Ad Agencies: Don’t Underestimate Your Competition

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Nick Brien, CEO of McCann Worldgroup, said that the ad agency giant’s biggest competition is media companies like Meredith Corp.

It turns out that Meredith, which does direct marketing and social media for Chrysler, beat out McCann for part of the auto maker’s business.

“If you don’t recognize who you competition is, you will underestimate them,” Brien told The Journal.

And in times as intensively competitive as these, you really don’t want to do that.

Ad agencies aren’t the only ones feeling the heat. Now PR firms either are – or should be – looking increasing their expertise in social media.

Earlier this month the Dallas Business Journal ran a story by Web Reporter Kerri Panchuk about how the PR landscape has been changed by social media advertising/marketing, and how local PR agencies are responding.

“In our business-to-consumer group, social media is getting to be at least 25 percent of our business,” says Michael Burns, CEO of public relations firm Michael A. Burns & Associates Inc. “We are diversifying our services based on what our clients want from a PR agency.”
James Hering, a principal at The Richards Group, tells the Dallas Business Journal that many of his clients allocate about 70 percent of their marketing budgets to digital and online initiatives.
As further confirmation, Michael Crawford, president of a M/C/C, an advertising and PR firm, estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of his revenue now comes from digital work.

I suspect these Dallas agencies are pretty representative of what’s happening nationally and internationally.

If your ad agency isn’t getting on board the social-media train, consider these parting words from The Winterberry Group, a consulting firm that helps advertising and marketing companies grow shareholder value:

“Spending in the online marketing segment is expected to increase to $8 billion by 2012.”

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Coca-Cola Can Teach Ad Agencies Valuable Lessons about Social Media

The Coca-Cola Company has always been one of my favorite companies, in part because of its innovative marketing. With the incredible brand recognition Coke enjoys it would be easy to get complacent, but Coca-Cola executives have resisted the temptation to do so.

So it’s no surprise that Atlanta-based Coca-Cola has become a leader in social media marketing. With 500 brands in more than 200 countries, can’t afford not to be efficient.

Michael Donnelly, the company’s group director of worldwide interactive marketing, oversees a group of 30 people in Coke’s global interactive group, including four focused on social media, according to an article last month Media Post News Marketing Daily

A new program called KO Social Hub reportedly will be a social media tool kit that any of Coca-Cola’s 3,500 marketers around the world can use locally to create programs.

“The idea,” Marketing Daily states, “is to make it easier for marketers in different countries to reach local cohorts of Coca-Cola’s 7 million fans across dozens of social-media sites.”

Instead of running programs, Mr. Donnelly is providing marketers with platforms to potentially run thousands of programs.

“If you were to create a Facebook and YouTube page for every country in which you market, then moderate and run those pages, you will be doing a $30 to $40 million investment,” he notes. “Our strategy is to have a single presence, central pages so that no matter where you are in the world, when you pull up YouTube/Coca-Cola, you get a country-local social page.”

Sounds like a smart, cost-effective strategy that will pay great dividends by continuing to build Coke’s brands throughout the world.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Has Agency Crisis PR Lost Its Way?

Crisis PR is in crisis. Or so says Matthew DeBord, writing in The Big Money.

He believes the 24/7 news-and-comment cycle and social media have permanently altered the landscape to the point where “the new crisis paradigm is spinning hopelessly in the dark.”

Leading with BP’s troubles and the inability of its crisis communications team to work magic, Mr. DeBord writes “the dark art is in meltdown.”

While Mr. DeBord’s article raises some interested points, his statement “The BP oil spill, Apple’s (AAPL) Antennagate, the fall of Goldman Sachs (GS), Toyota’s Great Recall, the sexual travails of Tiger Woods, the trysts of Al Gore, the loose lips of Stanley McChrystal—all these combustions would have been fixed, in the good old days of 2007, with a call to Burston-Marstellar or Sitrick & Co.,” is frankly absurd.

Exxon hardly waltzed through the Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which took place before the Internet was used on a large scale. Or how about Bridgestone’s tire disaster a decade ago? Bridgestone had a top PR firm working on the crisis, but would anybody say it was handled well?

While there’s no doubt that social media have changed the speed at which companies communicate and the way in which they interact with the public, the fundamentals of crisis communications haven’t changed.

I can’t recall ever seeing a crisis “fixed” just by throwing money at PR. There has to be a good-faith effort to fix the problem that caused the crisis in the first place.

If a company is deceptive and tries to hide the truth, no amount of crisis spin is likely to do it much good.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Media Survey Provides Insights for Ad Agencies

Journalists are broadening the ways they interact with PR professionals and other sources, and much of this interaction is coming through social media, according to the PRWeek/PR Newswire 2010 Media Survey.

The survey was conducted online, with 1,568 traditional and non-traditional media representatives and 1,670 PR practitioners completing it.

I found it particular interesting, though not surprisingly, that it is becoming more common for journalists to establish relationships with sources online.

The more traditional ways of pitching, while not dead, are certainly declining, and ad agencies need to adapt to new methods of reaching influential reporters.

Other noteworthy findings pertaining to social media include:

• 43% of journalists have been pitched through social networks, compared to 31% in 2009.

• 62% of PR professionals follow individual journalists and media outlets via social networks.

• 59% of traditional journalists are the author of a blog, whether personal or professional, and 31% are writing a blog for their traditional outlet, an increase from 28% in 2009.

• 44% of PR pros are choosing to circumvent traditional journalists for certain stories — 17% of respondents are pitching to traditional media outlets with less frequency; 66% are targeting bloggers more than before; and 45% are going directly to consumers more often.

• Journalists are also using blogs in their research, with 45% saying they’ve quoted a blog in an article. However, when researching a specific company, 90% of journalists are still acquiring information through the company’s Web site; 24% are using general blogs, and 23% are going to the company’s blog to get information on that specific business.

• While 34% of journalists say they use company blogs for general story research, 51% report they do not find company blogs useful, “pointing to a possible disconnect in how businesses are presenting information.”

• 43% of PR practitioners report using social networks to pitch the media, with 76% using Twitter and 49% using Facebook.

• 61% of journalists that have been pitched via social network have received pitches via Facebook, while 44% have received Twitter pitches. (Only 18% of journalists were getting Twitter pitches a year ago.)

• 84% of journalists consider e-mail the best way to receive story pitches; only 4% report the phone to be the best way to do so.

• 57% of journalists anticipate a decline in print circulation with an increased focus on the Web.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Tampa Bay Business Journal Explores Ad Agency of the Future

Robert Yaniz Jr., editorial assistant for the Tampa Bay Business Journal, recently interviewed three local ad agency principals about their thoughts as to how ad agencies will change in the years ahead.

Among the trends: Angela Massaro-Fain, founder and president of Grapevine Communications, believes there will be more boutique agencies, with most of the creative, media planning and public relations talent being outsourced.

Patricia Courtois, a partner at Eric Mower and Associates, says, “Advertising agencies are going to have to raise their digital IQ significantly,” adding that all team members will need to be well versed in traditional and non-traditional methods of communication.

But the comment I found most insightful came from Tony Ceresoli II, president and CEO of Ad Partners Inc.: “In order for ad agencies to thrive in the future, they will have to become experts in new, social and traditional media.

“Clients are weary of ad agencies that claim to have a handle on new and social media but don’t even use it for their own businesses.”

Right on. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more! While no one suggested or recommended abandoning traditional media, the reality is that advertising agencies simply cannot continue to do business old-school style and expect to be successful. New and social media will only grow and increase its influence.

If your agency is still playing catch up, a good New Year’s resolution would be to make 2010 the year you and your team gets up to speed on new communication technologies and social (interactive) media.

To read the article, visit: http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/12/28/focus2.html?b=1261976400^2635101

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.