Marketers unhappy with ‘biased, award-hunting’ digital agencies

Not sure that I believe this – commissioned by a digital agency? Are they saying that they are/aren’t in the same boat?

The fact that the industry uses the almost-totally-meaningless term ‘digital’* when I think they mean “computery voodoo stuff with the intertubes” indicates there is still a long way to go before the (now) fully clueless and the variously-clued work together to deliver something consistently beneficial to the client.

* re “digital”, all print production has been digital since the mid-80’s, all audio since the late 80’s and all TVC production digital since the late 90’s

I have to question why these senior marketers with no understanding of digital are responsible for digital strategy in the first place.

would love to see the list of the ‘senior marketers’

I’m surprised the dissatisfied number is only 59%. In my experience, agencies that take the time to understand a client’s industry and business are in short supply, whereas lazy, cookie-cutter “digital strategy” and bullshit metrics are rife. To respond to (another) anonymous comment, my guess is that those marketers without much understanding of digital make up a fair proportion of the “satisfied” group, because they’re less discerning about the strategies and results put in place.

I wonder what ‘senior horsemen’ said about the Model T and later models? “Won’t run on my current chaff!” “leather seats don’t suit my buttocks” etc…

Still, always room for improvement for clients and agencies alike.

I am glad there is finally some focus on this topic although I don’t agree with the premise of the title for this post (yes, I know it is a quote!).

I have worked with quite a number of agencies and marketers all around the world including Australia in both my previous role and in my current role. Part of my role is defining, developing and implementing Digital Excellence, Digital Ignition, Digital Centres of Excellence and mentoring (training, skills, resources, infrastructure etc) for our marketing communities (and in some cases agencies). So I guess I am ‘qualified’ to add some comments here.

This is a complex and yet simple ongoing problem for both clients and agencies.

Time and time again agencies are telling their existing and prospective clients that they have digital capability and expertise when in fact they have little to zero internal experience or skills. I’ve had global agencies telling teams in various countries that they have digital capability and experience which they might have in the USA but nothing outside of that country. But because they have the experience in the USA they feel they are justified in saying that they offer that capability locally.

On the other hand there is also still a large gap in understanding, skills, expertise and experience with digital marketing on the client side.

I still see far too many organisations led down the garden path by their agencies who are all too keen to please their clients by checking off a paper list of capabilities and experience but in reality they have little to no experience.

Most companies I speak to first turn to their agencies for advice and expertise in digital marketing but I find myself all too often having to fix bad and misguided advice from agencies.

Now, in all fairness to marketers and agencies, they don’t know what they don’t know and they have to get the knowledge and experience and then capability from somewhere.

On one hand we have organisations actively seeking digital capability and expertise from agencies but in a competitive environment an agency can’t well say they don’t have a certain expertise when other agencies say they have it, so they simply say they have it as well. Social Media Marketing and Digital Measurement are the two biggest bug bears of mine with agencies, more so in Australia. They simply don’t yet understand these areas, have far too many junior people working on them without any understanding of 360 degree marketing and are therefore constantly providing very poor advice to their clients and the media.

I know many organisations who have a pretty good grasp of most aspects of digital marketing (but not all) and some who are just starting out. I’ve also worked with some amazing digital marketers on the agency side all around the world.

Digital Marketing capability and excellence is not achieved through hiring a digital native who owns, uses or claims to understand the latest bright shiny object. In fact this is a complete distraction to the marketing fundamentals and time and time again I see the resulting outcomes as completely counter-productive to what the marketer’s goals and objectives were.

The marketing fundamentals of understanding the specific behavior, characteristics and media / channel / content consumption of your audiences, planning, strategy development, communications and messaging has not changed. The most successful digital marketing teams and agencies I know have a great focus and investment in an integrated, balanced and experienced 360 degree marketing capability.

Marketing is still an integrated discipline because the complex customer is still at the centre of what we do.

Anyway, my own experience is a firm but generalized NO to the question, “Are marketers satisfied with their current digital services supplier?” However, I am sure that if a similar question was asked to agencies about how satisfied they are with their clients then there would also probably be an overwhelmingly negative result! Compared to bad digital advice, I’ve seen an equal number of very bad briefs and too little time to respond being given by marketers to their agencies.

But, I have to say I don’t agree that the majority of agencies are giving digital advice to win awards and are deliberately biasing strategies / tactics and therefore revenue to do this. I would strongly argue that any mistakes are simply from a lack of skills, experience and naivety about digital marketing.

@anonymous digital marketer – True, there are marketing managers who do not get digital marketing but that’s an opportunity for the agency to provide even more value. Those managers must still have jobs for a reason whether that be great internal stakeholder relations or product knowledge, etc.

41% satisfied… I’m surprised it’s that high…! Who were they asking?

My colleagues and I (over 3 different service industries) all largely agree that ‘digital’ for most agencies is just a banner version of a press ad/DM (and even then only when you direct every last frame as ‘the idea’ is so ethereal as to be useless. And then only after 3/4 rounds of meaningless creative).

In my experience good digital creative is reserved for an agency pitch.Then *suddenly* you don’t have access to those people any more based on the model you have bought. And you end up with the same, stock banners and button static b.s that you had before. The *wow* creative/strategy…oh sorry they don’t work on your business, we’re hiring someone nearly as good, we promise we promise…

@1.41% is about 20% too high…. Totally understand your point, but you also have to realise that there is downward pressure on agency fees.

Lower Fees = Junior People, who are working late nights on multiple clients.

@ #2 piersg
” all print production has been digital since the mid-80′s”

I hate to drown in the meaningless past, but you should show some evidence of that.

Having worked in or servicing the Print Production industry across three countries since the late 80’s until a couple of years ago, I beg to differ.

Unless “all” means “some very large organisations”

AND

where “digital” means “some or all of the print production workflow happened on a computer” (emphasis on SOME)

I agree that focusing on the client’s needs and understanding their business is absolutely the centre of this issue… digital is still very “new” to a lot of businesses, and the constantly chaning environment means it can be difficult for a lot of in-house marketers to keep up (without a lot of passion for digital).

I’ve seen start-up clients with tiny budgets being pitched $10k websites, when a good social media strategy and time invested in a blog would have been enough… a perfect example of how an agency can twist things to their benefit.

However, if the client was willing to invest a bit of time and engery, they should have been able to figure that out on their own.

Personally, if you don’t understand the internet, you need to avoid it completely for marketing puposes.

Best case, you might increase your revenues/ROI slightly… worst case, you completely alienate your “digital native” customers.

This appears to be a common sentiment among marketers, in fact we make reference to this on our homepage:

We’re not here to win awards, we’re here to deliver outcomes for your business or brand.

http://www.onereason.com.au

matin walsh has too much time!

I have an issue with the question. Marketers could be unhappy with their current digital services provider for a number of reasons… shit coffee, the CD still has a pony tail, no big lunches on a Friday… Seriously – it’s a broad brushstroke don’t you think?

I don’t work in a digital agency, but I do work with a lot of them. Some of them are traditional agencies who have evolved successfully. Some are native digital agencies who don’t have to ‘get it’ because they ‘are it’.

It’s a fast-paced and ever changing environment. Innovation changes the rule book nearly every week. But I think there are plenty of traditional marketing lessons that are still just as pertinent in the digital world as they were, and still are, in the ‘old skool’ world of marketing. The agencies that are able to understand the entrenched principles of marketing, the new channels for delivery, the need for reputation management and the new rules of engagement are at least on their way to delivering effective digital solutions.

Any agency who still exists just for awards is a) living on life support, and b) obviously hasn’t grasped the foundation of digital marketing which is that Engagement and Efficacy are the new awards to win.

@Chappy

Yep, there are two paradigms here:

1. Too many so called ‘new media’ marketers who don’t understand the fundamental principles of 360 marketing, strategy, planning and have little to no understanding of customer behaviour and media consumption.
2. Too many ‘traditional’ marketers who are struggling to grasp significant change in customer behaviour and media consumption and new rules of marketing.

I would rather have an experienced 360 degree marketer who comes from a ‘traditional’ marketing background who has now moved into digital vs a digital marketer who has no experience with the rest of the marketing discipline.

As you point out marketing strategies, tactics, channels and rules have always changed based on customer behaviour & consumption and new and emerging channels. The best marketers, organisations, agencies and media have never forgotten the underlying principles of good marketing which have not changed.

Agencies or organisations who think that a low paid, inexperienced ‘marketer’ is a digital expert simply because they use the latest bright shiny object is in for a very rude awakening.

Interesting to see the term ‘Digital Services’ used in this article about what is basically online marketing. Richard Lord and I created the term ‘Digital Services’ many years ago when Hyro acquired the ability to connect the bright, shiny front end (online marketing) to the business systems (round brown spinning things). I feel that Nucleus is right in questioning digital strategies – something that other comments above seem to highlight as well. My take is that Digital Agencies are either BTL departments of mainstream agencies or companies set up by ex BTL folk and/or web developers. If this is true, then I would suspect that very few have the inhouse ability to link what they learn at the front end (engagement) to the back end (business processes), and that this is why so many clients are dissatisfied. Yes, marketing managers are to blame as well. Take a typical FMCG company. It will most likely be populated by brand managers and brand marketing managers who, only a year ago, were rolling out TV/Poster/Magazine/Gondola end, Promotion/Competition campaigns to achieve a short-term sales goal. Their mindset hasn’t necessarily moved with the times. Certainly, some FMCGs do have digital marketing/social media knowledge and experience, but at the end of the day, it’s still a company operating in brand silos all charged with delivering quarterly results by engageing with a multitude of digital agencies that too often present creativity rather than a business case that includes all the rest of what ‘Digital Services’ really is. Not much room for serious stragety, measurement and continuous improvement in that model.

i have to agree with this. working in the industry for too long with people wanting to look good, rather than make businesses happy, earn repeat business.

there is nothing wrong with prioritizing keeping it fun over repeat business, and not everyone does it. there are benefits. awards opportunities and new clients get a lot of attention, are interesting, and bring new blood. new blood and new business keeps ideas fresh. fresh ideas make for innovative digital strategies.

however, selling in the wrong things, i.e. blog to a commodity business, is broken. same effort spent elsewhere could reap much larger rewards, and closer client knowledge over the domain is always going to win. but closer client or domain knowledge only comes from longer term relationships, deeper relationships, and mutual learning between business and agency.

a long term partnership that focuses on mutual gains is what works best, creates open honest communications platform, and allows for experimenting and taking risks above board, but it requires both parties to be mature (client and vendor) and it’s a rare thing to find.

The whole issue of digital strategy is a big focus for clients at the moment – i ran a 2 day digital strategy workshop for ADMA last week (gotta love a bit of self-promotion!) with a room full of clients, and a whole range of issues came up, not the least of which was “what is a digital strategy, and where does it start and where does it end ? ” The answer to those questions normally lies with who’s writing it, what their remit is, and does it fit into the rest of the “strategies” in the business (IT Strategy, Business Strategy, Customer Support Strategy, or whatever is floating around).

Once you’ve got some idea of the scope, you can then work out who needs to be involved and for what facets – the fantastic thing about writing a “digital strategy” is that you can use it as a disguise for just about any aspect of the business, because it all touches digital in some way now – so to put together a comprehensive digital strategy, you could easily cover :- business planning, ROI, investment and product strategy, product development strategy, product sales strategy, support and contact strategy, HR strategy, Shareholder relations strategy, marketing strategy and even back-end business process strategy – all of which have a digital component.

Overlay that with a bit of channel stuff – website strategy, paid media strategy, social media strategy, CRM strategy, search strategy. Then try and measure it all, put KPI’s on it all and write the business case.

And that’s before you map in the IT components – operating patform, ERP integration, CRM integration, CMS platform, email platform, database system etc. etc.

Is it really a wonder that these things are hard to write, hard to get internal acceptance of, and even harder to implement ?

You need a highly skilled team of diverse business expertise, an organisation that has a strong understanding of where it’s going across all aspects of it’s business and stakeholder management skills that make you in line for a job at the UN to get them over the line. (And yes, i speak from experience on this… )

So if that’s the case, is it really surprising most digital agencies who come from a technology, design and marketing background, are a little out of depth when developing a “digital strategy” ? …. that’s assuming everyone know what they mean by that in the first place!

Wow, previous comment is definitely in the TLDR category. Just thought i’d add though – This report is the best piece of self promotion i’ve seen for a while – speak to a broad range of stakeholders in a wide range of industries with a variety of job titles in businesses of varying sizes, and then use the resulting figures as if they were statistically valid for the entire market, with no distinctions between big and small, categories etc. Great way to put a Digital Strategy agency on the map – wish i’d thought of that.

It’s an interesting report (I read it).

No doubt it is a profile raising report for the agency behind it. Nevertheless, the findings are useful for the advertising and communications sector in general. Thank you.

It’s good to see Martin and Mike adding some intelligent commentary to the discussion and I have to agree that I wish I had thought of this intelligent self marketing exercise myself.

Digital strategy is a business issue in equal parts as it is a marketing issue. Kudos to Nucleus for raising awareness that can only help to lift the bar for the industry as a whole.

Nathan.

comment 16 from martin walsh is spot on.

+1 for comment 16, but Martin your first post was full of terminology that unfairly maligns your views, which are quite good. I mean what the heck is “digital ignition” mean exactly? You lost me there, but your follow up post made me re-read your initial one, and you’ve nailed it.

Come on people, whether you want to call it Digital Ignition, Digital Strategy, or you want to mis-use the term Digital Services, unless you are able to take what you learn at the front end to business analytics and systems at the back end, then this is just an excercise in short-term, silo-based, product marketing for the bottom line of brand manager (and possibly for the show reel of that brand manager’s agency). Everything that is gleened from results of any sort of marketing campaign today should be made available in ways that Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management software can spit out as worthwhile information to a company. Hands up how many digital agencies are doing this? If you are not, then it is not Digital Services.

Nice one Geoff, perhaps an argument for media agencies to open share reporting and not blame the stickers every time?

Having come into pharma marketing from a traditional IT background, it’s clear the term “digital” is from a marketer’s dictionary because it isn’t used anywhere else! Perhaps that’s indicative of why this survey indicates pharmas aren’t happy with their digital agencies.

The challenges faced by pharma companies and marketing agencies is no different to traditional software houses working in IT; it’s a cottage industry, where everyone understands and implements IT (or digital) differently. It will take time, but greater understanding and awareness from all in the industry is the solution.

When it comes down to it the term digital strategy probably won’t exist in the near future – strategy is strategy. The problem is most people in centralised strategy positions either don’t understand digital, or don’t have the appetite for it. Hence they pay people to do it for them. To make things harder the financial motivations of various agencies digital, advertising, media or otherwise merely slows down progress in the industry.

I see the next generation of marketing directors/heads of planning coming from digital backgrounds. Why? Not because they understand the latest social tool but because they are wired differently and approach marketing from a totally different place. In fact we need to bring these people through the ranks much quicker.

The digital generalist will be dead, but we will see specialists flourish even in social media. I wouldn’t trust an ad or digital agency managing complex customer service or reputation management projects for large organisations. Lets be honest and get real.

Hi all, go and watch madmen, drink some booze and smoke some fags. That’s all some of you are worthy of 😉

Strategy flows from clear goals, which are often now shared with the Digital Agency. Clients still see Digital agencies as web / design shops to get an animated banner, Facebook page or web contest done. Clients who get their digital agencies involved in annual media planning and share their business goals will get better yield as with all agency relationships. On their part Digital Agencies need to invest in bringing in the right people and building their commercial expertise to meet client expectations. I wrote a blog post on what Digital needs to do to grow up – http://kevinalphonso.com/2010/.....o-grow-up/

I’ve enjoyed reading the opinions on this thread and hopefully they are enlightening for both sides of the fence!

In my previous role at Microsoft I worked very closely with Razorfish (Microsoft owned them at the time) as well as WPP, Wunderman, McCann, MRM, GroupM and others and I got to work with people like Shiv Singh who was the VP Social Media but is now client side at Pepsi as their Director of Digital.

He recently wrote a great simple post on his blog about what the world is like (in marketing) on the client side: ‘From the Other Side – Advice for Agencies’ http://bit.ly/fr4Wuy