Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Every Agency Needs An Innovation Lab

Safe adventure, investment marketing, risk marketing, measureable innovation. Call it what you will but the more I talk to agencies and clients the more I am convinced that to survive, the first/only rule we reallly need to adhere to is McKinsey's 80/20.

Spend 80% on stuff you know works and 20% on measurable innovation.

As the environment continues to be challenging clients are stripping back budgets and expecting those budgets to work hard. They and their agencies are shying away from doing anything that can't be very closely related to sales or is out of the ordinary. No real issue there but this will over time deliver diminishing returns, sacked clients and bored agencies.

To survive we all need to try new things and develop new ways of reaching our audiences. But it needs to be measurable. If the ideas work they are rolled in to the 80% if not we learn and move on. Rather than try and sell those in on an adhoc basis, fighting for budgets in the weeds, we need to all buy into this at a high level.

It keeps work interesting but most importantly keeps us moving, keeps us evolving...and we get to do stuff like this...