Speakers:
Moderator/Speaker Steve Parker (@levelwing) of Levelwing
Kevin Brioty (@kevinbriody) of Ignite
James Andrews (@keyinfluencer) of Be Everywhere
Ted Shelton (@tshelton) of Open-First
Steve: (Social Fresh organizer) Jason e-mailed me this question: Where is the best place inside an agency for social media to live?
Kevin: On the client side, when social was new a lot of people were jostling, ‘is it PR, is it marketing, is it brand,’ and it’s really evolved. They’ll usually have a product manager who has a social media strategy and they collaborate on the corporate level.
James: It’s been an amazing evolution to watch. Sometimes it feels like PR, sometimes like brand, sometimes like Aaron Spelling because I’m creating content. Social media touches lots of different organizations but it means something different to PR than to customer service than to anywhere. It’s how it touches the entire organization that has to be considered, is the best model.
Ted: From our perspective, it’s the wrong question. We look at social media as something that changes the way we do business. By asking where it lives, you create it like another challenge – I have broadcast, I have outdoor, I have this crazy social thing. That’s the wrong approach. It has to be deeply imbedded in how you do business today. we try to help companies transform the way they think so they break down the silos.
Steve: I would agree with that. You can’t just own it, you can’t. In our agency, there is no defined social media expert. Everyone is involved in it depending on specific client deliverables. You have to really allow it to permeate the organization and not be held captive.
Ted: We’re changing this. We’re bringing this new set of ideas into an organization. You have to talk to the lawyers, to the HR folks, to the execs. How do you reassure people and help them understand how you have to change?
James: I empower my clients with the tools. What we’re doing is complex. . .you need to empower with measurements tools and understanding.
Steve: How many hear consider yourself client side? (Very few in the room raise their hands.)
Steve: The second question submitted from outside the room asks how much of social is fed by digital?
Ted: Once you are the publisher, your means of publishing are digital, and once your digital you need to connect back. Everything in an organization should be digital, it should be infusing everything you do – packaging, billboards.
James: It’s critical to segment it a bit and tap into what social does that Web doesn’t do. Buying banners is very different than social in earning eyeballs.
Ted: I disagree with this. We might say let’s run a banner campaign that offers a message, and let’s run a banner campaign that engages. Both were easy because they had core messages, but Twittering a message and starting a conversation are more successful than a traditional banner ad.
Kevin: One of the challenges for a lot of our clients is they have their core marketing objectives – drive traffic, drive purchase decisions, build buzz – and their challenge is they are excited about the opportunity but they think more about how they measure and what scares them is the loss of control. That’s a difference in how social is different from traditional advertising.
Ted: Control is an illusion.
Kevin: I agree, but recognizing slowly that I’m going to put things out there and get engaged and it is a process.
Steve: We’re mining data for really relevant insights, and we do tend to think in silos and all that does is kill the momentum. In our opinion, data is alive and it needs to be let out of its cage.
Audience QT: With our agency experience, we often encounter existing marketing departments or coupled with traditional agency, and the silo approach hinders our efforts. What are your thoughts on how we can take it out of the silo?
James: We need to play nicely in the sandbox and learn the organization, that’s the first step. Forming a team – a social media union – is critical, it’s paramount to have members from many different silos on the same page. I’ve seen C-level execs using the tools – checking Facebook, mayor on FourSquare – and that seems trivial but it’s really important. We find champions within silos and befriend them and have boot camps and give them the tools. It’s not ‘that’s the PR team’ and ‘that’s the other team.’ We are all the team.
Ted: I agree, though I have a bit of a different approach. At the end of the day, we have the data. The guy running the print campaign, he doesn’t have the data. We can instrument everything on line. New agencies are extremely data savvy and help their clients become data-driven cultures. They use real information instead of the hyperbole of how many people may pick up a magazine.
Kevin: There are some steps you can take to live in your client’s environment, but you can show how it’s in their interest.
James: I had one situation where a big traditional agency had been interpreting the data one way. We were able to re-interpret the data and show the client what they should be looking at and were able to supplant them.
Steve: One example, Bridgestone, we’re their digital agency and they have print and brand agencies, and we work in concert together because we all have very strong core competencies. We don’t step on toes, and we help the client look really good. We pitch in and say ‘where will we spend money, what will we accomplish as a team’ because if we don’t do that we’ll all get fired.
Audience QT: Refer me to a resource that tells me ‘how do I price the services?’
Steve: Do not do anything for free. You will screw yourself and find yourself hating your client.
Kevin: Once a week I get that form letter, “I am a college student and doing a paper and want to know how you price your services.” (laughter) I think you’ll find you underprice no matter what, but we’re always building our price list. It’s tough.
James: We price by the project, we price hourly.
Steve: We don’t bill by the hour, we do it by the project and scope it out very clearly. Be reasonable, provide a great service that has depth to it. There’s a lot of junk out there and companies are getting burned, so you have to offer a good product.
Kevin: A lot of social includes repetitive tasks, functional tasks. Those are things you can develop expertise and become more efficient – that doesn’t mean your price should come down – but doing anything out of the goodness of your heart may make you feel you’re doing something good for the client but by and large I agree with Steve.
Ted: There are ad agencies that make their money on the media buy and underprice other services – that doesn’t work. It works for the ad agency that gets paid for their creative services. It’s saying, what is the value of the idea. We price on what we think the value of our creative is for our clients.
Steve: When we started the business 7 or 8 years ago, we would take anything. Today, we put time and effort toward the things that matter and charge for it. As the responsibilities grow and the work that you have to do increases, the client might not see the value of it.
Audience QT: Do you find that in billable hour situation, with the paradigm shift to ROI ROI ROI, do they want to see how many hours it took, and does that take you away from doing the work?
James: For us, the measurement that has been asked of us recently, we want to have x amount of Facebook friends, and our expectation is to increase our Twitter followers by x. In a couple instances, we’ve said, ‘you put us up against this metric, and we’ll do it’ but I want to change the mindset in that organization.
Kevin: It’s still an education. That, ‘we want to increase our fanbase by x,’ is answered by us, ‘what do you want your engagement base to be’? Let’s tailor our effort to engage those fans – are they responding, are commenting. You need to tell your client this is what really matter. Fan growth will always be hovering there, but it happens over time.
Ted: We get asked for breakout by hour. We say ‘ Absolutely not. We are selling you a core competency.’ Ultimately, if you are creating value the business person is going to still hire you even if you say no.The idea of having goals that are really clear with your clients — whatever that business objective is. Then you can say, ‘what gets us there?’ Unless you manage it to the end objective it is meaningless.
Audience QT: Do you have off-the-shelf equipment that you use to measure?
Steve: We built our own but there are many out there, such as Advantage. Some agencies report time daily, some monthly.
James: If you send me a Tweet, I’ll send you the 10 sources that do this.
Audience QT: With Smart phones exploding, we’ve seen increasing demand to have an integration with mobile and social. How are you dealing with it, since the mobile business model is different?
Kevin: Part of that is why you see this mad thrash around geo application stuff. It’s a truly mobile application that has a truly social function. It’s one of the first ways people are trying to go.
Ted: A bunch of lived through 1998-2001 bubble, boom, when the internet surge first showed up. Companies said, “Do I really need a Website?” Companies are saying the same thing about mobile. We ask every client, “What’s your iPhone app strategy?” The next billion people that use the internet will use it through their phone, not their computer. So you have to consider it in your strategy.
James: In the U.S., the whole notion that we mobilize an event, hashtag an event, I think the social mobile integration is critical.
Steve: Last question.
Audience QT: Where do you see your companies in three years?
Steve: Three years is a good number. When we started, we were media buying agency. We’ve changed. We modify. It’s a three-year moving target. What we believe in will continue to be centric.
Kevin: For us, the challenge is we’re 3 years old. We’re hiring by the way. (laugh) There’s a huge amount of growth in this space. The hot technical issues didn’t even exist a year ago. We can plot out where we want to go, but. . .. I look at Facebook and their changes, and we all have to scramble to see how this affects us. Look at Facebook F8.
James: Three years is perfect number. It’s about moving our agency from service to creating more content. Living toward the evolution where social meets TV. I would expect to be producing more content. I also want to grow talent. It’s such a new industry. We got to groom and develop talent — we’re hiring as well!
Ted: I’d like to suggest that in your lives and business you do this exercise. Perhaps you’re familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What do you need to survive – you need food, you need shelter. We’ve gotten past that survival level and we’re able to think about the next level – what kind of clients do we want to take on? We get to choose. Also, think about self actualization, more than survival or success, where it’s fulfilling. For a company, it means you have actually changed the world. We think companies need to be more engage, be more open first, that’s why we changed the name so we can bring this message. By doing so, you’re going to transform your business prospects to engage everyone in your market in business development and new strategies. If we do that, I think we’ll be able to self actualize.
Steve: We’ve moved away from hiring people with marketing backgrounds. The guy who runs our data center is a physicist. It’s a real change.
Steve: That’s it, guys. Thank you so much.
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