At this morning’s Marketing Week Live show Kelvin Newman from Site Visibility and I had a 15 minute chat (with him videoing it!) on a wide range of social and digital topics including:
MeasurementCamp – what it is, what I learnt about managing an offline community
There is a ton of cool stuff flying around at the moment, and rather than attempt some kind of comprehensive mega-list, here is a snapshot of why I think 2010 will rock. Read more…
The social media market is heating up quickly. Here’s the 4 indicators I see:
1. Recruiters abound
One of our team has had four recruitment callers in two weeks. One directly from a substantial traditional agency with a name your nan would recognise even though you nan doesn’t know agency land, two from ‘headhunters’ and I can’t remember where the other was from – a start-up agency abroad perhaps. Another of our team (and board) had a call last week. Some of our friends in the industry are finding that their needs for good people in this area exceed the available supply they can find.
As a side note, on this front I’m not personally fussed about our team getting calls. It’s distracting for them, but also motivating (I imagine). I can never understand it when my clever and hardworking agency MD/founder peers bust a gut when someone from their team gets poached. I’m hardly above getting emotional about business (quite the opposite), but I always reckon that all an employer/manager can do is look after their people. What they do is up to them :)
So the recruitment space is heating up.
2. Mergers & Acquisitions are poised
The whole agency space is warming up. The guys doing social media agencies to sell out to the established agency ecosystem will probably succeed – I know personally and directly that big agencies and groups are actively opening conversations with the new boutique firms. The professional intermediaries like Results and Pembridge seem to be fairly sanguine and patient about the agency M&A market as a whole at the moment but are starting to build their networks and engagement with the new social media thing. I guess for those on the fence at corporate finance and deal-making advisory firms the Headshift deal will have catalysed that.
3. MeasurementCamp attendees have evolved
A different sort of input: a human one! :) Yay for humans.
When I started MeasurementCamp with the help of the nascent social media community about 18 months ago it was the pioneers with a lower case ‘P’ – the lovely smart and down to earth writers/talkers/thinkers that are interested by the new and who naturally were investing their time investigating new interesting stuff. Today we have more of a blend which still includes the super-thinker hardcore people but the archetypal (though thankfully we still have lots of diversity) MeasurementCamper is younger, much more likely to be part of an agency, and is working on live social media projects. The market exists. And thank the lawds, there’s some REAL talent there. Even just last week at MeasurementCamp London there were three or four new very smart young agency people in attendance. I predict inflated salaries and big ‘welcome to traditional agencyland – now socialmediafy the world, by tomorrow please’ jobs for them all.
4. Clients are hiring
This is great news I reckon. Perhaps the best bit of all for all of the real people in the world. At NixonMcInnes we try hard to not build relationships with our clients based on dependency but prefer to help our clients build their own capabilities to do the stuff they need to do. (We will do stuff for them – but over time we prefer that they learn to do it for themselves). And so we have helped in some way BMW, Channel 4 and now one of our other clients (I don’t think I am able to name them just yet) shape a role and/or find a person that can come on board and be part of the internal revolution inside client organisations to embrace and harness the social web. Good good!
So what next?
I try to stay away from predictions but if I’d say it’s pretty obvious what happens next:
Salaries will go up bubbliciously for the few genuinely capable social media professionals (regardless of their flavour and original background) for a while until supply starts to meet demand
Some of these people will end up in jobs they aren’t yet ready for – but that’s OK, it’s called ‘learning by doing’!
M&A will kick off in a big way in 2010, with big agencies buying small social media agencies for the next two or three years
Eventually everything in the agency ecosystem and in client communications and engagement will be normalised and go back to everyday-abnormal
Enjoy the ride between now and then. We plan to :P
One of our biggest areas of interest here at Nizomk is how the big pieces of society can be improved by harnessing the social web. That’s why we like working with the COI, Cabinet Office, Ofqual, Department of Health and Brighton & Hove City Council. Because we think and they know that the social web can help do stuff better – stuff that impacts everyday life for very many people.
A conversation popped up around that recently here in our proudly digital city of Brighton & Hove, where the council is employing a Social Media Communications Officer (or similar title!), had been ‘challenged’ by the local media org, and I wrote about it over on my personal blog. Some of the comments that have been added in the last few days have enhanced my original post.
If you’re an interested tax payer or a public servant with a digital outlook or maybe a rubber duck or a collector of North African butterflies, then feel check it out and join in that conversation.
This morning Gareth Jones, Editor of Revolution Magazine, asked if I’d like to bosh out an opinion piece on the five things that digital marketing people need to know about Why Facebook bought Friendfeed – it’s here ‘Revealed: why Facebook acquired FriendFeed’.
The five aspects of the deal I picked out for marketers to be aware of are:
1. ‘Real-time’ is the social media soup du jour
2. FriendFeed is a stepping-stone between Facebook and Twitter
3. Google and Facebook are fighting it out
4. Discovering content needs more than Google Search
5. Conversations happen around content
If you’re not familiar with FriendFeed so much, or want to think about what the deal means for the bigger picture, check out the piece. (This piece is for digital marketers so if you’re some kind of sick gnarly social media black-belt you probably don’t need it – you need other things, like daylight and poetry).
This social web thing. It’s hard to keep up, no? Sheesh :)
We have been busy at NM Towers with the help of our friends at Hotwire contributing to articles and generally getting ourselves and our opinions out and about on the social media scene.
Here is a round up of the recent press we have been contributing to since the New Year; I hope you find this interesting, please feel free to comment.
Will’s comment in response to the call for social networks to prove their worth to investors and advertisers in 2009…
- What does 2009 hold for social networks?
- Is it a case of monetise or die?
- Have social networks mistakenly focussed on growing their user base rather than generating revenue?
02-02-09 – BBC Radio 4 – iPM
Jenni was interviewed for a Radio 4 podcast featuring passionate debate from across the web with Eddie Mair. Unfortunately I can not find the sound bite online, however I can give you an overview of what the interview was about below.
As UK workers woke up to several inches of snow on early on a February Monday morning they naturally turned to the web to look for up-to-date weather reports and travel bulletins. With what seemed like the majority of the UK going online at the same time, traditional web sites began to falter and strain under the weight of so many people accessing their data.
Queue the social web and sites that enable dynamic conversation like Twitter. Are these the places that people will turn to in future to get the real time information they need?
04-02-09 – Anna’s comments included in an article for TechRadar.com
On Facebook’s fifth birthday Anna gave her thoughts on how the social network has impacted the internet and how new audiences are being brought online.
Following on from Will’s now famous interview on the BBC, our local Brighton newspaper; The Argus picked up on the story and ran a nice article about it.
25-02-09 – Letter to the Editor in Marketing Magazine
Will’sresponse to an article written by Alan Mitchell who wrote an opinion piece suggesting that marketers shouldn’t focus on social networks but should turn their attention to community-based advice sharing websites like moneysavingexpert.com.
Thanks to just.Luc for the photo – http://www.flickr.com/photos/9619972@N08/
The premise of the survey was ‘what would 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing professionals describe as their Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future?’.
I would add that given that it was sponsored by Sapient and was such a small sample size, the findings whilst useful and interesting aren’t conclusive in any way!
So here they are:
1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. With more than a third of marketers surveyed revealing that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising, it‘s clear that agencies need to have a greater knowledge of the digital space in order to thrive. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents have switched agencies (or plan to switch in the next 12 months) for one with greater digital knowledge or have hired an additional digital specialist to handle their interactive campaigns. Further, when it comes to an agency‘s area of expertise, 79% of respondents rated “interactive/digital“ functions as ‘important/very important.‘
2. More use of “pull interactions.“ When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions‘ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push‘ campaigns.
3. Leverage virtual communities. An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents expressed interest in leveraging virtual communities (public and private) to understand more about their target audience.
4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Ninety-two percent of respondents said it was ‘somewhat‘ or ‘very‘ important that agency employees use the technologies that they are recommending. For example, it is important that agency executives regularly use Facebook, Flickr, wikis, blogs, etc. in their personal social media mix.
5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed said that agencies with chief digital officers are more appealing than those without.
6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. Sixty three percent of marketers surveyed said that an agency‘s Web 2.0 and social media capabilities are ‘important/very important‘ when it comes to agency selection.
7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. Seventy-six percent of respondents deemed this as an ‘important/very important‘ aspect of their agency‘s online digital marketing and interactive advertising area of expertise.
8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed ranked strategy/brain trust capabilities at the top of their agency wish list.
9. Branding and creative capabilities. Sixty-seven percent of respondents ranked branding at the top of their agency wish list while seventy-six percent ranked creative capabilities as ‘important/very important.‘
10. Ability to measure success. It‘s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.
My lightweight conclusions:
Well it’s awfully comforting for us digital agencies isn’t, as you’d expect from a survey commissioned by a digital business.
And doubly-triply-super comforting for those of us digital agencies that already specialise in the social media aspects of digital, given that this neatly ticks off points 1,2,3,6 and 7. (And for us at NixonMcInnes, where we hire on the basis of ‘Agency executives using the technology they are recommending’ too, so that’s nice).
But where does it really leave us? What are the gaps?
I think point 10, the measuring success piece, remains a yawning and tricky chasm between what we as marketers would like and what’s acceptably and reasonably achieveable right now. I hope that initiatives like MeasurementCamp are helping us take steps towards a better grasp of the measurement thing, but it’s a hugely complex task.
I reckon the other stuff on the list is very achieveable.
In fact, in the email I sent around to the team here at NM HQ, what I moved the conversation (or was it a monologue?) onto was instead the building blocks of professional services success that these wishlist items need to sit on top of.
Not the cherry-on-the-cake digital specialisms and cutting edge ‘Web 2.0′ expertise that clients also rightly demand, but actually the basics, the bread and butter. As I suggested in my email to the guys:
“However, I would add that this is built on top of a list of ‘What clients expect from all agencies’ which always includes things like:
- Delivery: they do what they say they’re going to, by when they said they would
- Communication: They keep me informed
- Honesty: tell me when they can’t do something
- Proactive: bring ideas to us, suggest things, don’t wait to be told or asked
- Responsive: can turn things around quickly, nothing is too much
And it’s here, in these much more mundane pragmatic areas, that we at NixonMcInnes are working hard.
The top list is well under control: that stuff is what we do, and we’re increasingly recognised by our clients and the client community for it.
But the bottom list, the agency-underpinnings, that’s where we need to do much much better…
As a small agency, our limited resources can be easily stretched.
And as a specialist in a new, complex and rapidly evolving area, how we actually deliver work can change on every single assignment. So these practical delivery bits are the pieces we’re now working on.
What do you think of these suggested client wish list items? Ring true, or sound a bit wonky to you?
As well as keeping a finger on the digital pulse, we continue to be making marketing momentum in the more traditional media channels, take a look below at some of the recent press we have been enjoying… Read more…
To accomplish their bold mission, like a few other smart brands (including BMW, who we’re also helping along a similar path) the head honchos in the Channel 4 Press and Marketing teams have recognised the need for a dedicated digital dude to unify and glue together the two converging worlds (Marketing and PR). This person – who could be you, or your friend – will help to continue driving Channel 4’s online marketing and communications activities ahead by being the lynchpin of a new virtual team to pioneer new techniques, new levels of engagement, new activities and new tools and processes.
So we’re hereby promoting this role to any smart cookies out there: if you’re a switched-on digital PR & Marketing person, check this little bad girl/boy out:
The Department
The Press & Publicity department is responsible for all Channel 4’s editorial dealings with other media. The department publicises Channel 4’s programmes across print, broadcast and online media, to drive viewers and users to the Group’s programmes and services and help it deliver its commercial objectives. The department also aims to protect and enhance the Group’s public service reputations through external communications. It is responsible for rapid rebuttal of critical press comment, generating positive executive profile and managing issues arising out of content and operations.
Key Responsibilities
Reporting to the Chief Publicity Manager and/or the Head of Marketing, New Media, he or she will:
Co-ordinate a “virtual” digital promotions/publicity team, bringing together resource from across picture publicity, listings, publicity, marketing and new media to promote key programme priorities most effectively through online digital media.
Lead the execution of the highest priority promotional campaigns in online digital media, seeding content across the web including social networking sites, portals and blogs.
Establish, run and maintain community sites for these and other campaigns.
Work with genre publicity teams to ensure that all lower level priority PR campaigns have a significant online element.
Act as the key point of liaison between Channel 4 Press & Publicity and any journalists working primarily in online media.
Create a directory of key sites, online journalists and bloggers for use by the press department
Introduce publicists to key contacts at social networking and other sites to open dialogue about content placement
Educate the wider press department about tactics for online PR
Lead on opening up the press intranet allowing great access to press materials in conjunction with the New Media department
Identify a set of metrics to assess success with the longer term aim of helping Channel 4 secure an equivalent share of voice in online media to print media.
Essential Skills and Experience
Wide experience of delivering promotional campaigns in online media, including proven track record of using social networking.
Extensive contacts within social networking and other key sites.
Excellent personal/written communication and influencing skills
Desirable Skills
Experience of consumer PR with leading UK brand
Knowledge of UK broadcast sector.
Cool eh.
I think this is a brilliant opportunity. Genuinely.
Why?
Because it’s a super brand, because it’s a role sympathetic to the new online ecosystem (you’ll see words like community, dialogue, access and education above) and because these guys are already ahead of the game in that they’re thinking about this stuff, planning, and (ahem) working with some recognised specialists like us to pave the way.
Traditional digital marketing has been around for at least 10 years now. During that time benchmarks and standards have built up around this form of promotion. We have tried and tested techniques to measure and apply best practice to this area. At present, no such principles and values exist in relation to measuring social media and online PR. Queue MeasurementCamp.
