Personalization and Flexibility Will Define Agencies in the Future

Kevin Miller provided today's post. He is president and chief strategist of Frost Miller, a Bethesda, MD-based integrated marketing firm that provides a complete range of marcom services.

Five years from now our agency will pretty much look the same as today—smart folks sitting around eating donuts and creating results-driven marketing campaigns.

Broadly speaking, there are three overarching trends that will help shape how our agency works:

1. Strategy, planning and execution are becoming intertwined

2. Digital marketing is getting more personal

3. The more things change, the more they stay the same

It used to be that the only way to achieve a client’s marketing goals was to develop a strategy, put a plan together, and then execute that plan. That’s all changing. 

With real-time measurement of digital campaigns, tactics—and even strategies—can be changed immediately. Underperforming campaigns get replaced with ones that generate better results. But in order to improve performance, the people producing these campaigns will have to be strategic thinkers who can make changes on the fly.

An unfathomable amount of personal data about customers is allowing marketers to target very specific audiences. Targeting once achievable only through direct mail lists or Nielsen ratings—which only tracked the broadest audience characteristics—is now done through technologies that allow you to know exactly who, and where, your prospects are. Mobile, Facebook and Google lead the way, but this trend will reshape how we market in years ahead.

Telecommuting, virtual workspaces, and other trends that affect most types of businesses won’t have such a big impact on agencies. That’s because what makes a good agency great is collaboration—especially in an integrated marketing agency like ours. Sharing ideas among people with diverse individual skills leads to the development of fully integrated, and more successful, campaigns.

Series continues.

What Will Our Agency Look Like Five Years from Now?

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

What will we look like in five years?

We're going to be much more diverse.

Mirroring clients, more people with engineering, science and software backgrounds. A data scientist or two and even people with nutrition, life sciences and other technical training. 

Practically everyone will be coders. “Growth hacker,” a term emerging from Silicon Valley, will describe more of us.

More people who see themselves as marketing technologists.

More experiential specialists, as events, private and public, are only going to grow.

More B2B e-commerce experts (although we already have four), as this area will boom and bloom big time.

More B2B sales and marketing strategy experts. We’ve already taken some of this kind of work from McKinsey.

Probably a professional comedian or two to create “edutainment” to capture more attention and interest. Look at what Tim Washer has done for Cisco. Hiring journalists for content will be old hat.

More history majors. They just “get” the outside world better.

More senior women, although we’re not doing badly.

More African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Indians and Muslims. All to better mirror B2B buyers and clients.

Not just homegrown diversity. More people coming our way from exchange programs with the 30 members of WorldwideB2BPartners, our global B2B agency network.

For sure, no prima donnas, jerks or worse. Actually, we're already pretty good here by hiring team players and asking every new employee to read Choosing Civility.

As many dreamers and woolgatherers as we can find.

And, finally, a bunch more slackers. We just can’t get enough of ‘em!

Series continues.

B2B Agencies Lean into the Future

After buying The Washington Post in 2013, Jeff Bezos was asked whether he knew what trouble the company faced.

He said he was buying the publisher's people, who weren't to blame for the collapse of the newspaper industry.

"What we need to do is always lean into the future. When the world changes around you and when it changes against you—what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind—you have to lean into that and figure out what to do, because complaining isn't a strategy," Bezos said.

Like newspapers, B2B agencies face strong head winds.

Clients are better equipped than ever. They have DYI tools once found only within agencies.

And they're more self-assured. Confident the can come up with big ideas, they're quick to shoehorn agencies into tactical roles.

But smart B2B agency execs are leaning into the future.

Tomorrow begins a five-part series that shows how. Five B2B agency execs will answer the question, What will your agency look like five years from now?

The Wanderess

Without knowing why or how, I found myself in love with this strange Wanderess. Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me: a life of destiny and fate; as my own life up until we met had been so void of enchantment.

—Roman Payne, The Wanderess

My first crush was my second grade art teacher.

Her name is forgotten to me.

She dressed in black and wore berets.

She told us she commuted on Fridays to my elementary school by subway from Greenwich Village, where she lived. I knew artists and Beatniks harbored there, enjoying vastly Bohemian lives.

Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me, as my own seven-year life until we met had been so void of enchantment.

Remember your crush this Valentine's Day weekend.

Buying Brazil

An old joke goes, "The CEO asked for coffee. The company bought Brazil."

In middle managers' eyes, decisions by CEOs—even bad ones—are unassailable.

That might-makes-right is why your B2B messaging should mirror CEOs' aspirations.

Even when wrong-headed, those aspirations matter—more than anything.

When J. Bruce Ismay decided to cut the number of lifeboats on Titanic by 66% to fit more luxury cafés, White Star Line "bought Brazil." Why? Ismay aspired to attract super-wealthy customers.

When Gregg Steinhafel decided to fast-track the opening of 124 stores in Canada, Target "bought Brazil." Why? Steinhafel aspired to outgrow Walmart.

No, you don't want to abet disasters (you'll never get testimonials). But you do want to abet CEOs' aspirations—because they're what matter to buyers.

Buyers don’t want to save money. They don't want free trials. They don't want comprehensive solutions.

Buyers want to fulfill the CEO's vision.

They want to buy Brazil.