Is Your Ad Agency Ready For Social Media?

We're all trying to hang onto clients. Will social media be a determining factor?

If your company is making tons of money right now and the last thing you need to worry about is increasing revenues or your job stability, then good for you. You can pass this blog post and move on to Travelocity and book your European vacation. Please send the rest of us a postcard.

Everybody else, listen up.

When it comes to social media, ad agencies just don’t get it.

That’s what a survey by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony of 60 marketers in North America, France and the U.K. revealed, according to an article earlier this year in Adweek.

In the article, 50 percent of marketers said social-media efforts needed to be handled at an executive level with "significant" resources. Another 30 percent agreed social media is a "revolutionary opportunity."

But overall, the marketers expressed a frustration with ad agencies not getting it.


Are You On Twitter Or Are You Just Now Discovering E-Mail Marketing?

As a freelance copywriter, I’m meeting more and more of the firms engaged in some form of providing marketers with services related to Internet marketing. And of course, I know and work with a lot of ad agencies. These two cultures are vastly different.

Social media presents a great opportunity for those of us in the business of creating marketing content. As the book, Groundswell, demonstrates, the ROI for social media can be measured, perhaps even more effectively than in traditional media. The efficiencies social media offers in terms of media savings and the pass-along factor can far outweigh the costs for development.

But who is more prepared to actively tackle the challenge? Traditional ad agencies or digital agencies?

Here’s my take on what I’m seeing in terms of the differences.

Ad agencies by their very nature, are still traditional. They create ads for traditional media such as print, outdoor and broadcast. And most now are creating websites and managing some online advertising efforts for clients.

Of the firms that create marketing messages and content, ad agencies tend to have the greatest understanding of branding and message creation. Perhaps mostly due to senior management having 20-30+ years of branding experience under the belt.

In terms of addressing the needs for social media, I am seeing a handful of traditional ad agencies starting to bring in people at the executive level to handle digital strategy and management, which presumably includes social media. Some of the bigger agencies such as DDB are starting to form digital marketing arms, like Tribal DDB.

Of the Internet marketing firms I’m seeing, most are managed by people under the age of 40. They don’t normally have the breadth of business experience of the people managing ad agencies, simply due to youth. But, they have all the technology experience and expertise in the world.

They may not necessarily be bad managers, in fact their youth may help them connect better with their staff, which may be largely in their 20’s. But they likely lack the business experience of managing a business through changes, such as, oh, let’s say a major recession. However, they do know how to lead through changes in technology, given technology seems to change every 24 hours.

They know the capabilities of technologies like FaceBook and Twitter. But where they often fall short is a lack of understanding of branding and message creation.

They may be able to advise a client to microblog on Twitter, but would they know how to advise the client to microblog in a compelling way that’s on strategy with the brand? They may know the right places to embed video code, but do they know how to create a video that has the production values that consumers have gotten spoiled to in the mainstream media.

Because while social media is about media created by the people, for the people, it still requires some nudging from the marketers. In other words, if you’re waiting for consumers to create content for your client, you could be waiting a long time. Even crowd-sourcing demands a nudge from the brand.


Fight The Great Depression 2.0 With Advertising 2.0

So what am I leading to with all of this?

If you’re an ad agency trying to figure out how to manage through the hard times the whole business world is facing right now, do what you advise your clients to do. Position your brand uniquely by taking a leap into what your audience wants—social media.

But don’t wait. Because if an Internet marketing firm beats you to the punch, getting the business from clients will be harder in the future, than it will be now. And the longer you wait to take your existing clients there, the harder it may be for them to make any headway there as their competitors may have already staked out the territory.

In other words, don’t be the art director who in 1992 refused to adapt to working on a Mac. Embrace the new, and dive head first into it, willing to make some mistakes along the way. Heck, social media is so new, everybody that’s tried it has likely made some mistakes. You made mistakes when you got into working on Macs, didn’t you? Start by developing social media strategies for your own agency and learn from that. No marketer will likely take you seriously for social media projects until you've done that anyway.

If you’re an Internet marketing firm, get ready for the inevitable competition ad agencies may be getting ready to bring your way. While the ad agencies are hiring people from your world, hire people from the ad agency world with the expertise to create content and build brands.

Because as ad agencies hire more digital expertise, your value as digital experts will be de-leveraged until you have more assets in place for creating strong branding. Granted your relationships with your clients may give you a stronghold, but we all know the day we get a new account is also the day we start to lose it.

Oh, and to complicate this all a bit more, let’s throw in the competition that you all may be getting from public relations agencies. Social media is largely about public relations, especially in terms of monitoring public opinion and working to influence it. And if PR firms get more tech savvy and become better at creating brand content, you’ll have even more competition on your hands.

Whichever side of the fence you’re on, ad agency or Internet marketing firm, the idea is that tough times call for getting innovative. Maybe the place to meet is in the middle, where ad agencies and digital agencies form strategic alliances with one another, as some of you are already doing.


Your thoughts?

What are your thoughts on this? I’m eager to hear.

If you’re up on social media technology, you can DM me on Twitter @macwriter where you'll find me microblogging. For everyone else, a simple comment left below will be fine, just click on the "Comment" link.

And finally, please email this blog post to the owners / partners of your company. They need to read it.