Category: Ideas

Ideas / Marketing — No Comments

It’s time to compete on what you’re thinking

Posted by James Trezona on Tue, 23 Aug 2011

Marketers have traditionally focused on selling the benefits of a product, detailing functionality and demonstrating strengths over the competition. But in a competitive and abundant market place, there’s an opportunity to compete on something more distinctive: not what you are selling, but who you are.

In B2B, it’s often a case of ‘you don’t sell, they buy’. If they – your customer – can’t understand who you are, then no matter what you are selling, you’ll struggle unless you have a truly disruptively superior product. They may defer to rational reasons for the reason they went to the competitor, but the truth is far more human than that – the customer is interested in what you’re thinking, your personality and your ethos.

Jeff Ernst of Forrester suggested in a recent post that your products are not as unique as you think: “Marketers have to realize that in the age of the customer, business buyers don’t ‘buy’ your product; they ‘buy into’ your approach to solving their problem”.

Behavioural economics tell us hugely powerful active emotional triggers revolve around trust and uncertainty – and when you are selling an experience, which is what most B2B sales are, you must use trust to overcome uncertainty. Not facts about what your product does, or an explanation of how it works, but trust about you as a brand. Using facts to try and overcome uncertainty is akin to persuading someone to like you by quoting your Facebook statistics. Would you do that?!

Communicating who you are might sound easy if you’re a small business but where do you start if you’re a big corporation? It starts with telling your story, tapping into your raison d’etre, your philosophy, your culture. It’s about developing a strategy for thought leadership storytelling that sets you apart by your vision and ideas.

Thought leadership is a grown-up way of describing this most powerful of persuasions – story telling – giving the listener value, entertainment, and a plot that’s relevant, insightful and memorable.

That is what makes your business unique. So don’t tell the marketplace how awesome your product is, instead put the spotlight on thought leadership and tell them what you’re thinking.

General / Ideas / Marketing — No Comments

Injecting a start-up spirit into advertising

Posted by James Trezona on Mon, 18 Jul 2011

There’s something about a start-up business that gets the pulse racing: that energy, that pressure, that collective spirit to pull together to turn an idea on a PowerPoint slide into a living and breathing business. Whether it’s a tech business starting out in another garage in Palo Alto or a creative one launching around the corner from our Bristol office, they share common challenges and opportunities. That journey to launch will rarely be easy but the sense of achievement in taking an idea to market should never be underestimated.

As an agency we’re big fans of the start-up spirit. Many of our clients may now be global technology corporations but many of them still have that passion for the product coupled with a pioneering attitude to launching new products or services. I think parts of the ad industry could benefit from an injection of start-up spirit to help us ensure our people are best-motivated, our ideas stay best of breed and that we don’t get stuck in old habits of doing things.

Here are five lessons we can learn from start-ups:

  1. Speed/ agility: often the success of a start-up is their speed in executing from idea to launch. Agencies that can compete on speed and break through organisational process to deliver, no matter what, may find themselves more recession proof.
  2. Teamwork: at the risk of romanticising what can be a very tough working environment, there’s something very important in a culture where everyone mucks in, whether it’s assembling your own IKEA desk or pulling an all nighter to stick brochures in envelopes. That collaboration where people come out of their silos to take collective responsibility is a great asset for any organisation.
  3. Goals: a start-up is the machine that takes a new idea to market and that’s exactly what agencies like Mason Zimbler do. We launch products and services for brands. When the clock is ticking and launch is 30 days away, that mix of pressure and focus makes sure people are focused on action and implementation. Having a clear and simple goal on execution, and doing whatever it takes to get there, is a great motivator.
  4. Customer-focus: Start-ups are usually pretty close to the customer and therefore effective at making decisions looking through the customer lens. Sometimes the ad industry is guilty of devising ideas in isolation, neglecting the most important person in the equation: the end user.
  5. Passion: Working 18 hour days, sleeping under your desk and living off take-away pizzas for long stretches might not sound like fun but that camaraderie of a team preparing to launch a site, product or piece of software is often driven by passion. The ad industry needs to fall back in love with our clients’ products and rediscover our own passions.

Already we’re seeing how some more progressive thinkers in the industry are turning entrepreneurial. Some agencies fed up with clients turning down killer ideas have turned the tables by setting up their own businesses to exploit their intellectual properties – if the client doesn’t like it, we’ll do it ourselves. Other agencies are partnering to create VC funds to create and exploit IP;  they’re becoming start-ups themselves.

At Mason Zimbler, we’re going to stick to what we know best so you won’t see us launching our own venture capital fund or setting up our own online store quite yet. But I’ll certainly stay open minded about how injecting start-up thinking might alter our routemap. And in the meantime we look forward to welcoming the next generation of Silicon Valley garage start-ups as clients.

Ideas — No Comments

Keeping it old school: five ways to boost action and productivity

Posted by James Trezona on Wed, 11 May 2011

At Mason Zimbler we’re proud to be a 21st century agency with a progressive outlook, a young but experienced team, and an understanding of the power of digital technology. Our clients are in tech, so we like to live and breathe it too.

So there’s an inevitably high gadget count in the agency together with a suite of digital tools to manage work flow, capture ideas and aid productivity. But sometimes organisations can get so wrapped up in digital tools and systems we kid ourselves we’re getting stuff done, when actually we’re not.

In our own drive for greater productivity and results, we’re looking at injecting some ’old school’ thinking into our company working practices. Here are five areas we’re looking at that also might work in your organisation:

  1. The To-Do List. When it comes to the to-do list, there are stacks of apps and tools out there to capture your daily action points. But analogue has the edge over digital here: there’s nothing better than a hard copy to-do list for crossing through tasks with satisfaction. What’s more it’s visible and doesn’t need booting up.
  2. Idea Capturing. The best idea-capturing device for meetings, trains and planes? The humble but trusty notepad and pen. Ultra portable and always turned on, they’re vital for those night-time ’can’t sleep moments’ where ideas are spinning round your head.  As David Allen (The Getting Things Done Guy) said, your mind is for having ideas not holding them, so scribble them down on a pad.
  3. Implementation. Sure, good planning is crucial and the MZ planning department lies at the heart of the agency for crafting campaigns and client activity. But when it comes to putting your ideas into action I advocate execution over excessive planning. After all, any organisation can plan and schedule their intentions all day long, but nothing’s more effective than just doing it!
  4. The Face To Face. While I agree an excessive meetings culture is never recommended, the good old fashioned face-to-face can be so much more effective for important or rapid communication. Every so often, rather than an email or a phone call, invest in some face time.
  5. Getting Unplugged. We all spend so much time in front of screens, it’s important to switch off to get creative and productive. So if you’re looking for killer ideas, take a step away from the work station. At our agency, the coffee shop and our local members’ club are extensions of our office environment, helping to incubate better ideas.

So if you’re looking to increase productivity and get your team focused on action, try going back to basics. Instead of kitting out everyone in your organisation with an iPad, buy them a notepad. After all, it’s cheaper, it doesn’t need Wifi and you can’t check Facebook on it…

General / Ideas / Marketing / Social Media — 1 Comment

Social Media. It’s just one ingredient.

Posted by James Trezona on Fri, 11 Mar 2011

At Mason Zimbler, our offering is very much fully integrated. That means we’re not digital specialists or mobile specialists, we believe it’s about creating the perfect marketing mix of whatever ingredients it takes to create an effective campaign. So the current obsession with social media: is it important? You bet. But it’s just one ingredient, it’s not everything.

I was on a panel last month at a B2B Marketing seminar, “How To Maximise ROI From Digital Marketing”; these are my five takeaways on how to get social working for you:

1.  Don’t look at social media in a vacuum. If you send someone a letter, you wouldn’t leave it at that.  You might follow up with a ‘phone call. It’s the same with how you use social media. It will not work in isolation – integrate it!

2.  Don’t believe the hype! Brian Solis created this colourful infographic showing the social media universe. Okay, it’s pretty but also pretty impenetrable. With such a daunting array of platforms and social networks, where does a brand start? Social Media feels a little alien and aliens need treating differently, it’s not one-size-fits-all.

3.  ‘Free’ doesn’t mean it looks after itself. So, the platforms might be free but they still need time, content care and attention. Make the same investment as you would with any other medium. Don’t throw your marketing principles out of the window for social, you still need to keep them.

4.  Listen. Engage with your customers through the sales funnel. Your content has to be of use. Don’t be like the guy who turns up a dinner party, shoves out their business card and talks about their product. Listen. B2B is all about trust – provide value and don’t shout.

5.  You can’t measure everything. ROI is essential but recognise you can’t prove it on everything. With B2B brands we’ve found social to be a great tool for understanding the customer and for providing user feedback to shape product development. And that return is invaluable because in web 2.0 people will tell you if they don’t like something.

So make sure you embrace social media, make it part of your strategy, but don’t use it as an absolute tool. It’s just one ingredient of many.

General / Ideas / Marketing — 1 Comment

Does the ideas business need a new model?

Posted by James Trezona on Mon, 28 Feb 2011

Whatever side of the table you sit on, marketing is in confusing times. For the CMO there’s a dizzying array of platforms, trends and technologies to comprehend. For the agency, budgets are shrinking, reaction times are more demanding and it’s difficult not to get distracted by the shiny new digital opportunities appearing at every page swipe. This raises a bunch of challenges. How do CMOs and agency heads get clarity from the muddle? Are the established agencies too entrenched in the old ways of doing things? Are the new agencies too digital-obsessive? How to navigate this maze?

There have been many column inches and indeed pixel widths devoted to this debate in recent months. Danielle Sacks wrote a great essay ‘Mayhem on Madison Avenue’ in the Dec 10/ Jan 11 edition of Fast Company, and many industry bloggers have been giving their view. Sean Corcoran is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, his post on 2011 Agency Predictions is worth a read.

Yet, whatever the changes, the CMO is still hungry for ideas; ideas are essential in order to distill a brand product(s) into a series of easy to understand, clear and simple communications. And however complex this business has become, I think most we’d agree that’s what it’s all about.

So does the ideas business need a new model? How do we need to rethink the agency/ client relationship? Here are my five considerations for CMOs, agency owners, account directors and industry watchers in rethinking the paradigm:

  1. Think Partnerships: If you can break down the barriers so the agency becomes part of the brand, rather than it just being ‘another supplier’, there is value for both sides. For the agency, it’s not about submissively and blindly executing the brief, it’s providing greater value by questioning the brief, turning it on its head, knowing the client so well that you can suggest a new direction. At Mason Zimbler we advocate that clients have an ‘open brief but clear goals’; we have a laser-focused understanding of the results we need to deliver but are afforded some flexibility as to how we get there.
  2. Be Smarter With Data: Performance and measurement data is much misunderstood as a cold dehumanised commodity that can only tell you how successful a lead generation campaign is. But by using data to better understand user behaviour and insight, it can revolutionise and innovate. Exploit data insights to change how organisations behave and how marketers engage with audiences. By blending ‘data and creative’, you can combine the best of creativity with the most intelligent analytics to produce even better results.
  3. Break Out of The Silos: Break down traditional agency divisions so people think and operate across silos. We’ve seen how the productivity of ideas and results increases when you throw people together. Clients are seeing the value of that too, Fast Company told the story of when integrated agency Mullen pitched (successfully) to JetBlue’s SVP of Marketing Marty St.George “..we all noticed through its pitch process that you couldn’t tell who the creative people were from the media people or the planning people. They all finished each other’s sentences, regardless of what we were talking about”.
  4. Stop Behaving Like A Factory: Don’t confuse ideas with production. At Mason Zimbler we’re trying to move from a ‘production model’ towards a ‘Big Ideas innovation agency’. Production and Ideas are two different disciplines so they need separate approaches in not just management but also valuation. Idea creation is not as commoditised as web coding or data mining, after all, how do you value an idea devised by a Creative Director in the shower? Fast Company quoted Peter McGuinness, CEO of New York agency, Gotham “We have to figure out how to get paid for the big idea, and what that idea is worth”, so be weary of commoditising innovation too crudely.
  5. Rethink Pitching: By refocusing the relationship as a partnership, some of the pitch process feels broken, with huge drains on resources where five or eight agencies pitch against each other. We have to bust the myth that the bigger an account or campaign is the more agencies need to be involved. Plurality of ideas is not always a good thing: better to have a small number of intimate agency relationships respond to a brand they know well rather than putting it out to tender. The management consideration from the client side is huge whereas the cost for agencies to pitch is getting prohibitive, the odds just don’t stack up. Of course there are always times when you need fresh perspectives from new agencies, but both client and agency need to be more confident about the value of solid long-term relationships.

We’d probably all agree that, tough times lie ahead for the agency world. It’s inevitably a case of ‘distinct or extinct’. Agencies need to be brave enough to reconsider how and where they add value and reinvent themselves accordingly.

As Sean Corcoran says in his advice to CMOs, effective change requires co-operation between client and agency: “To succeed in this environment, you should commit to your agency relationships (i.e., don’t hire them to be strategic and then treat them like vendors or vice versa), set clear roles with the agencies, and constantly evaluate your agency performance and knowledge”.

Whilst the debate on the future of the industry is well advanced, I think there remains work to do on putting these theories into action. We need to be brave enough to start taking action, for if we can’t address our joint ability to innovate, we run the danger of taking the greatest risk – that of risking nothing at all.