Social Schmocial

One of the hot topics of discussion in the marketing world is how to use social media. As Michael Gass points out in his latest newsletter, a report from the Aberdeen Group on "The ROI on Social Media Marketing" says that 63% of companies in their survey planned to increase their social media budgets this year. But what constitutes social media since its meaning seems to be changing all the time? What are the other touch points that marketers can reach consumers other than just having a Twitter Feed, Facebook/Myspace page, corporate blog, etc? Everyone seems to be getting on the bandwagon because in this economy budgets are tight and getting your customers to participate with your brand can be more cost effective than the traditional channels, especially when you consider the fact that consumers are tuning out all the advertising they're bombarded with on a daily basis. It'll be interesting to see in the coming months which marketers are successful in figuring this all out and which ones get drowned out in the conversation. And can we please come up with another term other than "social media" which has fast become old.

Be Prepared

I never made it past Tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts but I do remember the motto: Be Prepared. Preparation is key to any meeting, especially a sales presentation. Who are you meeting with? What's their background and experience? What are they doing with their brand? What is happening within their industry? What have other people been saying about them? What are some of the ways you can help them do a better job and make them look great?

Battle of the Presentations

Godzilla vs. Mothra. Ali vs. Frazier. Kramer vs. Kramer. Obama vs. McCain. Then there's Keynote vs. PowerPoint.

For some time now, PowerPoint has been the de facto corporate presentation tool. It's relatively easy to use and fairly seemless with the other Microsoft Office products. Firstborn's a creative agency and P-Point doesn't give us the oomph that's on a par with the work in our portfolio. Some of my co-workers had suggested using Apple's Keynote on the MacBook we have in our office. Being a PC guy, I was reluctant at first but now I couldn't do without it at meetings.

Keynote allows much more impactful presentations with really simple to use but powerful design tools and transitions. Also, we tend to show a lot of our work using video captures of our projects since we might not have an internet connection. It's just a lot easier to talk over videos of projects rather than having to click around. Quicktimes in Powerpoint just don't work but with Keynote, they're a charm.

Keynote, you won me over.

Show and Tell

The one rule about giving presentations is that there are no rules. Every client is unique; every situation different. In some instances, we may be presenting to a room full of people having to respond to specific questions that the potential client has laid out in their RFP. In those cases, we'll put together a very structured Keynote presentation.

Then there are those meetings that are much more informal. We may be getting together with 1 or 2 people, often in their office, sitting around their desk. It may be about a specific project or it may be just a general capabilities introduction. In those circumstances we'll certainly have an agenda but be flexible enough to change our approach on the fly. Do we show work from our laptop? Do we just talk? Or a combination thereof?

Our approach will also depend on the type of client we're meeting with. If it's a marketer, they're going to be more interested in results and solving business problems than an ad agency client who might want to learn about how we can execute and enhance their wonderful idea.

Ultimately it's about having a feel for the room which is different everytime; knowing when to get in and when to get out. Being prepared enough to be quick on your feet with every different circumstance.

Jon Schneider

I was wondering whether to write about a very sad subject but I'll go ahead. We learned yesterday that Jon Schneider, Executive Vice President, Director of Client Services at MRM, died of a massive heart attack on Sunday. He was 52. I spoke with Jon during the contract negotiations for an Intel website that we worked on for MRM in 2006. There were some tense moments but Jon was always a great guy to deal with. I happened to be at Disney World for my 5th anniversary at the time and remarked to him that it seemed like a Fellini movie with all the noise of the Magic Kingdom in the background. Jon's response: "Fellini? Welcome to my world. Web 8.75 ;)"

Asking the right questions

Sometimes first impressions are the best. I had an initial meeting today with a potential client. We gave our usual capabilities presentation at the end of which he asked us a series of very insightful questions. The net effect of this was 1) This client knows what he's doing so consequently 2) He's definitely the type of person that we'd like to work with. We always say that the best meetings are ones in which the client does most of the talking and it's more of a workshop than a one-way version of our giving our company spiel. Such was the case today and if we do end up working with his brand, we know that we're ahead of the game with a client who gets what we do.

Small is the New Big

Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter wrote a good article in Ad Age about how much he admires small agencies and what they can do compared to the large firms and holding companies. At Firstborn, we've always had the model of a boutique sized shop; currently we're at around 40 people and don't have plans to ever expand too much past that number (perhaps 50 or 60 tops). We don't have layers of account management; our producers serve that role in addition to their project management duties. It allows us - as Mr. Bogusky points out - to have a lower overhead than the larger companies, and as they say in sales land, we can pass on the savings to our clients. Being a small sized shop allows us to get stuff done quickly and efficiently. I like to point out in client meetings that you don't need large teams of people to produce high quality large scale work. Just look at our portfolio and you'll see what I mean. Long live the small shops.

Sue Me Sue You Blues

I've commented before on the issue of 3rd party infringement warranties in contracts with our clients, particularly our ad agency partners. Essentially, while we say that our work will be original we can never agree to any language that states our work won't infringe on the rights of a 3rd party because that statement leaves us open to frivolous law suits that could potentially put us out of business. Also, agreeing to this means we take on all of the risk rather than sharing it in a fair manner with the agency we're working for. Now comes the news a couple of weeks ago that Omnicom is now enforcing a sequential liability clause in its contracts with vendors which says that even though our contract is with the agency, if they don't get paid by their clients, we don't get paid. Needless to say this scenario is creating an uproar in the production community. Fortunately, we have organizations such as the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), of which Firstborn is a member, to push back on these unfair edicts. The net effect of the Omnicom mishigoss could be that companies who are producing great work will refuse to work with Omnicom and the slack will be taken up by crappy companies who will sign to anything and as a result, the quality of production will go in the toilet.

The Sales Cycle

The sales cycle can be a long process - over many months in most cases but years in some. About 4 years ago I had a meeting with a large potential direct client in the Atlanta area (who shall remain nameless for the time being). They really liked Firstborn's work but we never hooked up on a project mainly because they were already committed to their agencies of record. Flash forward to a few months ago when their long time traditional agency approached us about co-pitching on a very large assignment for this brand. During one of the very first calls when we were at the agency and had the client on the phone, they were told that Firstborn was in the room and the first question out of the client's mouth was "Is Kevin Arthur there?" This had to be one of the most gratifying moments of my career at Firstborn because right from the start the client was already familiar and comfortable with their agency's digital partner. Wait until they see the out of sight creative work that our team produced! The actual final pitch meeting is going on as I write this but it just goes to show how a sales meeting can finally pay off years down the line. Thankfully they all don't take that long but in this case, I'll take it.

SXSW

I attended the SXSW conference from Sunday through Tuesday. It's always a balancing act to attend as many panels as possible to learn what other people are doing/saying and to network with people that you know or want to know. So between the educational and social elements of such a conference I supposed I focused more on the latter this year. It's my sense that's what most people lean towards although I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who does sales. There were still a bunch of people that I wished I'd met but in the end, I was happy with the new contacts I made as well as catching up with friends I hadn't seen in a while.