Do Marketers And Their Agencies Bore Too Easily?

Earlier this week I read this article on how social media is disrupting the well-established framework of Paid, Owned and Earned Media. Reading it I found myself agreeing a lot with the author. Hell, I even tweeted a link to the article. But somewhere along my reading, I came across this quote from a VP of planning from Razorfish, saying that he ”often finds himself “frustrated by the rigidity of the buckets”. Really? Maybe Razorfish and their clients are all cutting-edge marketers who have adopted the framework in all they do from budgetting through organisational design. So now, it’s no more web team, CRM guys or acquisition budget? I seriously doubt it. It’s certainly not the case in the companies or agencies that I’ve worked with. But the thought leader from Razorfish is clearly fed up with the constraints of this ’old and tried’ framework. I wonder if his clients are feeling the same way?

This made me think about a conversation I had a couple of months ago. It revolved aorund how small-to-medium-sized webshops are missing out on a lot of marketing best practises because they lack the resources and don’t have the option of hiring expensive agencies. Also, the business model of the agencies seem to discourage most business owners, which was also the fundamental claim in my blogpost Broken Agencies. Anyway, that’s not the topic of my ranting this time. What is however, is the fact that the person I had the conversation with disagreed strongly with me. He is an brilliantly smart guy and a pioneer in digital marketing and technology. He was o none of the first Google task forces on web analytics – you know the guys that were flown around the world to do projects on web analytics and search engine marketing before anyone had dubbed it SEM. That was back in the early 2000’s. He didn’t believe that the majority of people having a business online are not savvy digital marketers. But most of all – and this is my claim – he had just talked and worked with the concept for so long that in his mind it must had turned mainstream by now. He didn’t realise that he (and I) live in a bubble where we only speak to people that almost do the same things as we do, read the same blogs and industry newssites as we do and talk about the same things that we do. That doesn’t mean that everyone else does.

Maybe the CMOs of Razorfish’s clients read about Paid, Owned and Earned media two years ago like the rest of the digital marketing industry. We were excited and talked about what it could mean if it became the standard by which we started working – and that was it. We talked. I doubt that the CIO/CTO, the CFO or the CEO of Razorfish’s clients read or talked about it. And I doubt that a lot of their clients reorganised their teams or their budgets. So I think it ended up sort of a ”flavor of the month”. Some persistent people still talk and write about it consistently. One of my favourites is Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research (link)

To me it seems that almost everyone in digital marketing – whether it’s the techies or the marketers – are way too busy chasing the next big thing rather than making interesting concepts sustainable.

What Are We Missing Out On?

To begin with, our clients run the risk of missing out in a big way. If we spend our time and energy getting them excited about something – like the Paid, Owned and Earned Media framework – but abandon it before it actually reaches a certain level of adoption, it never gets implemented. And few or no companies reap the benefits of what could potentially be exceptionally valuable. That’s not the role you’ll want as an advisor. You end up a court jester rather than driver of business value. There’s a good reason why that’s a very sustainable debate about marketing’s role in the organisation – if we hype something for 3-6 months only to abandon it once something new and novel comes along, we’re going to remain the joke that marketing still is in many organisations.

And what about the times when a concept actually cathes on and goes mainstream. Then there’s a sub-industry being built around it. And wouldn’t it be a shame to be the ones putting resources into getting the party going only to leave it once the guests are starting to have a good time? Trust me – just because it’s getting a bit old to you, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t serious money to be made there. On the contrary, it’s when something reaches wide adoption that big money starts flowing. Both when it comes to technology and agency advise.

Why Does It Happen?

The macro-explanation has to do with a culture that incentiveses and urges shorter attention spans in general. Everything from 140 characters on Twitter through multiple devices being used simultaneously (working on a computer while listening to music while tweeting on a mobile while…). We get trained to not pay too much attention to anything and to abandon it if there not constant and instant gratification in it.

Of course that’s a very high-level explanation that hints to the underlying reasons but doesn’t really explain anything specifically.

A more digital marketing industry specific explanation is that the industry has a tendency to build certain individuals up to be considered thought leaders on a given subject. In an age of a social media culture there is both emotional and personal reward in achieving a ’guru’ label as well as money to be made giving keynote speaches and hosting workshops on a given topic. And because that individual is supposed to be ’visionary’ and a ’guru’, it’s almost a prerequisite that whatever is said should lack substanse.

I think that the underlying assumption that drives this behavior is complete bollocks. The assumption is that senior agency staff have an obligation to always be bleeding-edge innovative. To always know about the early-curve developments. Unfortunately they translate that into not really doing anything very well or sticking with anything for very long. The reason why it’s wrong is because clients (or anyone under pressure to deliver real business performance) aren’t looking for ’new and novel’, they’re looking for ’solid and with impact’.

The cutting-edge people are so tired of talking about social media campaigns. Now it’s all about Gamification. But the truth is that less than one in ten companies have done anything in social media beyond a few Facebook ads. And of those ten percent that have, less than one in ten have been successful. So acting like kids that are bored with their toys doesn’t do anyone any good.

What Do We Do About It?

The short answer: stop acting like spoilt kids. Tough it out until you know what you’re doing, not only until you kind of know what you’re talking about.

When you know enough about a subject to really understand, you’re probably ready to preach, educatte and inspire your clients. When you’re nearly fed up with the subject, you’re probably ready to start spending your clients’ money on it. When it getting awfully trivial, when you’ve made a success or three and when it seems that everyone else is doing it too, your probably ready to deliver actual value to your clients.

It might not be what earns you a Gold Lion in Cannes, but it sure is what earns your clients a retur non their investment.

Coffee

In my last post, I wrote about some of the thoughts and worries stemming from all of the sudden getting up in the morning not having a well-defined mountain to climb. I've always worked pretty hard and focused on achieving something. Now there is the freedom associated with having a blank canvas but also the pressure of having to now invent everything myself. And perhaps most importantly, the very real fear of not being able to support myself and my familiy in a not so distant future.

Since my last post – and that’s roughly two weeks – I’ve tried to remove some of the immediate barriers that were perhaps getting in the way of thinking about things in the right way and in the end making good decisions. The big one was of course, if I screw around for a while sorting out what I want to do, will I run out of money, build an enormous debt and never be able to pay the rent and put food on the table again?

Some might say that ”of course you can always get a job”. But I have to say that the psychology in all of this is surprising. Rationally, I know that there are things that I’m more than half-decent at. But that’s not the same as knowing – not thinking or hoping but knowing – that you have options.

So – I decided that getting a realistic overview of my options was required to allow myself to focus on what I really want to do. I couldn’t really commit to exploring my various ideas if I was spending half my time thinking about how my decisions would drive me into personal bankrupcy.

Thus, I did what the title of the post suggests. I had some coffee. I called people in my network, professional as well as personal, and asked them to give me perspective input on my situation. It was genuinly a heart-warming surprise to learn the extend to which people were willing to take time out of their schedules to see me and how they were all committed to providing honest advise and help. The purpose of my writing this is most definitely not to paint a picture of everyone jumping through hoops to do me favors. But I believe that the level of flexibility and creativity from myself and some of the people in those conversations revealed some ways of achieving part of the economic certainty that I think I needed while keeping time free to explore the option of launching my own business.

Ideas – maybe not so creative or innovative in hindsight – ranged from getting a desk in an office with smart people to talk to and bounce ideas off of as opposed to sitting at home staring at the wall, over reasonable and constructive ways to cut costs in our private life, through to offers to do various sorts of freelance work to boost my finances and thereby providing a longer timeframe to get my own thing off the ground.

Right now, it feels as if it did the trick. I got the peace of mind that I was looking for. And I got some interesting follow-up conversations to perhaps execute on some of the ideas conceived during the talks.

More importantly I had some really long talks with my wife. About what we want to do as individuals and as a family. What we’re willing to sacrifice in the short term in order to achieve what we want in the long term. About the sacrifices that one person makes in order to allow the other to feel comfortable. About the pressure I’m putting her under by not providing an income right now. About what entrepreneurship means, not only to the entrepreneur but to those around him. This is without a doubt the most important aspect of removing uncertainties and doubt in my mind: to be able to talk to her and genuinly agree on what WE want to do.

What’s the lesson to learn from this story? Not sure if there is a generic one, but for me it is very much about being honest with myself about what keeping me from doing what I should be doing and then removing those barriers. At a later stage, it’s probably something entirely different (and harder to do) but for now, asking people who know me for help and advise provided just the peace of mind that I needed to keep moving forward instead of feeling forced to play safe only to regret it in two months. Having honest and difficult conversations with my wife helped realise that we are both willing to sacrifise a whole lot economically speaking for me to pursue entrepreneurship. Sure, I’d be doing that also to make money, but statistically I’m not very likely to. So the process of trying is what must drive it, not just the dream of the gold at the end of the rainbow. Arriving at that conclusion together I think will prove essential later on when things get tough.

And by the way, it feels as if one of these previously mentioned ideas is taking shape, so I might be writing about that sometime soon.

Now What?

Just over three years. That was what it amounted to for me at Agillic. Now I’m ”taking time off” to use an already tired cliché. My time with Agillic has been pretty eventful: I was hired to facilitate fairly significant change following a few years of not hitting targets. As anyone who has ever been involved at management level in a VC-backed company will know, those kinds of owners are pretty tough on failure, so I was part of a new management team consisting of the technical founder serving as CEO, a new CFO and myself serving an oddly undefined role spanning strategy, business development, operations and running the commercial organisation. In essence anything that wasn’t directly related to product development was under my wings. It’s been a huge challenge and a lot of fun. I’ve been responsible for developing a new corporate strategy, a new go-to-market model, and a new customer support model.  I’ve shut down sections of the company that didn’t make sense in the context of the new strategy – in essence having to let people go or re-assigning them to new roles. Some of them very talented people that just didn’t fit into the new model but who have gone on to deliver lots of value in new positions. And I’ve had the fun of also building the new teams to execute that new strategy. I’ve made hopeless mistakes of hiring wrong people because of time-pressure, inexperience and other factors that – at the end of the day – aren’t really excuses at all. And of course have had to fire those that fell victims of my recruitment inabilities. But I like to think that I’ve learned from those mistakes. I’ve also hired exceptional people, who have helped transform the operation and put the company on it’s current positive trajectory with two (soon to be three) years of +100% year-on-year revenue growth and a positive bottomline.

So – why did I leave if it was all so great? Well, the big change had been made. We had developed a new sales channels with digital and direct agencies that’s working (over coffee last week, the Danish CEO of a large network agency let slip that Agillic had definitely changed the way that the Scandinavian market does CRMin the digital age – I’ll take the liberty of calling that a big acknowledgement of our achievements). Our UK managing director, Turlough Martin, and his team are - after a start that was a lot tougher than it looked in my powerpoint presentation to the board before launching – doing great and are adding new clients to the list every month. Our Partner Support team is well-established and are delivering outstanding customer satisfaction ratings. The business is fundamentally working. So after long discussions with the CEO and founder, Carsten Hyldahl, is was becoming evident that the time to move on was now. Genuinly after mutual understanding. Really.

Back to the opening question: Now What?

In short, I feel like the time has come to try being the boss. At Agillic I was running the shop with Carsten in what was always a very very close partnership between two people who spent many hours a week debating and arguing about the direction and decisions. But at the end of the day there’s only one person making the final decision. In Agillic’s case it was Carsten. And now I want that to be me. Obviously, there are many ways of getting to be in charge. There seems to be broad agreement among the carreer advisors that I have spoken to that I’m not yet in a position to fill a CEO role with a large global company – bit of a blow to my success-inflated ego. The short route is to start your own thing. So I’m giving that some pretty serious thought.

When you spend a few years in the technology space you get exposed to so many people and ideas that you eventually tend to get a few of your own. I’m no exception. So far those ideas have been sitting in a drawer at home, but I’ve spent the last few days going through them and speaking to a few select individuals about some of them. It feels exciting, even exhilarating. I think that one or two of them might have legs if further developed and enhanced. Are they mind-blowing technical innovations? No. Are they pragmatic ideas for solving big needs in the market in a new and novel way? I think so. And that’s what feels so damn exciting. But is also feels like jumping off a huge cliff. So the rational part of me is trying to be as cynical and analytical about my own ideas as I’ve been about clients’ or colleagues’ ideas in the past, trying to figure out if one of my ideas have the potential to become a business. The emotional part of me is screaming that it’s the certain route to endless debt, sleepless nights, a divorce and all other things awful and terrifying.

Weighing the comfort and security of a monthly paycheck against the almost uncontrollable urge to give myself the challenge of putting my self-perceived greatness to the test. It’s scary stuff.

As I’m sure it’s fairly evident I’m undecided. But writing a few words about that uncertainty is supposedly therapeutic and in this social media age any idiot with a blog is a writer, so here it is. Maybe some of you have been going through the same thing and find a bit of comfort that you’re not alone. If that’s the case, please share your thoughts.

Either way, I hope to keep posting as my thinking matures. In the meantime, feel free to reach out if you have thoughts, ideas or questions that you want to share.