Mele’s Musings

Lessons from the Outlook Report

I had the good fortune this year to participate in the creation of the Razorfish Outlook Report, and it was a very enlightening experience. In fact, I was asked to take on the article that probably gets the most scrutiny from the outside, and can raise the most controversial of topics. And this year was no exception.One of the most stunning, although for me not surprising issues was the fact that only small percentages of our client’s budgets were spent on mobile and social. Weren’t these, particularly social, all of the rage and what everyone talked about in the press? Indeed. But the truth is that social and mobile are harbingers of things to come in the media and marketing space in terms of the types of work we will be doing in the future, and the ways in which that work needs to be compensated.

It is a tired concept by now that media and marketing are changing. We all know that. We have all had our fill of fragmentation, disintermediation, discombobulation, and all of the other pithy terms we use to describe the changes in the space. But there are other important changes we need to pay attention to, and these were the things that struck me the most as I put together my articles for the Outlook this year.

Lesson #1: Agencies need to be business partners
Regardless of whether or not the economy is in an upswing or a downswing, the job of the CMO, and by extension her/his agency, is to drive sales. This means that agencies need to be equipped to address the hard questions around how marketing and communications activities lead to valuable actions. Agencies need to deliver on the “hard” ROI of ad spend to sales, not just how an ad campaign leaves a lasting impression in the mind of a consumer.

What the Outlook Report also pointed out is that clients were still willing, even in a down economy, to experiment, test, and shift budgets. My take is they continued to do this because it is a necessity in order to be relevant to consumers. But this doesn’t mean that brands are going to be frivolous with dollars. They need and expect agencies to be able to forecast the pay-off for these new opportunities.

In addition, agencies need to know our client’s customers intimately. This means that we must take the time to listen to them, ask them questions, and respond to their needs. In the digital age, this is easier to do, and all the more important because not doing so can have serious consequences. Knowing customers also means ensuring that the communications and experiences we create for them are as personalized and relevant as possible, and be based on the relationship that the customer has with the brand, not just on context or demographics.

Lesson #2: The definition of media and the media persons’ job has changed
Media is no longer about finding a space and time to place an ad. The work of media and marketing today is much more creative and much more complex than that. Today, for marketing and communications to be effective, media and creative teams must work in a coordinated and integrated fashion, and consider deeply the best ways to reach and create experiences for consumers. In the digital world, the palette is not set like it is in the traditional world, meaning that the media and creative teams have much more control over the environment itself. But if these groups are not in lock-step, there is trouble. Brands must expect that media and creative, along with account planning and business analysts, ideate and create from the same place at the same time.

In addition, media is as much about content as it is about time and place. Gone are the days where media provides space for creative. Today, media is as responsible for content as anyone. Particularly when we think about social, about the importance of search and SEO, etc., the media team needs to be intimately involved with, thinking about, planning for, and often creating the content itself. This is a huge shift in thinking and approach.

Lesson #3: Compensation models have to adjust
If the job of the media department is not just to buy space but to also think about content, and if the creative group is not the only group creating, then the way agencies are compensated needs to adjust. Percentage of media rewards spending dollars, but the media planners job is no longer about spending dollars. The most effective communication may entail no media spend at all - reaching out to influencers, creating a strong Facebook presence, building a mobile app - but agencies paid on a percent of media are not compensated correctly for this type of approach.

As we saw in our Report, despite all of the talk about mobile and social, not a lot of media was spent on them. This is because often the spend is in people creating content, responding to customers, building experiences, and not on spending money. Which means that paying media on percent of media spend and compensating creative on hours of production is an antiquated solution that must change if brands are to get the most out of their agencies.

Lesson #4: Organizations must change
In order to truly leverage the power of new platforms and integrated communications, we need to start thinking very differently about the types of people we have in our organizations, as well as the ways in which they work. Andrea Harrison and I expressed this in our article “How to Become a Social Brand” but the reality is that the people we outline are not just important for social, but for all marketing and media in the future.

Specifically, we need Account Planners that work with media as well as creative, content creators and community managers who can communicate with consumers in real ways, UX experts who understand how consumers use new interfaces like touch, technologist who understand how to create experiences that can live well past a campaign timeframe, media people who think like designers or architects rather than buyers, and analysts who can look at mounds of data and find actionable insights.

And clients must adjust as well to not just accept these changes, but to reflect them as well.

Please take a look at the Outlook Report and send me your feedback. As we start to plan for next years’ report, we want to make sure we are examining things that people really care about, and your input is crucial.