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Kimberley Hardcastle-Geddes contributed today's post. She is president of San Diego-based mdg, a marketing agency that currently serves 10 of the Trade Show Executive Gold 100.
Given the pace at which the media landscape continues to evolve, it’s impossible to say (with any degree of certainty) what mdg will look like in five years.
That’s precisely why, when evaluating new candidates for employment, we look less at their current skill set and more at their proven ability to learn new skills. My business partner, Vinnie Polito, and I make it our mission to hire the right people, have in place the right processes, and create the right culture to allow us to adapt to meet the ever-changing demands of the clients we serve.
Most recently, we’ve met these changing demands by enhancing our offerings in specialty areas and hiring more professionals skilled in digital marketing, coding, video production, international marketing, database marketing and public relations. Our clients’ needs in these areas are becoming more significant, yet they don’t have the corresponding internal resources (nor the desire and budgets to develop them internally), which enables us to efficiently and effectively fill gaps. Over the next five years, we’ll continue operating under the same general philosophy, developing new business units that align with evolving demand.
We’ll also stay focused on delivering results. While we believe in the power of a strong brand, we know that our clients hire mdg based on the agency’s proven ability to increase attendance, grow membership, enhance the bottom line or achieve whatever objective happens to be at the forefront of their marketing plans.
mdg has built a reputation over the past 39 years for an ability to effect real change, and will continue reinforcing that reputation over the next five.
Rick Whelan contributed today's post. He is president of Marketing General, a full-service membership marketing agency based in Alexandria, VA.
What will my agency look like five years from now?
We’ll look exactly the same, but different.
I say the same, because the need for great strategy, consulting, creativity, program implementation and back-end results reporting and analysis will be the same; but different because the speed at which all the components will be needed, and the constant evolution of tools, technique and technology, will force us out of our comfort zone. We'll have to test new media and new methods to get ever better, faster results for our clients, all for less cost.
Other changes I think we’ll see are fewer full-time on-site staff, and the increased use of freelance specialists worldwide who are employed for their expertise in a certain areas and for a particular project or program, and then let go until they are needed again. This will maximize my agency’s talent pool, but also allow me the convenience of “just in time” experts to match clients' needs, budgets and expectations.
One thing that will not change is the need for some sort of agency orchestration of all the moving parts of a marketing campaign. If anything, agencies will be more much more consultative in nature and challenged to prove and then reprove their worth to a client over and over.
Finally the biggest change (and one that's been building all along) will be the use of better, bigger and more encompassing data on prospects and customers alike to drive all facets of the marketing spend.
Series continues.
Jean Whiddon contributed today's post. She is president and CEO of Fixation Marketing, a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications company based in Bethesda, MD.
Last week I met with a new primary care doctor. As I approached the desk of the new practice, I noticed a significant display of business cards: on the left, about 10 card holders for the primary care docs; on the right, a smaller cluster for the related specialists. Ah, I thought, one-stop shopping for integrated medical care.
I bring this up because the medical practice somewhat mirrors my vision for the marketing firm of five years from now.
At the center is a core of hands-on creative strategists and designers, able to conceive, write and/or help execute the solid building blocks of an effective multimedia campaign—advertising, direct mail, email, websites, print and digital collateral. They’re agile, experienced and savvy (clients are in a hurry, so they need adept problem solvers).
In our “one stop shop” for strategic campaigns, the extended team includes “specialist partners,” incorporating, but not limited, to a researcher, media planner, SEO/SMM/SEM pro, developer and focus group/meeting facilitator. All these subject matter masters may be independent, but are vetted, curated and managed by Fixation with complete transparency (and with as much direct contact as warranted between client and partner). It’s a model that’s heavy on custom collaboration and light on overhead, because that’s what works best.
What a far different model than the “all in-house” agency I joined nearly 25 years ago, but one driven by client needs and a changing marketplace. And really, it’s been evolving for a long time.
Series continues.
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.
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.
