You are here: Home / Archives for branding

Following Gap: A Quick Thought on Brand Consulting

August 18, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

No longer do just companies battle each other in the marketplace. Today, brands do combat, and many clients faced with this changed landscape aren’t sure how to brand their goods and services to win. Clients want to achieve the greatest return on their branding investments, while at the same time protecting these highly valuable corporate assets.

Sometimes they miss. By a mile:

“Established in 1969 in San Francisco, Gap is one of the most popular American clothing brands — net sales of $3.8 billion in 2009 can attest to it. With 1,140 stores in the U.S. and almost 300 more abroad, Gap pushes simple and unfuzzy clothing at very reasonable prices and of very reasonable quality. Through their advertising they have established a cool, breezy, and sophisticated brand visual language that ties everything together nicely and, until now, their logo was the perfect little bow to keep it all together. Without any fanfare, Gap rolled out a new logo yesterday.”

Gap made a huge mistake by not thinking about the impact changing a logo would have on its overall brand. Gap is a long-standing very traditional brand that many have come to love over time. Gap was/is timeless, much as Coke was/is. Messing with the “mix” without proper planning is just plain wrong. See New Coke as exibit A. Messing with a logo without thinking about the overall brand is … well just stupid. Frankly Gap has a brand problem. Has had one for a very long time.

Changing the logo is the act of a desperate marketing team that wanted something fast to help immediate sales. In doing so they’ve opened themselves up to ridicule and jokes all over the web. Perhaps they can turn this exercise into a win, much as New Coke ended up doing so for the overall brand. Or not.

The simple fact is many traditional ad agencies are not prepared to help clients in this branding struggle because agencies in general have spent years branding advertising, not branding companies. Branding advertising is the best way to achieve communications synergy for clients.

Branding a company is the best way to enhance corporate value for clients. Learning the difference between branding advertising and companies, and understanding how to work with clients at a strategic level to do a better job of branding is critical to the long term success of any marketing firm. Your goal should be to move from acting as communications vendors, where price is the deciding factor, to becoming a trusted brand advisor where value-added is the key consideration.

NOTE: This post was lost in the great switch a few months ago. Reposted it as many were asking for my great Bob Logo!
New Post: Did Gap goof again? http://bit.ly/q8oUWA

 

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

7 Ways To Improve Your Agency Finances

August 17, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

Often when speaking with agency leaders they bemoan the state of their finances. Projections are looking better, but they’re still not great. Marketing firms aren’t setting any records for growth. Client marketing schedules are still being pushed back. What can an agency leader do?

Nobody is sure what the future will hold - is the sky clearing or is there a storm on the way? All we can do it make sure we are prepared.

Improve Your Financial Position:

  1. Productivity improvement. This was once described as “pushing the staff to work harder.” Most agencies are at the limit now when it comes to how hard your staff is working. It’s more effective to strip non-value-added work out of the process; Streamline the workflow, implement new tools to enhance communication, remove old forms and steps that were implemented in another age.
  2. Compensation and contract terms improvement from clients. This is a great option if only you can figure out a way to make your clients pay you more. Revisit your contracts, utilize benchmarking results, establish performance goals and understand how to negotiate.
  3. Organic growth. This is the British term for getting more work from existing clients. It can be difficult if all you do is try to sell more of your existing services. It is far more effective to find ways to sell Business Building Ideas and Value-Added Services.
  4. Merge or acquire. An effective way to reduce overhead or add services you are now buying from someone else. Look around your market for a good opportunity for a cross-town merger. If done properly, this can transform an agency.
  5. Realign your brand. Focus your efforts on one category and become an expert. By adapting a more consultative approach for your existing and new accounts you can increase revenue to the bottom-line
  6. Cut salaries and staff. This is a meat axe approach and is usually the last resort before the door closes. If not handled correctly, the end result is often good people leave and bad ones stay. There are some effective ways to better align staff with your overall agency goals. If this is done correctly, it can reenergize staff by removing deadwood.
  7. Grow. Win more new business. One of the things Sanders Consulting Group is best known for is our new business prowess. Over the years we have taught more marketing communication people around the world more about generating new business than anyone else. If your firm needs more new business, give us a call.

Setting goals can be easy, but coming up with a plan that will allow you to meet these goals is significantly less easy, and sticking to your plan is even harder. If you can set goals, create a plan and stick to it, you will go much further than ever before in terms of your cash-flow. By following these tips you can increase your bottom line, even during the recession. And, if you need help – don’t be afraid to ask the experts!

Photo Credit: the-spifster
Filed Under: Leadership, Operations Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Future of Ad Agencies: Digital Flood

July 28, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

I read with much interest Fast Company’s fascinating article misnamed “The Future of Advertising” when the Fast Company’s article is more about the future of the advertising agency business. And it’s worth more than a casual read for anyone in the agency business.

But the article missed a key point in my view, and it’s a question of scope.

Johnstown Flood 1889

On May 31, 1889, a neglected dam and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophe in which 2,209 people died. It's a story of great tragedy, but also of triumphant recovery.

We can relate the current reporting of our industry’s effort to get in-step with the digital revolution to news coverage of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 which wiped out the town and 2200 souls in western Pennsylvania. The Johnstown Flood was tragic and changed the local landscape quite a bit but it couldn’t compare with the Biblical Flood in Noah’s time. And Noah’s Flood is more in keeping with what’s hitting our world, not just the advertising industry. The Digital Flood that’s happening is of Biblical proportions, and the article didn’t do justice to the scope of what’s happening to the world we used to know.

Read some of our thoughts on the sweeping changes in what we call the Creative Age.

I would guess that we are about ten minutes into the Digital Flood with much uproar and consternation over the wet streets, creeks overflowing, and gushing downspouts we see. Our industry ponders when it all will end, not realizing we are just at the leading edge of Day One of the Digital Flood with nearly 40 more days to go. That’s the scope I see.

Time to build an ark?

Digital Flood: "And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered" Genesis 7.10

Interesting enough there is more then enough evidence to show we are just starting to see the effects of the flood:

McNamee’s bottomline? Everything is changing.

More specifically, a few big themes:

  • Microsoft is toast because we’re moving to a post-PC era;
  • HTML5, the new web standard that allows to make interactive web
    pages, is going to revolutionize the media and advertising industries;
  • Social is “done”, it’s now a feature, don’t go do a social startup.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/roger-mcnamee-video-2011-7#ixzz1TPbF5mTN

Time to Build an Ark?

We help our agency clients prepare for the Digital Flood by taking five actions:

  1. Narrow your focus and become experts in one area and treat your market place as world-wide.
  2. Get your brand right, and make sure it’s in-step with where your best prospects want to go.
  3. Learn how to learn. Never let your agency stop learning by doing more partnering and collaborating. And make that learning process an agency priority.
  4. Learn how to relate because by relating the new things we see to past things that were familiar, we can handle the speed of change coming at us much better.
  5. Lastly, learn how to choose, because there are too many options being pushed at us to take advantage of any more than a few, so “choose well, Grasshopper.”

In my time with the Marines I learned in Land Navigation that you have to know where you are before you start moving in any direction. Our industry is the same, you must understanding where we’ve been to better understand where we’re going. This presentation will give you some insight into the challenges facing our industry.

Marketing Chessboard

 

Congrats to Fast Company for pointing out the Digital Flood sweeping over our advertising agency industry. It’s just a lot bigger than that. And it’s much more than wet streets, jammed drains, and water in the basement.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Must be Leap Year: Demise of the Ad Industry Being Reported

June 23, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk
The advertising industry finds itself – yet again – at a crossroads, a confluence, a decision-point, a junction. Attention is needed. Assessment is necessary and action is required. After all, it’s been nearly 10 years since the industry was last stumbling headlong toward extinction.
End of the Ad Agency

Every few years "experts" claim the traditional ad agency is going the way of the dinosaurs…

Are there many reasons for concern? – Yes. Are there always reasons for concern? – Yes! It’s most interesting how the “expert class” repeatedly presumes cataclysm at the first sign of economic Darwinism. Chicken Little would be proud.
Remember, not that many years ago, the Internet spelled doom for the industry. Still around – amazing. Before that, there was this new thing that would kill print advertising called TV. Before that radio…
Assuming clients will continue to sell products and services, there is a reason to believe that agencies will survive this most recent report of their demise.

Agencies HAVE Changed

That said, there are indications that more change is needed to stem the tide of marginalization. Agencies have expanded, purchased, and partnered their way into every market, category and discipline. They have leveraged advancements in technology to become as connected globally as their predecessors were in one office tower only a decade earlier. And have scoured the market for the best and brightest to set to work advancing their client’s brands and products.
Evidently, not everyone has been impressed by the results of this effort. (pdf file)
The End of Advertising As We Know It
Traditional advertising players – broadcasters, distributors and advertising agencies – will need innovative new approaches to respond to major industry shifts underway.
What is most intriguing about this point-of-view is that it assumes the clients will sit and wait on the ad agency and their partners to innovate our way into the future.
There is no question that the future of advertising will look radically different from its past. The push for control of attention, creativity, measurements and inventory will reshape the advertising value chain and shift the balance of power. For both incumbent and new players, it is imperative to plan for multiple consumer futures, craft agile strategies and build new capabilities before advertising as we know it disappears.
Bold mine. A truly shocking point of view! I know! The industry will have to “craft agile strategies!” in light of this “shifting balance of power.” This is amazing to hear in this day and age. Particularly from IBM who is serviced by the industries most influential agencies. After all, didn’t the industry spend the past few decades consolidating to deliver on the opportunity of integrated services, or was it convergent communication, or media-neutral communication, or whatever other iteration of the same to better measure and influence consumers. If agencies were delivering on their service promise, then churn would not be at unprecedented levels and clients would not be seeking the same service object as a decade earlier – FROM YET ANOTHER AD AGENCY.
And yet another outside point of view claiming the end of our ad agencies. Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, one of music’s most successful brand ambassadors did not soft-pedal his message for a rapt audience of advertising and media delegates.
“Ad agencies are yesterday,” he said. “But ad agencies that can turn consumers into agents that add value to community and life, that’s what it’s about right now.”
So, where’s the rub? Change is coming. And some agencies won’t make the change… See Cliff Freeman’s closing as Exhibit A.
Fingers of fault can be pointed in every direction, but what can an agency do to deliver on the promise of change and better consumer insight?

Options For Change

One choice might be to do nothing. As one CEO of a prominent agency network advised, “it’s not going to happen in my lifetime, so I’m better off spending my time on matters where I can have an impact.” This pessimistic view might work for him and his pre-packaged retirement, but, as an industry, ignoring the issues is not a viable option.
If you are confident that agencies are on the case and see these views as a “Chicken Little” prophecy, consider one advertiser’s recent action. They terminated their agency relationships claiming the agency model to be irreparably broken. Then proceeded to underwrite the organization of its new agency – only to see that model stumble and fall. And now have folded the whole mess into yet another ad agency.
This is an extreme but not an isolated example of how client dissatisfaction has embodied itself in unprecedented levels of client churn.
Some would argue that client’s share much of the blame in these dysfunctional relationships. But these same clients –criticized by agencies – have increased the role and expenditures for their management consultants year-over-year. Perhaps as an industry we need to consider why? Anyone can satisfy and make money off of the handful of great clients. A great agency effectively services and profits from all of their client relationships.

Time is of the essence; a recent study reported that those in the “advertising” profession rank just ahead of Used Car Salespeople in esteem. But neither that nor the changing consumer will end advertising as we know it.

Ramifications For Agency Leaders

Ad Agency Leaders Lead

"Having a vision marks you as a visionary. Then if you have the ability to get others to buy into that vision, you’re called a leader." Bob Sanders President, Sanders Consulting Group

This shift has big impact on the way you should think about your business. Clients are thinking about marketing differently. To them it’s tactical. And tactical is measured on achieving results, fast delivery and staying on budget. So anything that keeps you from delivering on their tactical-oriented measurements needs to go. Some examples that might be hindering your firm include inefficient operating structure, department thinking and department silos, slow response and low productivity. All these need to change.
Create an action plan to adapt now:
  • Take the best thinking from tactical firms and best practices from strategic firms.
  • Find your own trusted advisors.
  • Understand how to manage change.
Build your business model so you can prosper in this new environment:
  • Your agency needs to be positioned and branded properly – focus and discipline are key.
  • Most of your competitors are operating without any strong positioning other than a hazy label.
  • There is little concentrated branding going on among agencies, meaning few agencies have a clearly defined brand.
Hard to believe but it may be time for your firm to move into a larger and faster growing market area. And that’s consulting. You do this by launching a flanker brand aimed at CEOs offering a variety of services, including serious branding. Serious branding is usually more than communication branding that agencies do just done to win an account but serious branding can be highly profitable work for marketing communication firms that know how.
Understand that to live in the past, you will die. Adapt to the present and you can survive. Plan for the future and you can really prosper!
To find out more including how to start your firm soaring, not just surviving, then give us a call. Our work together often begins with an open discussion with one of our consultants so we can better understand if we can be of help. Start by contacting our office at 800.899.1538 – or drop us a line at info@sandersconsultng.com and we will schedule a call.
Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,