marketing

10 Reasons to Hire an Agency: Reason #8

Nader Ashway1 Comment

Reason #8: The agency did great previous work for Client X.

The hiring of agencies based on their historical success with another client goes beyond just the business world.  Indeed, in virtually every facet of modern life, we reward those who have performed well in the past, regardless of the circumstances that may have led to those successes or the outcomes that may have followed.

Professional athletes receive lucrative contracts based on a fairly small sample of exceedingly laudable accomplishments.  Songwriters have their contracts renewed (and often bloated) following the release of a hit.  Same for authors, actors, newscasters, and don’t forget CEOs, CMOs and a gaggle of other C-dash-Os.

And likely, those who have enjoyed success tend to continue to succeed, especially when they’re affirmed – and often funded – by those who are invested in their future output.  So when agency X gets a “hit” with a campaign, it’s likely that the client will quickly sign on for 23 more executions just like it.  It happens every day.

There a number of factors that make this seemingly obvious connection troublesome at best and downright unreliable at worst.  For one, there is often a blurriness of specifics about how or whom or what led to the admirable outcomes.  Very often, success is a collaborative process that requires creativity, compromise and multiple input sources.

For an agency to be successful for a previous client, a whole lot of things had to go remarkably right:  the idea (regardless of who seeded it,) had to be sound, the hypotheses had to be tested (or at least vetted,) the talents and the efforts of a lot of diverse people had to be leveraged, the client had to go along with the concept and then 17 other departments had to get on board with the vision and execute with excellence:  research, media, production, the talent at the recording studio where the radio spots were crafted, and on and on.  Even for smaller or local marketing efforts, this tends to be true, just maybe with less actual people involved.

Let me be clear, it’s never a bad idea to hire an agency because they had success with a previous client.  It’s quite likely they learned a lot in the process, thereby implying they’re more educated than when they started.  They may have won a bunch of awards for the work, implying they’re confident and have been buoyed by their accomplishments.  They may have even written some case studies or a trend paper on the process, indicating that they’ve derived some universal truths or best practices out of the experience.

So hiring an agency for work they’ve done in the past for another client will get you halfway down the road, but it’s not a guarantee of success for you or your brand.  A number of reasons abound for this, but it comes down to this: it starts with you.  You determine what the freedoms or the limitations will be.  You determine how daring you want the campaign to be.  You write the checks.

Beyond you, it’s something bigger, and far more elusive.  The creative process (even if you’re creating a strategy,) is capricious.  It’s improvisational.  It’s collaborative.  It’s subjective to environment and timing and weather and the kind of coffee you’re drinking at the meetings.  It’s a bloody mess, but it’s the only way we get from here to there.

As a creative director, I’ve often been asked to show previous work to prospective clients, so they can gauge my abilities to both create solutions and direct a creative team.  And I hate it.  It’s not that I’m not proud of the work – I often am.  But all this shows is that I had a series of deeply thoughtful and leading conversations with my client, (often a strong voice in the conversation,) and that we went through a series of revisions to get to the final executions.  Joy.

There are directives (check out “Make My Logo Bigger Cream” on YouTube…you’ll scream,) and imperatives and legal requirements and of course the objectives and the budget restrictions and the market limitations and the testing breakouts and a hundred other factors that should indicate that our agency wasn’t allowed to run free through the fields and put a tree here and a waterfall there.  I was a collaborator in a business process, that’s all. And yet, the portfolio or the reel is the only barometer of our future abilities.  Seems odd.

In any collaborative engagement, the final result is only as good as the least willing participant in the process will allow it to be.  In some cases, depending on your business, it’s only as good as the loudest voice in the room.  So if you’re hiring an agency based on work for a previous client, start asking yourself, “am I ready to collaborate to the fullest extent?”  If so, it may very well be the best reason of all.

Tomorrow – Reason #9:  Location

Marketing Egypt – Four Sets of Objectives

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Egypt2.0

The next phase for Egypt will be a telling one.  And if the country and its people are to actually realize movement in a forward direction, now must be the time to set intelligent objectives.  Marketing Egypt will be a tall task, which is why defining clear objectives is so critical at an early stage.

Let’s be clear:  “regime change” is not an objective in and of itself.  It’s certainly a goal, and the sum of hundreds of thousands of protestors, rocks, hand-written signs and a zillion tweets and Facebook posts.  But a suite of objectives could help the process of democratic transformation take shape, and could provide a road map to the next chapter in Egypt’s storied history.

So what kind of goals should Egypt be setting at this point?

Operational Objectives
Obviously, there are innumerable logistical considerations.  Operational objectives must outline what the desired outcomes will be for electoral systems, governmental systems, infrastructure systems, military stability.  Chief among these, of course, are all the financial systems that must be monitored, maintained and scrubbed for security.  These include tax codes, regulatory systems for Egypt’s stock market, the maintenance and sustenance of Egypt’s chief revenue producers:  the Suez, agricultural exports and tourism.  The culmination of these objectives would likely be outlined in an amended Egyptian Republic constitution.

Political Objectives
Of course, political goals are nearly as important as the operational objectives.  Egypt currently maintains a high profile on the world stage, despite its warts.  The next government will have to lay out a specific agenda for its political objectives.  How it will represent itself at the United Nations.  Where it will stand on the myriad issues that face the Middle East.  How it will contribute to global efforts facing the environment.  Where it will draw a line in the Saharan sand on women’s rights.  And a host of others.

Product Objectives
Most marketing objectives I’ve helped formulate usually involve an element of productizing; helping my clients draw fact-based conclusions on what products will drive revenue, or drive new opportunities for engagement.  For Egypt, the product plan will likely involve two phases: expanding its current line, and developing new products the world desires.  Its current line of agrarian exports can be expanded.  Cotton, rice, wheat and others are a very good start.  But there are tens of millions of people who could be gainfully employed building equipment, or refining sugar, or planting new citrus crops near the Nile.  And for that matter, new contributors to GDP are just waiting to emerge:  there are equal numbers of engineers who could help build assembly plants; refineries, distribution centers, healthcare infrastructures and more.  This may be the most exciting of all the objective-setting plans ahead for Egypt.

Brand/Image Objectives
Naturally, any entity that has been the focus of so much media coverage will have to undertake great effort to repair its image.  The brand objectives will first be a combined effort of artfully bragging about the success of the aforementioned objectives coming to fruition: Yay – a new government!  Yay – new GDP sources!  Yay – equal representation under the law!  But beyond that, Egypt will have to go a long way to lull back tourists to its resorts and attractions.  Egypt will have to enact new programs to prove that it’s a safe and friendly place to visit.  That it’s a worthwhile (and legit) country for investment.  That it can stand up again and take the next step in the evolution of a great nation.

On the horizon:  strategies.
The combination and consideration of these objectives will begin to form the vague shape of an Egypt of the future.  But getting there will require sound strategies.  Those in an upcoming post.

Egypt could use some marketing right now.

Nader Ashway4 Comments

flag of Egypt

A dear colleague of mine just rang me up on the phone and said, “I’m interested in your take on Egypt.”  He was asking because I am 100% Egyptian, although born and raised in America.  We spoke for about 30 minutes, and I realized that there are many facets of what’s happening in Egypt that so many Americans (or others in the world) don’t know.

So this will not be an entry about politics, or about history, or about civil disobedience, or a journalistic report about unfolding events.  But it may espouse all of those disciplines and many others, since it will be about the marketing of what I believe is one of the greatest countries and one of the greatest peoples on earth.

What’s happening in Egypt is at once breathtakingly fabulous and terrifyingly tenuous.  A revolt is underfoot, fueled mostly by young citizens demanding change at the highest level – regime change. But what’s not seen is the potentiality of disaster in this, the most populous Middle Eastern country.  While Egypt needs a complete marketing makeover, let’s begin where all good marketing begins – with data.  Here now, a brief SWOT analysis for Egypt.

Strengths
Egypt has amazing strengths and strategic assets, both natural and man-made, including the Suez Canal, a thriving agricultural export, (ever pay a premium for Egyptian cotton?) globally appealing tourism and the mighty Nile, where most of the nearly 80 million residents gravitate to make their homes and their livings.  Perhaps one of the most underestimated and underreported assets of the country is the strength, the resolve and the character of Egyptian people.  A fun-loving, hospitable and intelligent bunch who bring high-level skills (like medicine, engineering, technology and arts,) to the free world.  There are countless other assets that may be less apparent:  Egypt’s contribution to the arts, medicine and mathematics in ancient times.  A stable and thriving population in modern times that has led to the Middle East’s leading free media infrastructure, some of the most advanced communications networks in the region and a growing stock market.

Weaknesses
But there’s an underside, too.  And the country’s weaknesses are evident.  Egypt has grown rapidly, with a disproportionate distribution of wealth concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria.  There is woeful poverty and a quiet but obvious acceptance of class distinctions.  Take the Zabbaleen, a minority people in inner-city Cairo who basically pick up more than ¾ of the garbage in the capital city.  Despite their historical presence (they’ve been living this way since about the 1930’s,) as an urban asset, they have been overlooked in recent years when Mubarak’s administration awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to Italian contractors to pick up Cairo’s trash.  Guess what?  The Zabbaleen are better at it.  They have found ways to recycle and/or repurpose up to 80 percent of Egypt’s waste, when nine figures of government capital investment can only manage about 20-25%.

And what of Mr. Mubarak’s NDP (National Democratic Party?)  How is it that they’ve managed to stay in power for more than 30 years?  Another major weakness in Egypt:  the beloved dance of apathy and system-wide corruption.  Interestingly, Mr. Mubarak’s “term,” which has been won with either unanimous referendums or lame turnout is due up this September.

Opportunities
Egypt is now in a new dance.  A dance with opportunities.  A free media has led to the opening of minds throughout the country, and dissenting voices are (selectively, but mostly) being heard.  The rise of communications allows the flow of ideas and invites interaction through social media. And quietly, throughout all of this, a potential successor.  Mohammed El Baradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for work with the International Atomic Energy Agency, is something of a folk hero.  He has been summarily dismissed (and even harassed, some would say,) by the Egyptian government for openly criticizing the sitting administration.  And today, he is in Tahrir square, squatting with teenagers and propagating a message of possibility and potentiality.  Is El Baradei the answer to Egypt’s problems?  Probably not.  But it sure is nice to entertain the possibilities.  What Egypt really needs is a global intervention.  (Next post, I promise.)

Threats
And there are threats, to be sure.  Apathy is a lame foxhole companion, and with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood lurking and operating underground, it may be easy to quickly and perhaps completely overtake a country which has remained an ally for the West and an example (despite taunts, teases and threats,) to the rest of the Middle East. Don’t forget, this type of subversion was seen recently, when Hezbollah came to a position of near-irrefutable power in Lebanon’s parliament in 2008.  Economic factors also play a crucial role in the threats facing Egypt…those in poverty will do nearly anything to get out…including, in some cases, listening to anyone, or voting for anyone that promises change.  Gulp.

Change?
And for that matter, change itself may be the most threatening factor of all…despite Mr. Mubarak’s inefficiencies as the head of government, he has succeeded – wildly – as a head of state.  He shows up.  He calls back.  He’s on a first name basis with Barack, Nicolas, David and Angela as well as Abdallah, Michel, Momar and Bashar.  He has kept his word and held Egypt’s stance on some of the most important issues facing the world, not the least of which is the 1979 Peace Accord signed at Camp David between Egypt and Israel.  He averts risk.  He stays out of the “he said/he said” arguments that most of the Middle East entertains.  He has enjoyed decades of military and economic aid from the United States.  He has kept a strong and loyal military in top shape.  He has also presided over the longest stretch of peace in Egypt’s modern history.

Next Phase
So where does Egypt go from here?  Where all sound marketing plans go:  setting objectives.  Without goals, without a direction, Egypt will continue to wander aimlessly through the long night of stagnation.  If El Baradei can help set those goals, then perhaps he is a viable alternative.  If he can’t (if I were a betting man, I’d say it’s someone else – a more Obamaian type,) then someone must.  As with any marketing plan, without objectives you can succeed and still go nowhere.  Standing still is no longer a viable strategy. If this recent movement has proven anything, it’s that Egypt must now embrace movement.