Why should I hire an Interactive Agency if I already have a full service one?

I’m repeatedly asked this question by marketers. Moreover, I recently had the need to help building the case internally for one of the contacts I met with at a leading global player. I was surprised I was not able to find supporting articles online, as my initial idea was to provide third party justification. Therefore I decided to go ahead and give it more thought and write about it here.

This topic is somewhat related to the post “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted” as well as “Online, for the offline’s sake” one. Over and over again, brands conduct agency reviews, including everything in a single package. This is particularly true in the US Hispanic Market, where the inception of dedicated Latino marketing departments is relatively recent and their budget is considerably tight. They are building their case internally, to growth their capacities and resources.

As I tried to identify myself the reasons why this is so common, the fact that marketers might feel more comfortable with traditional agencies, as that is a ground they are familiar with and been experiencing for years, came to my mind. On the other hand the prospect of working with a single vendor might contribute to think this is the best way to go.

However there area several logical and not so evident reasons why brands should relay in traditional and digital agencies:

• Specialization: this is they main reason among all. The nature of the digital media requires significantly different skillset. Technology might arise as the first one, but the characteristics of the media it self cry for a different approach. Interactivity is the key component that is not present on the offline media. The tracking capabilities, the message customization, campaign targeting and dynamic content are other concepts that the traditional media lack of or are particularly difficult to implement, without entering into the cost arena.

• Business Relevancy. Online budgets are usually 5% of the offline ones, therefore a traditional agency winning a particular brand’s advertisement business will mostly, and usually do, focus on the offline side of the account, leaving online to play a secondary role, as collateral to all the offline activities and not as one of the key components.

• Resources. Most of the traditional agencies end up outsourcing the production of online materials to small shops or freelance developers/designers. So what is the point in awarding this slice of the business to them anyway?

• Innovation. Traditional agencies tend to follow the market on the implementation of digital strategies and not the other way around. Most of the offline agencies’ work on the digital media tends to be isolated from other actions, limited to very nicely designed minisites, a banner campaign and email blasts.

• Customer segmentation. And this point applies particularly to the US Hispanic Market & Latin America market. Consumers that have internet access are usually more qualified as consumers than those who do not. The demographics of online users have a tendency to be more educated and with higher income levels. Other audiences that are remarkably more knowledgeable on the online are the younger audiences, that becoming less and less receptive to traditional advertising methods.

I could keep citing more reasons why separating the online and offline advertisement accounts is as important as the selection itself fo the most appropriate agency. One of the additional reasons could be the consumer generated content trend along with viral marketing, that are centered on the web 2.0 but that deserves a completely separated discussion.

Let me get this straight, I’m not against traditional agencies or media, my position is that both, offline and online, should play a relevant role and that there should be a high level of interaction between the two of them on a particular account, to make of this a successful model.

Summarizing, on my personal experience, those accounts we work with, that previously had only a full service traditional agency, were in an earlier stage of adoption of digital media, lacked the required knowledge to implement comprehensive relationship marketing programs or even integrated campaign and tracking of call to actions. Moreover, the level of accountability of the dollars spend is usually lower on the offline side of the business, where metrics are not based on a one to one measurement and mostly related to statistical estimations. Making it harder for marketers to build the case for more budget and resources.

Marketers thinking on putting their account in review, should consider separating the offline and the online business, creating a competitive environment where creativity will keep flowing and the comfort zone for neither of those agencies will be reached.

Online, for offline's sakes

Most of the time we are approach by a client, they are thinking in running just an online campaign. Most of the time they think of online as an isolated resource. There are few companies exploring the power of multichannel marketing, which basically means driving audiences from offline (print, TV, radio, points of sales, outdoors and others) to the digital media, and back again to offline.

Why should a marketer think on more comprehensive multichannel campaigns? Simply, it's individuals that are being exposed to the message in a variety of contexts and formats. Some channels with a more immediate call to action, others with a more mindshare objective.

The online can perfectly fill the gap between offline channels, providing marketers with the ideal tool to track conversions and acquiring customer information to then be used on more targeted digital communications (making then more efficient, measurable and adjustable than traditional media).

Let me put it in more simple words. Recently at e-volution we develop a set of campaigns for Disney in Latin America where TV audience was encourage to show off how much they knew about specific characters on primetime series. The result: Disney was able to register TV viewers on their email database, to target them in future online actions, but also to trigger desired offline behavior, like for example notifying them of in-store offers of new DVD releases. Even more interesting, rewarding those loyal consumers that provided you with the information with a pre sale event at specific retail (let’s say, the most loyal retail partners). This campaigns measure which days of the week people were watching more the programs involved as the questions and activities related directly to the episode air on a specific date.

Online brings new ways to measure the level of commitment of a brand’s audiences, not only on the consumer side but also on their distribution channel or even among vendors. Allowing the brand to act accordingly and reward them, as in the example set above. Why bother delivering an offer driving traffic to a retail store that you know would not have enough products on the shelf? There are alternatives to the traditional earn points to get this great plasma TV programs. Channel programs that reward business owners with coop marketing activities are a great incentive that also reinforce the sales cycle.

On the other hand, by acquiring customer information, particularly media companies can discover new audiences that are part of their viewership. For example with A&E Television, one of e-volution’s clients in Latin America, we discover a younger audience, more technologically savvy based on the responses to on air promotions driving users to participate in online contests.

I summary, when most of the marketers think of an online campaign, composed by a nice banner on a highly well known site linked to a registration form for a drawing, they are missing an infinite number of opportunities that could be seized on every touch point of the campaign.

Email disaster recovery or a better planning process?

I periodically read MediaPost’s columns as they are one of the most reliable sources of information on trends in interactive marketing, particularly those dedicated to email and online advertisement. Last Thursday an article on email titled When a good e-mail goes bad, by Jeanniey Mullen from Ogilvy World Wide in New York, caught my attention. Can really a good email go bad? Or is it that it was good only to the eyes of those involved in the creation process?

At any given time, advertising agency as well as advertisers might make decisions based on personal perceptions or myths. Customer insight is frequently scarce and as humans we tend to create our own personal “personas” that might not necessarily fit the profile of those who will be actually receiving our message or eventually that “persona” might not react as we expected during the creative process. Therefore the need to balance the creative process with methodological procedures that provide the means to test, measure and adjust the final message that is going to be delivered.

As I discussed in my last post on the article published on The Economist, The Ultimate Marketing Machine, the most significant advantage of the digital media is the ability of marketers to track and act upon numbers, not words. This has been said over and over again since the inception of digital marketing practices on the mid 90s. However, few are the companies that have undergone the cultural change that requires the adoption of the digital media. Sending emails to a database religiously on time and without any spelling of grammar mistake, is not enough. Consumers change, they sometimes outgrow the brand promise, they get married, divorced, die or just change tastes. What worked before does not necessarily will work now.

Establishing a role inside the marketing team focused on deploying an effective testing, not for only email pieces, but also for all forms of digital and even offline communications, including Call to Actions, layouts, design, would help avoid thinking on how to fix that good email that unexpectedly went wrong.