Just follow the instructions:
DIGITAL @ (INSERT AGENCY NAME)
30/3/9
Work: Business as Usual
Digital isn’t a discipline; it is a specialism within other disciplines. We believe that any agency can produce innovative marketing solutions that connect brands and their audiences using digital media and/or leveraging on people’s digital behaviour. Just as they currently do through offline channels.
Fundamentally it’s about finding ways to make advertising useful: be that informative, educational, functional or entertaining. The diet of work that traditional agencies ought to be associated with will not be large site design & build but smaller, campaign based marketing solutions.
Cool shit that drives (INSERT AGENCY APPROACH) and ultimately changes perception of the client’s brand.
Culture: Everyone is Digital
To change output, we need to change culture, behaviour and process. Everyone in the agency have to get onboard and feel like they participate in the digital change. This could be simply building digital metrics into teams business targets and incentivising clever use of new digital platforms/digital media. More importantly, we would set up ways to share ideas and thoughts inside the agency. Training will be a key part of educating the client and agency teams as would competitive and trend monitoring to keep them both inspired/afraid.
Delivery: Work the Network
Given the accelerating change in technology and digital channels we believe that a network of trusted, specialist suppliers alongside a small in house capability, working closely with existing account and creative teams is the optimum way to deliver digital. Building and actively managing ecosphere of companies with proven capabilities that is strategically and creatively overseen. We would quickly set up a list of approved suppliers and establish SLA’s.
People: A Thin Agency
As digital is everyone’s responsibility we would leverage the existing teams – planners, suits, creative – to manage clients, much of the process and drive the digital business in their own accounts. There are a couple of key internal appointments and a small team (freelance or fulltime) detailed below who would provide specialist skills.
· A senior suit - internal - to help navigate/circumvent process, client relationships, general agency culture etc...
· A team PA
· A Creative Technologist – is it possible/will it work/ a senior technologist, probably a technical director either freelance or currently working in a digital agency.
· A Senior Digital Project Manager – managing digital projects is far more complicated than any TV-production and have many more moving parts. There is also a perception that ’anything can be changed at anytime’, where a project manager has a key role in pushing back/keeping everybody in line throughout the development.
· Prototype Team - consisting of 3, 4 designers with decent action script skills and good understanding of cross-platforms interface design to build some of the lower level work
Plan: Phased Approach
’Discovery‘
Investigate client list to select the top five digital opportunities based on:
a. digital maturity,
b. agency-client relationship,
c. estimated speed of conversion,
d. propensity to invest in innovation/test activities,
d. activities in the client’s market space.
’Planning’
Develop strategies for the client business leveraging on existing employees knowledge. Collectively we would convert the market & business understanding into ’digital opportunities’ and ’digital briefs’. Some of these initiatives should be pro-active, others could be developed in conjunction with wider client briefs.
’Creative’
Engage current creative teams work on digital briefs but with the addition of the digital resources outlined above. In this phase we need to engage ’digital project managers/producers’ to anticipate implications and production of any ideas that come up and prepare for the ’production phase’.
’Production’
Prototyping is also essential both as a ’sales tool’ to demonstrate the experience to clients and as a ’briefing tool’ to developers. This can either be done by an in-house team or be handled by selected design house. We don’t foresee that (AGENCY) would have any large in-house design/build capabilities, but would outsource all design and development to the partner with the most suitable skill set and ’flavour’.
’Deployment’
Launching a project is only the beginning. Seeding, PR and reputation management needs to be well-orchestrated to ensure success.
‘Measurement’
Measurement and ongoing optimisation are keen to demonstrate success and prove the case for digital. We would connect the teams with the most appropriate suppliers as well as educate and consult with them to structure the appropriate criteria.
‘Education & Inspiration’
Training, trend and competitive monitoring will be ongoing. We have a number of tools we can deploy but ideally a junior planner or account person in each business group would be responsible for collating and distributing much of this.
‘Positioning’
Pretty early on we will need to develop the agency’s digital point of view, something that is uniquely yours. Everything we develop should ladder up to this as a thought. To promote this we should endeavour to get speaking, writing, judging and committee engagements as well as attending the most appropriate conferences and events.
Written last year.
Some of it still valid.
