuff cued up on your TiVo or in your “to watch” file. I can relate. Also, as MySpace becomes more and more commercialized- we’ll see more people kill their profiles as they move to more specialized and hip communities. As to marketers jumping into MySpace- get your own space- and make it fun- that boat sailed a while back.
As a side note- the woman sitting next to me recognized me as being from the agency that lists all the adveritisng agencies in Dayton on our site. Of course, she had just completed her job search and was working for one of them. Congrats for being a smart job seeker.
by Next Wave Team | Feb 20, 2007 | Advertising, Brand Relevancy, Creativity, Differentiating Your Brand, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Great Ad Agencies, How To Select An Ad Agency, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Search and Business, Secrets of Great Advertising, Web strategy
Good content brings good business. At least for The Next Wave. Chief Creative Officer, David Esrati was just interviewed for an hour by Inc. Magazine for their “Smart Questions” column for the May issue.
Our section of this site called “How to select an ad agency” pops up at the top of Google and apparently our insight was more interesting than other results.
There is no magic formula for selecting an ad agency for small to medium sized (Inc. sized) businesses- but there are some do’s and dont’s. Some advice worth taking (as shared with Inc.):
- Read at least a few books on advertising to establish common ground (our booklist should help.)
- Realize advertising is not a silver bullet solution to business problems and that great work takes time to gestate.
- Have a high level of trust and respect for your agency partner.
- Look for passion for your product- David Ogilvy always used his clients products.
- You get what you pay for. “Saving money” by buying your own media, print, trash and trinkets (promotional items) when not specifically spelled out in your retainer agreement might not end up saving your relationship.
- Don’t ever ask for a campaign that “looks just like” your competitors.
- Remember, advertising takes time to get results. Nike has had the same agency from the start (Wieden + Kennedy) - and it took a long time to get from the first ads to “there is no finish line” to “just do it.”
- Make sure both client and agency have shared expectations for the brand/campaign.
- Great advertising can be shown to your mother- without excuses or explaination.
- Don’t separate internet, media buying and creative if you want a consistent brand voice.
There was a lot more, but this is a quick recap. There was no simple answer on what agency compensation should be, we’re still trying to find a balanced solution like every other agency. Look to the May issue of Inc. Magazine to see what made it in.
by Next Wave Team | Feb 14, 2007 | Brand Relevancy, Careers in Advertising, Creativity, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Differentiating Your Brand, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Great Ad Agencies, Marketing & the Web, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, Web strategy
If there is one thing the Internet/web 2.0 thing does, it makes connections.
The idea of six degrees of separation is so, like Web 1.0, now if it’s more than 2 degrees, you’ve got a problem. In fact, that’s the new job of marketers and ad agencies- reduce the gap between the consumers and the brand- make them intimate.
So, an official announcement of sorts: The Next Wave is working with Hogshead Media, the biggest small ad agency in the country. We’re helping Sally Hogshead do web 2.0 magic- and to create that intimate connection between her and her markets. For those of you who don’t know Sally, I highly recommend you bop over to read her bio. Besides working at Wieden + Kennedy, Fallon, opening the West Coast office of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, having her own shop: Hogshead & Robaire, and winning every award known to advertising, she wrote the book Radical Careering which is a great primer on how to jump start your career.
Working with someone you idolize is one thing. But, to make it even sweeter, I got to write the headline for her post about her podcast with Seth Godin. (Note: If you don’t know who Seth is, and didn’t know who Sally is, you probably shouldn’t be reading this).
[update: Seth posted about Sally’s interview here]
Hog Blog » Bald head & Hogshead: An interview with Seth Godin
For those of you not familiar with Seth- I’ve included a picture at right. Yes, he’s bald.
For those of you not familiar with Sally: she’s sort of famous for writing a lot of headlines just to get one right. See her post about Luke Sullivan (another hero of mine) and the 800 headlines.
The post and podcast should be must reads for anyone in advertising. I particularly like this quote from the interview:
“Style and fashion spread through the ad agency business really fast. But they’re very bad at changing what they do for a living, they’re very bad at any form of new media, they’re bad at pushing clients to really dramatically, fundamentally reinvent themselves. What they’re very good at is adopting a new slogan or a new look or a new image. That’s deckchair re-arranging.”
The reason we’re called The Next Wave, Marketing • Innovation, is because we don’t believe that advertising is the solution to sales problems. While we can help with the slogan or image, what we try to do is reinvent the customer/brand experience. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been so enamored with the web, where you can establish meaningful relationships with your customers. That’s what we’re starting to do for Sally, and what we would like to do for you.
The best part of this collaboration: I only wrote 3 headlines to get to the winner.
Now jump over and listen to the podcast.
by Next Wave Team | Feb 12, 2007 | Advertising, Change the world, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Great Ad Agencies, How To Select An Ad Agency, Low Budget Advertising, Marketing & the Web, Media, Practical Marketing 101, Search and Business, Web strategy
A friend in the indy newspaper business sent me this from Editor & Publisher and asked my opinion. She knew I’d have one.
My initial response is that the gene pool needs thinning.
Although most major ad agencies still don’t understand delivery of online ads, or how to build searchable site content- it’s apparent that very few of them understand web statistics- a whopping 84% of advertisers and agencies seem to think you need a third party auditing firm to tell you who hits your own server!
We can save you a bunch of money on online advertising- let us show you how to analyze your results, and continue to build traffic, without having to buy keywords from Google. Organic results are worth more, cost less, and are so easy to attain- if you understand the basics of how this whole thing works.
ABC Study: Advertisers Don’t Believe Online Ads Are Measured Accurately
By E&P Staff
Published: February 08, 2007 5:10 PM ET
NEW YORK Few advertisers and agencies have confidence that their online ad impressions are measured and reported accurately, according to a new study sponsored by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
In the survey, 84% of respondents say they believe that verification of online advertising activity by an independent third-party auditing firm will become increasingly important over the next three years.
On behalf of ABC, NSON Opinion Research surveyed 270 professionals involved in the buying or planning of online advertising in a Web-based poll conducted between Oct. 24 and Dec. 31, 2006.
“Just as publishers and print advertisers require accuracy and credibility in traditional media information, we’re seeing increased demand for transparency and accountability online,” Michael Lavery, ABC president and managing director, said in a statement.
Ninety-one percent of those surveyed said it’s important to audit ad impressions and delivery while 89% want to see the verification of online traffic.
Other findings in the study: 83% of respondents plan to increase online ad spending in 2007, more than half expect double-digit budget increases.
The age of respondents played a role in the results aswell. The younger the respondent, the more blasé they were about the data. Participants under 25 — 75% of those surveyed — said they trust metrics provided by online publishers while 22% of those 55-to-64 said the same thing.
read more here:ABC Study: Advertisers Don’t Believe Online Ads Are Measured Accurately
The reason online campaigns, advertising and even the good old company website are so valuable is that there is an absolute way to measure what brings the customer to your business, what they looked at, how long they spent with your brand. The intimacy of the connection is up to you to nurture- but, it’s almost as good as having a feed directly from a helmet cam as they walked through your store- after completing an interview about what brought them in.
These stats, when analyzed by a brand manager, can tell you everything a focus group can, only better- since the customers have no idea they are being observed. The key to maximize effectiveness is to have content on your site that includes your competition- so you can also find out what customers thing of your them too.
There are a lot of stupid things being done online right now. Google is laughing all the way to the bank. If you want to keep them happy, don’t pay attention to what we are telling you- the Chief Marketing Officer and Advertising agency gene pool needs thinning too.
