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Agencies

The lure of new business

I should have known better. Much earlier this year I committed the agency to a pitch. In a sector in which we have a lot of experience and no client conflict. A statutory pitch, you understand. We started with an RFI process. We flew through that. Four agencies pitching, including the incumbent. We’ll play those odds. The brief

Integration disintegration

Taking an integrated approach to relationship marketing is now de rigueur across the industry. However, while many organisations claim to deliver fully integrated campaigns, in reality they are no more integrated than they were 30 years ago.  They simply exploit more channels than had previously existed. The battle over what should

Topshop demand nothing less than measurable social media

‘Shoot the Show’ is a fantastic example of the next stage of social integration within a business. With this, Topshop moved beyond blogging, tweeting and liking. They understand that their audience, their customers, the fashion industry and the media are intrinsically linked in a symbiotic relationship of entertainment, opinion,

Marketers: Do you know what interests people?

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad.” Howard Gossage. I’ve used this quote from ‘The Socrates of San Francisco’ as a bit of a touchstone in recent years. At face value, it’s a call to creatives to develop ideas that meet a human need or spark

Creative agencies addressing product first when answering clients briefs

Having looked in awe at some campaigns that have been showcased so far at the key awards in 2012 (D&AD, Cannes and so on), one theme jumped out at me in particular. A number of winning agencies focus primarily on improving/evolving/altering their client’s product first when answering their respective briefs - while treating

Evolve or perish – the Darwinian theory of agencies

In the 10 years that I've been running my agency, one thing that has been truly constant is the pace of change. We have seen the rise of web 2.0, eCommerce, eCRM, the birth of social media and its rapid rise to mainstream media status, the growth of user-generated content and now it's all about mobile, the semantic web and big

How do we overcome the recruitment crisis in marketing?

One could be forgiven for thinking that, at times, we live in a parallel universe to that of the media. While we hear tales of doom, downgrade and disaster via the BBC, internet and the bloke in the pub, many of us are rushed off our feet, have had our best years yet and are wondering how we can find the talent we need to handle the