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Client of the Future: In Six Easy Lessons

Client of the Future: In Six Easy Lessons

It is somehow assumed that if a creative and strategic agency brings a completely new way of thinking into the company’s structure, all will magically fall into place and the brand will be ready to roll into a new level of communication effectiveness. But this unfortunately is not quite so—for it takes two to tango.

Clients should put some hard thought into how they are internally structured and how they inspire their staff to take on the challenges in partnership with forward-thinking agencies. The fear of risk taking and the tendency to fall back into a complacent position of letting agencies struggle to fit a square peg into a round hole by themselves will inevitably yield more of the same.

What Should the Client of the Future Bear in Mind Today?

Understand it’s not about your brand story, it’s about people’s stories.

Communication is much more powerful when it allows people to take something away from your communication—just a little something—and create some fantastic stories of their own with it. That is about planting a seed.

Much has been talked and written about regarding how agencies are preparing to take on challenges that brands are facing and will face in the near future such as message and target superfragmentation shorter attention span, integration of online and offline capabilities to create unified communication structures, extension of agency’s offerings to cover new formats, and emerging technologies and the like. Yet, little has been written or talked about with regard to how clients should brace themselves for that shift.

opinion

Innovation,Culture & Courage6

Andre Matarazzo had worked in

agencies in Brazil, Canada, Holland,

Sweden, and Japan before starting his own in São Paulo

in 2006. Gringo is a strategic agency

that is online-centric but media-agnostic.

By: Andre MatarazzoCCO

Gringo

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One misunderstanding is that a 30-second TV ad is content that allows for easy multiplication. Even if it’s a truly eye-blasting spectacle, it will be sent around by perhaps thousands of people, but it won’t allow for the social capital we are looking for. What does sending a great video to your friends say about you? It says that you also saw some interesting content online. In 30 minutes you will see more great content online. It’s irrelevant.

On the other hand, let’s assume brand X creates a nifty and simple test that figures out how old you truly are, based on how well you’ve cared for yourself (or not!) in the last few years. The content is nothing spectacular if you just let it sit, but as soon as users interact and make it personal, the brand will offer people a simple new truth about themselves that really defines who they are. And so they spread it around, since the branded content now has added extra personal value, and that will generate the highest form of engagement and value.

Lesson 1

Create an environment that allows people to tell their own stories. Your brand story is secondary and should be worked into theirs.

It’s not about digital, it’s about communication.Well, who even talks about “digital” these days? Everyone, unfortunately.

Clients are eager to jump on the integration bandwagon, and in the process, try to find agencies that can deliver in every single specialty field. When they realize it is an almost impossible task, they bring in a bunch of specialty agencies and assume they should just get along and create magic together. And why not? They are all just so good at their stuff—they must be able to get together and just integrate!

Well, it doesn’t work quite like that. Why? Because the best agency creatives are like chefs in the kitchen. Too many chefs equal disaster. They are all like needy kids who want to play and make mommy

proud! And they will poke each other’s eyes for getting a larger share of love from their mother’s heart. You will not get extremely bright kids to follow each other’s lead. They will simply make it all seem “integrated” in the most makeshift way to make you, the mom, happy! That will be your loss.

We are starting to use our technology know-how to drive innovation to products and create new services that broaden the opportunities for connection and deeper recurring engagement models.

Lesson 2

Get all agencies together in a room, brief them, and allow them all to put forth their best ideas. Yes, let all of them stand on equal ground. If you always get the lead offline agency to create the communication strategy and structure, you will have lost the opportunity to find THE new opportunity in digital, in POS, in packaging, in service, or in any other segment that can possibly represent the change your brand is looking for. Let the best idea, not the largest agency, take center stage.

It’s not about changing perceptions, it’s about changing engagement.We usually operate in the realm of changing brand perception through communication, and that’s part of the story. But nowadays, agencies are starting to ask deeper questions and putting their creative arsenal and know-how of technology to good use.

We are starting to use our technology know-how to drive innovation to products and create new services that broaden the opportunities for connection and deeper recurring engagement models. That relates to anything from the oh-so-talked-about Nike Plus case

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study to the more nimble and nifty application users may download to their mobile phones or social profiles.

Lesson 3

Give agencies space to explore, to help you build better products, to help you create new and much needed services, more intelligent operational structures, facilitate user interaction through other channels. This realm is not occupied by the traditional agencies as they do not dare to enter because they did not dominate the technology that could potentially be game changing.

These ideas are now starting to be put forth by the new agencies, but they are harder to push through the approval chain for they go beyond the marketing department’s domain. Try to see the larger operational picture, and ask your agency to see the brand as a living organism that is not only in possession of a communication mouth.

It’s not about the big idea, it’s about the little ideas.Yes, it’s not about one big idea that gets pushed and adapted and elevated to fit different points of contact. We are beyond the age where our ploy was to make clients understand that ideas must assume a totally different format to work best in different channels.

Now we face a different challenge. Try to think of digital communication as a pinball game. Take advantage of the game that launches several balls onto the board while keeping them in play. It’s fast-paced, difficult, and you have many variables to watch out for. Some balls will go straight into the gutter, others will live for a while and then disappear, and a few lucky ones will allow you to play the game for long time giving you great joy and satisfaction.

Lesson 4

Have the courage to dare, to hit and miss, to launch several little ideas onto the board and see which ones come to fruition beautifully. We are playing in an open

field of possibilities, and you should set aside a fraction of your budget, if nothing else, to high-risk enterprises, such as emerging technologies, wild ideas, things that are difficult to operationalize, and your team’s passionate visions…Allow for wild dreams to come true!

It’s not about motivation, it’s about participation.So you want your brand to motivate millions, to what? Be better people? Help change the environment? Create a new social order? Finally be an integral part of culture? And you want to use the magical ingredient—social networks—to make that happen? Well, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

The fact is that high levels of motivation are achieved through deeper experiences. Consider how you may stop smoking only after you or someone in your family has suffered serious smoking-related health problems. Maybe that will motivate you to change your behavior.

You may click on Facebook’s “Like” button when you bump into an important message for saving our planet’s water, brought directly to you by a friend who did the same. But that will most likely not be motivational enough for you to really change your habits.

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Not to worry, that should not be the purpose of messages that move around and across networks. The medium excels at increasing participation by lessening the degree of motivation that participation requires. Clicking a button? Passing on a message? Sure, millions can do it—and therein lies its strength.

Lesson 5

Ask for less. Instead of urging consumers to grab their webcams and their mothers and friends and their dogs and create a funny video, or get them to feel inspired to write a short story that will win them a prize, ask for less. Ask for support in the shape of a click, a tweet, an “I like this,” and you may see participation soaring. The golden rule of thumb is to give a lot and ask for very little in return.

It’s not about staying ahead, it’s about leaping ahead.Everyone wants to leap ahead. We know the competition is biting on our ankles, and we need to start sprinting. But then most clients get weighted down by their own systems.

Risk aversion is a corporation’s sure path to spending more money than is necessary on actions that do not generate much value and drive brands to near oblivion. In our competitive market, doing good work is not good enough. Walking fast will inevitably place you in last position in the race where many are running.

Lesson 6

Try to instill passion and fearlessness in your team, especially the communications team that work directly with agencies. Consider how many great ideas have been pushed aside particularly because they represented risk to the everyday junior marketing manager.

The math is simple: if you dare and fail, you put your career on the line in a corporate world that privileges well-scripted and calculated moves. If you dare and succeed, you get a pat on the back and maybe you’re eligible for a small bonus. Create a culture that awards calculated risks that foster innovation. You may have to account for a good degree of trial and error, but eventually you will leap far ahead.

Conclusion: Are You Ready to Be a Client of the Future?

Creating movements that change the way brands touch people’s lives is no easy task. Clients must build solid partnerships with one or several agencies —it is no longer what we encountered from the ‘50s through the ‘90s. Today we are literally on the same boat, fighting the same battles, trying to see the larger picture, and finding creative ways to do everything better at a lower cost.

Do allow for true partnership, and be part of re-inventing our industry and our world.