To those of you who’ve been participating or just following along as Hitch comes to life, I appreciate your eyeballs and interest and the countless discussions, phone calls, emails & meetings over coffee and beers.

It’s a wonderful experience to involve so many bright minds from the across the country (and literally across the world) in intellectually stimulating and challenging discussions; both philosophical & practical about the nature of marketing.  We’ve shared books, blogs, pdfs, videos, tweets and text messages.

What’s come out of these discussions is a new kind of marketing resource for companies.  Hitch connects you with your marketing dream team:  specialists ranging from brand strategists, ad agencies, experiential marketers, word of mouth firms, branded entertainment, digital conversationalists, app/widget developers and more.  At their core, Hitch and its growing roster of companies share a pioneering spirit and a penchant for calculated risks as well as a commitment to accompany marketers through this evolving media environment. 

A new breed of marketer is evolving from the ashes of traditional models. Together, brand and customer become futurists and innovators who support, encourage, and engage the collaborative discussions and co-creation happening in online communities, coffee shops, dorm rooms and board rooms around the world.

Business relationships are gold so I’ll do my part to keep up the conversations we’ve begun; I ask you to do the same. This dialogue can only benefit all of us and the trade of marketing we all love. 

Thank you for your input and suggestions.  Thanks also for challenging me and cheering me on.  I’m off to SXSW Interactive in a few short weeks and back to put the finishing touches on Hitch.

Stay tuned.

How do you frame your company or help your clients frame theirs?  For example, Xerox doesn’t sell copiers, it sells workplace productivity (thanks Harvard Business blog.)

A smart friend from a killer web company in San Francisco said yesterday:  [sic] in this economy we’re looking with clients at areas where there’s a problem that needs to be fixed.  This is not the frame itself, but the method to get at the frame for the customer.

Which gets to the heart of issue:  frame your company in a way that solves a problem for your customer not your solves your sales quota.

Guy Kawasaki in Reality Check says you either “frame or be framed.”  And isn’t this a position you want to influence for your brand?  If you don’t someone else will.  A proper frame gives, well, a frame around which customers can have conversations about your brand.  Your customers are having these conversations all day every day with or without your input.

Guy goes on to asert the following truths of how to control the frame:

• Be true to yourself:  a frame should represent what you stand for as opposed to what market research might tell you to stand for.   This is just another way of talking about transparency.  Zappos is huge on this.  They put on no airs.  What you see is what you get.  See the interview question: Why is culture so important?
• Avoid the frontal assault:  When framing the competition do it with faint damning praise.  (Not going into tons of detail here, buy the book!)
• Align with core values:  these should be the values of your customer and or generally accepted social mores
• Draw first blood:  better to fire the first shot and force the other party to react to what you’ve done.

Framing your (or your client’s) company is easier said than done.  It asks you to step outside the traditional features, advantages, benefits scenario and take a look at your company in a way that adds to the customer’s dialogue already in progress about your brand.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some carpentry to do.

Great post for any agency worried about low cost hacks.  Somethings juat can’t be improved so read along, share it with your friends.  Is outsourcing to other countries really a threat, hmmm.

Send this to any client who asks you to cut your price.

http://www.160over90.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-50-dollar-logo-experiment/

This article was so spot on, it’s reposted here in its entirety.

A Few Steps to Help Your Challenger Agency Thrive

Think Big, Show Off Your Creatives and Share the Hate

Posted by Milan Martin on 02.18.09 @ 11:10 AM

Milan Martin

I promise I won’t waste anyone’s time talking about how bad the market is. We all know it’s a tough year ahead. The difference is that “tough” in no way must equate to “bad.” Let’s talk about how we as challenger agencies can do more than survive. Let’s talk about how this economic crisis becomes the pivotal opportunity that will enable us to accelerate our growth, to get in front of the clients we want to work with and show a new agency model — a better experience and simply better results. Forget survive. Let’s talk thrive. 

At our agency, there are several principles that we embrace — that every challenger agency should embrace — in order to turn this proverbial lemon in to sweet, sweet lemonade:

1. Be better suited to create big ideas. Many of us are faced regularly with the challenge that some of the larger clients look to the larger agencies because of a perception that to get big ideas you need to go to a big agency. And, hey, the big agencies have done a good job building their own brands in this sense, so kudos to Mr. Burnett, Mr. Ogilvy and Mr. Bernbach. But last I checked the big boys don’t have a monopoly on big ideas (Apple started in a garage in Cupertino, didn’t it?). My opinion is simply that the challenger agency is better suited to create game-changing, business building ideas for our clients and more effectively execute them across the appropriate media. The big boys with 2,000 people in the New York office find it very difficult to focus on a client’s core problem, solve it and execute across traditional, direct and interactive media (probably because the digital guys are in a different building and have a separate P&L). I know, I’ve been there; I spent the first 12 years of my career working for them. In our agency, the term “integrated” actually means that we surround the client’s objective with smart people from each discipline. I’m sure you do the same. After all, it’s your size that enables this approach and that it is very much aimed at gaining a better result for your client. 

   And don’t be afraid to let prospects know this when you’re up-against the big boys; throw a few grenades in your pitch (in your most charming way). Clients need to know that the old “nobody ever got fired for hiring (insert big agency name here)” just doesn’t apply anymore. In fact, if you look at the average CMO tenure these days, I’d argue that some have been! 

2. Don’t hide your creative people. Again, the big boys like to send suits to take the brief and keep the creative teams locked up at the agency. It’s simply an antiquated approach. If you’re anything like Gyro, you hire creatives that are as strategically savvy and presentable as any account person. So here’s the plain truth (coming from an account guy at heart): Clients love working directly with good creative people! Our approach is that client engagements are lead by a joint team of a senior account person and a creative director. Clients love it. It’s a much more collaborative relationship when the agency team walks in the door and can start to riff ideas with the client on the spot. This is the kind of nimble approach clients these days are craving. 
3. Offer skin in the game. I’m sorry to say but when your client is bleeding red and you walk in with Forrester reports and case studies as to why they should not reduce spending, they’re thinking about kicking you somewhere sensitive. It’s actually a bit rude on our part. That said, if we can sit there eye to eye with our clients, understand the stress and risk they’re personally facing, and counsel them to take a risk by spending on an initiative that may otherwise have been cut by sharing some of that risk? Now that’s something different. Propose a break-even cost for you with bonus for success. Work with your media partners and suppliers to do the same. This, my friends, will increase the chances of them saying yes and will form relationships with long-lasting strength. 
4. Share the hatred. If your clients are invested in their brand, they have an arch enemy — a nemesis maybe — that is the focus of their toil. Every brand has one: Microsoft has Apple; American Express has Visa; The Eagles have the Giants (I’m a Philly boy at heart!). If we can show them sincerely that we want nothing else but to help them kick their competitor while he’s down, a bond will form. More importantly, show that you have the process and the tools to help identify weaknesses in their competitor’s defenses and put together aggressive programs that enable your clients to prosper from them. Relevant consumer insights are as important as ever but ensuring that you help your client “know thine enemy” takes the top spot in this market. Set a common goal. Helping them steal even the smallest share percentage will not only bring confidence to spend more but will weave you into the fabric and the heart of that client. This has been a huge element behind our growth here at Gyro.

All in all, it’s business as usual for us challenger agencies. These are the things we do in good times, as well as bad, to show our clients that there is a better way. As we would tell our clients, from crisis comes innovation and change. Let’s give them a taste of our sweet, refreshing lemonade. 

~ ~ ~
Milan Martin, exec VP-general manager, Gyro International, New York.

6 years ago Cleve Langton* recapped the first AAAA New Business summit.  450 senior level people ranging from advertising executives, search consultants and marketing clients weighed in.  Their findings bear repeating.     

Notice bullet point #1 and the reference to the tight economy.

“Ok-so what are the “pitch killers?” Here’s the consensus:

• “Pitch everything that walks.”—It might seem counter-intuitive but in a tight economy, prospect selectivity is more critical than ever. Pitch to win rather than pitch to pitch.
• “Too much about us (the ad agency).”—not enough about them (the client).”—Kill the credentials because they kill the pitch.
• Not doing enough homework. The client expects you to know and understand their key business issues, even in the first meeting.
• “Knowing too much, too soon.”—Failure to listen to—and absorb—the client’s issues and problems before offering solutions.
• Failure to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Think of the pitched as a play—the more you rehearse, the better the production—the more spontaneous you appear.
• Going overtime in the pitch..”—Perception is that if the ad agency can’t manage its time in the pitch, they won’t be able to manage the account.
• Strategic/creative “disconnects”. — Failure to establish the clear linkage between the strategic solution and the creative execution is a “tragic flaw” which knocks advertising agencies out of a pitch.
• Overemphasis on “Unique”, “proprietary” agency tools and systems. They are generally not “unique” and most bore the hell out of prospects.
• Failure to build “chemistry”. Prospects hire advertising agencies and people they respect—but first they want people they enjoy working with.
• High tech vs. “high touch”..”—Death by PowerPoint!

Not surprisingly, the “pitch winners” are the flip side of the killers listed above.

Overall, the biggest complaint prospects have about most ad agency presentations is that we don’t take the time to learn.”—and understand.”—their business. They also say that we bore them with our credentials, we bore and confuse them with “agency speak” (use jargon) and we over-promise the value of our “unique”, “proprietary” agency tools and systems.

The sooner we, as an industry, learn that “it’s about them, not us”, the sooner we will raise industry standards and, thereby, prospective client respect.”

*Cleve Langton has forgotten more about the ad biz and advertising new business pitches than most of us will ever know.  He’s the former Director of DDB’s Worldwide Business Development and was responsible for directing DDB’s U.S. multi-office pursuits and multi-regional pitches worldwide.  Cleve is also the founding Chairman of the AAAA New Business Committee.

And he’s got a new book out called New Business Lessons from Madison Avenue .