I’ve  been invited to co-author a book with John Winsor from Crispin, Porter& Bogusky, one of the best ad agencies in the world.  I’m thrilled.  What an opportunity.  I’d like to thank everyone at CP&B  for working with me and say what an honor it is to….

Oh, hi, John.  You’re wha?  Crowd…what? CROWD sourcing it.  

Oh.

Apparently, John Winsor from Crispin, Porter & Bogusky is crowdsourcing the next edition of hisbook Beyond the Brand, which he’s also renamed: Flipped: How Bottom-Up Co-creation is Replacing Top-Down Innovation .  Another bold step from a bold, innovative agency.  

 You can participate too.  

Watching the comments roll in and tracking the evolution is very interesting.   Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

And stay tuned to the Ad Industry Innovators series right here on the Hitch blog,      C, P & G is coming up soon!

All kidding aside, John, it’s still pretty cool.  And we don’t have to tell my Mom what crowdsourcing means do we?

Nitro Group started in 2002, but I first heard about them in 2007 when Founder and CEO, Chris Clarke, spoke to the ARF about The Agency of the Future.  Afterward I was in search of whatever I could learn about this group of marketing innovators and a theme began to emerge for me. 

Although we’ve never stood in the same room together, I like Chris.  His vision for what advertising can (and should) offer its clients is simple, but innovative, although he’s the first to point out that his is a craft long ago perfected by the likes of David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett.  So is Nitro, a throwback or a curve jumping visionary? 

Nitro’s willingness to step outside the communications discipline for solutions is revolutionary.  Giving clients what they want is just good business.

They believe senior people should always have direct contact with clients.  They believe in variable compensation according to results,  a topic that’s been hotly debated lately, and their model appears to be working for a broad range of clients such as Unilever , Kraft, Coca-Cola, Nike , Volvo, American Express, L’Oréal and Diesel.

1.     What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been”?

It feels like a lifetime ago but I built and sold an agency network in the Asia Pacific that was focused on traditional advertising. I was out of the industry for 2 years and I looked back at the industry as an outsider and realized how slowly the industry was changing and adapting to the needs of their clients. When we set up Nitro it was on the basis that we were truly partners with our clients – we offer innovation, communication (being advertising and digital) and branded entertainment. We offer solutions to their business problems rather than just creative communications. Our clients, particularly Mars in the early days, were craving this kind of service and have never looked back.

2.     What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader?

Years ago it was Sun Tzu, The Art of War as I was learning business skills.  Then I ordered a copy of The Alchemist for everyone of my staff because I believe in the power of positive thought.  Now it is Ekart Tolle, The Power of Now. Just a beautiful and powerful book to live one’s life. But to be honest I spend most of my time reading Mr Men and My Little Pony to the kids.

3.     Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why.

One of our offices in Australia came up with a fantastic campaign idea for our client Tourism Queensland. Our client had a very limited media budget and they needed to reach a global audience to attract tourists from all countries to the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. The idea was to promote through cheap classified advertising the Best Job in the World which was the caretaker job on the island. We seeded it through all international media and it got a amazing response because the idea was so powerful. We received global coverage, 34,000 1 minute video applications for the job, over 6,000 news stories and created over US$80Mill in media value for our client. It is these type of ideas that make me most proud when we produce a result like that for our client.
You can check it out at www.islandreefjob.com

4.     We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken.  Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches.  Do you see an alternative to this process?

Yes I can. The traditional pitch process is focused on responding to a communication brief that has already defined the issue and the usually also the media solution. We operate a step before this stage. When talking to new clients we ask them for their biggest business issue, which usually is not a communication issue. We then focus on working collaboratively with them to solve the issue in a week. This is very different to the traditional pitch process.

5.     What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future is built around creating and maintaining interest groups and communities that clients will be able to gain access to. As media continues to fragment, agencies will have to diversify, they will have to be the primarily creative and strategic consultants but also be able to bring expertise in executing in all forums including digital communities.

6.     What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

A true partnership model, not just someone to give them creative solutions to their communication issues. Marketers are faced with so many issues on a daily basis and most of the time they are not communication issues. Applying creative thought and creative processes to business issues opens up a whole new area that will allow the agency to operate as a real partner with marketers.

7.     Who do you admire and why?

Ray Chambers. He was one of the most successful hedge fund owners in the world who one day decided that he and all of his team has prospered beyond anyone could have ever imagined. He switched off the lights in the world’s most successful investment bank and decided to apply his skills to charity. I have had the pleasure on working on creative challenges facing some of his charities including Millennium Promise and Malaria No more.  He is very inspiring.

Phil Johnson made this PDF available from the Mirren New Business Conference.  

I thought it was worth sharing again, so here it is!

http://www.agencypja.com/pja-scorecard-mech.pdf

I first heard about Traction while researching interactive shops in California.  Hearing them recommended by their peers was intriguing but, I became a fan as I dug further into their work, and even more so as more we talked about their agency’s higher purpose.

Traction was recently named the #1 interactive agency in the United States by BtoB Magazine, 2009.  They call themselves a creative agency with a digital core. 

Founded in 2001, Traction is full-service and develops campaigns from strategy through every consumer touch point, but they view everything they do as interactive.  From integrated brand and social experiences to engineering strategically driven user experiences, Traction moves audiences from awareness through conversion.

Their client base is diverse ranging from Apple and Adobe to CamelBak, Virgin Mobile and Walmart.com, just to name a few.

Their twitter stream is always interesting or check out their web at www.tractionco.com or Adam Kleinberg’s blog

1.      What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been”?

I have little aha moments every day. We’re constantly being reflective about our processes and approaches to make them a little bit better.

But, if there was a big aha moment along the way, it was when we started the agency.

My partners and I had worked together at big agencies like DDB and McCann and saw that there was a real mess about how integration worked. One group would do a print ad and then the interactive guys would be told to “make your stuff look like that.” We just thought that was dumb.

When we started Traction, we were integrated from Day One. We have one team working on all our business. We expect people to be able to take a concept from an idea to execution across whatever tactics they imagine.

And you know what?  They can.

2.      What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader?

I read voraciously. I spend a lot of time on the blogs on iMediaConnection.com and blog on that site myself. There are a lot of smart industry people using that as a platform for thought leadership—and a lot to learn.

I’m also a huge fan of Susan Bratton’s Dishymix podcast. And I read my trades every week—AdWeek, Ad Age, BtoB, Creativity, Comm Arts.

My nightstand actually has way too many books on it. Reading Death by Black Hole right now, but have a bunch of business books on deck (Good to Great, Wired to Care: How companies prosper when they create widespread empathy, Grown Up Digital and A Sense of Urgency). I also have Eckhart Tolle’s Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. And Steven King’s Talisman. And Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Really.

3.      Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why.

Because of the ubiquity of technology, consumers can now interact with brands on their own terms. Ideas that provide relevant value to customers and get them to invite brands into their lives are what I consider brilliant marketing.

Zippo’s iPhone app is a great example. Three million downloads. Untold thousands of kids holding up their mobiles at concerts across the globe, promoting a brand because it provides them was a chance to be part of something greater. That’s brilliance.

4.      We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken.  Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches.  Do you see an alternative to this process?

Sure. We have ten active clients right now. I think we only went through a pitch “process” for half of them. I just emailed a potential client a half hour ago to tell them we wouldn’t do spec work.

It really depends what kind of work you want to do. We walked into a capabilities presentation at a major consumer software company a few weeks ago, had a great meeting and got a call from their procurement department in the midst of celebratory margaritas 25 minutes later. 

We ordered another round.

5.      What does the agency of the future look like?

Interactive, obviously.

But more so, I think agencies are going to need to move up the value chain and become true strategic partners for their clients.

If agencies make their money producing banner resizes, pretty soon clients are going to ask, “Why don’t I just hire someone to do that?” On the other end of the spectrum, more and more publishers and providing brands with unique content integration opportunities and doing creative on their own.

What we can offer that is unique and invaluable are the abilities to uncover insights, to translate them into strategically relevant creative expressions of a brand, and to uncover opportunities to get those messages in front of the right audiences at the right time with the right vehicle. That will mean giving up some creative control at times, but it will also mean greater value will be placed on the strategic process and brand innovation that the agency of the future will bring.

6.      What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

There’s a huge focus on ROI today and there’s good reason for that. But the result has been a slew of agencies that focus solely on performance marketing and are unwilling to take a risk. They’re afraid to fail.

Great ideas always feel like risks. They always make you nervous. Because great ideas challenge conventional notions. That’s what makes them great.

What marketers need and are not getting from agencies are efforts that bridge that gap. That offer breakthrough thinking married with best practices and a measured ROI. That’s the value we strive to bring our clients at Traction. I think we do a pretty good job.

7.      Whom do you admire and why?

Is it trite to say Barack Obama? I don’t care. He’s my hero. He’s truly a visionary on so many levels. He dares to inspire us. He thinks and he leads. Total man crush on the prez.

Tomorrow is the first post in my new blog series Ad Industry Innovators.

The idea is borrowed (with permission) from Aaron Strout at Powered and his series called Experts in our Industry.

I’d have coffee with a different agency leader once a week if I could but that’s not practical, so this is the next best thing.

I don’t want to be the smartest one in the room; and if I am, it’s not a room I want to stay in very long!  It’s what I love about helping clients find the best agency for their project.  I stay current on emerging technologies for marketing (as much as anyone can) and get to work with some of the sharpest minds in marketing on the client and agency side.

In the coming weeks I’ll introduce you agency people who are leading the industry in this new era of marketing.  No one knows for sure where we’re headed but they all agree that things are changing, and fast.

I’m honored to kick things off with the folks at Traction in San Francisco, CA.

Next is my buddy Tim Hayden from Game Plan Experience with offices in Austin, TX and New York, NY.

We’ve got Chris Clarke from the global agency, Nitro Group and even some Seattle stand-outs like DNA-Seattle and Boom Boom. 

We go global again with Alain Thys from Futurelab and lots more but I don’t want to give away all the surprises!

So put us in your Google Reader.  Subscribe. Tell your friends.  ”Wake the kids and phone the neighbors.”  It should be fun!