Everything Ages Fast

Making Lemonade

When working in a group, which for most people is all the time, you can find yourself in a less than ideal situation. Your ideas aren’t being heard, there are clicks within the group, you have opposing viewpoints with a team member, for whatever reason the team is not getting along. The fact is you still have to work with that team. Here are some ways that I have found to deal with a team situation that has gone sour.

Gain respect by taking on more responsibility

If you are feeling like you’re on the outside of a group, take on more responsibility and put in more work to gain the respect of your team.

Back up your creative arguments with research or facts

If nobody is accepting your ideas, then back them up with research or facts that make them undeniable or at least more noteworthy.

Don’t be afraid to be the guy or girl that nobody likes

If you feel that something is deeply wrong or right than say something. The whole team will be happier in the end if you produce good work rather than get along and produce something that’s not worthwhile.

Social Media is Better for Customer Retention Than Acquistion

I hate to be the one to say it but social media is not the answer to all of your business problems.  Even though, some people will tell you that all you have to do is get a Facebook account and hoards of new customers will come running through your door, I’m going to argue the opposite. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of social media, but it’s important to remember that social media is just another tool in your arsenal. And like any of your other tools, social media has its strengths and weaknesses.

In my mind, social media is a great tool for customer retention and building brand favorability, not for acquiring new customers. I stumbled upon some data today that agrees with me. 2008-to-2010 trends show higher portions of social media marketing budgets being spent on customer retention than customer acquisition.

The general shallow nature of social media makes it hard for me to believe that a facebook “like” or a “follow” on twitter could influence a someone enough to walk into a store that they have never thought about going into before.

As Malcolm Gladwell’s article Small Change points out, social media rarely sparks physical action in the really world at the same magnitude that it does online. Although someone is willing to “like” your company in the zero-barrier-to-entry world of Facebook that does not mean that they are willing to change their behavior in the real world.

Social media is new access point to talk to consumers, not an access point to new consumers.

More resources on the subject:

Jay Baer’s think different rules

Facebook like are not engaging

Why the revolution will not be tweeted

Ways to measure social media’s affects on customer retention

50 Cent Releases Unfinished Track via Twitter Then Asks Internet Producers to Finish It

I want to make something clear, I hate 50 Cent’s music. However, I like this. Not only will 50 Cent get free music production through crowd sourcing on twitter, he will also get his fans and internet producers to advertise his song for him. Smart.

Check out his track if your interested: Ghetto like a MotherF*cker (uncensored)

SocialFlow

This is a long video but the service is pretty cool. SocialFlow allows you to load a queue with tweets and they are automatically released at the most optimal time.

Invention Company and The Agency of the Future

To quote digital strategist Dave Allen, “Digital breaks things.” As human beings we become cozy in our role and our job. Then the ever-changing world of digital media and technology changes our limitations and breaks down the systems we are used to.

Advertising is not invincible to this.  As anyone involved in marketing and advertising has seen over the recent past, digital does not mix into the ad industry hierarchy that was developed in the days of print and television.  It is foolish to think that the two bodies of advertising and digital can mesh together without changing the way one of them operates and is organized. So what is the future form for of advertising agencies?

I see an invention company. By that I mean a company that is prominently digital and operates to create things not messages. If you look at the standard practices of current ad agencies, you can see that many of them aren’t needed in a digital world. For instance, campaigns are not relevant unless you are creating a message. In digital you create things that stay there, so it doesn’t make sense to think about them in a cyclical way like you would a campaign. Another example, again moving away from creating messages, is agencies of record.   The practice of agency of record only makes sense when you are tied closely to another company for a long period of time. While digital companies establish relationships with other businesses, they can act on a somewhat case-by-case basis similar to the way a product design company like IDEO operates. A potential client comes to them with a problem and they create a solution.

I guess my vision for the future of agencies isn’t really an agency at all, but a marketing solutions company based in digital.

This post is not meant to tell you what to think but rather to give my point of view and leave an open question. What is the future model of ad agencies?

Here are some other models that have been put to use. Victors and Spoils. Agency Nil.

Other resources on the subject:

What Consumes Me

IAmDaveAllen

The “Agency of the Future” will not be an agency

The Future of Advertising