I started chatting with David Deal of Razorfish after reading their brilliant 2009 Digital Outlook Report, which has been quoted many times on this blog.  

To say Razorfish is tops in the agency world is an understatment.  I’ve always been impressed by the powerhouse that they are in the marketplace–the braintrust they bring to the industry.  They’ve helped reshape marketing conversations by leading public, transparent discussions on how digital touches all aspects of the marketing enterprise.  They demonstrate this position every day in their work and on twitter, employee blogs, Slideshare, Vimeo and YouTube–a public sharing of information that inspires everyone to reach higher.

Razorfish has raised the industry standard for what’s acceptable and what digital marketing can and should be.

I think you’ll like David’s point-of-view, and hey, you gotta love a guy who lists Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page among his inspirations.  

David says of Razorfish:

[We use] digital to help companies build their businesses.  Sometimes building a business means repositioning a brand for a new audience, like what we’ve done with Mattel for the Barbie brand and for Intel with its Core i7 microprocessor.  Sometimes building a business means strengthening a brand’s digital presence, as we’ve done through with CNN through the redesign of CNN.com.  Or we might help a company create a digital presence altogether, as we did with Postopia.  Razorfish combines thought leadership and full services globally.”

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

The aha moment for me occurred in 2006, when a Razorfish colleague asked me to help her improve her employee blog.  I realized that Razorfish needed to inject Social Influence Marketing into our marketing and communications outreach.  I also understood that marketing at Razorfish needed to involve the diverse voices of our employees more effectively – including my own. Not long after that experience, I helped create the Razorfish employee blogging program, which was a team effort involving some passionate and dedicated employees like Shiv Singh, Lauren Nguyen, Amy Vickers, and Ray Velez.  I also became a more active participant in the social world by launching my own blog, Superhypeblog.com, among other activities.  We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time.  I like how Razorfish is using Twitter as a means to disseminate thought leadership and to be responsive to the marketplace.  But we have a lot of work to do. 

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

My nightstand includes Endgame, 1945 by David Stafford; The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers; Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller; and a Hardy Boys book that my daughter and I are reading together, The Secret Warning.  (By the way, I think marketers should frequently read books written for children. Seeing the world through the eyes of children is humbling, energizing, and eye opening.)  I regularly follow Razorfish blogs like FEED: The Digital Design Blog, and insights from the industry like Guy Kawasaki’s blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang, and Andrew Frank’s Gartner blog.  I’m also a sucker for Perez Hilton.  Because I blog myself, I look across the blogosphere for diverse ideas, especially content that doesn’t conveniently fit my job description.  I also gain inspiration from music.  To that end, I think the Facebook wall posts by Mikal Gilmore are better than anything I’ve seen in the blogosphere.

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

I think the Barbie 50^th Anniversary celebration is outstanding because Mattel is taking advantage of the interactive and social nature of digital.  Mattel’s business challenge is to reposition the Barbie brand to grown-up women while celebrating Barbie’s 50^th.  Instead of investing into TV, Mattel has created a digital lifestyle for Barbie that taps into our cultural affinity for Barbie and recasts her as a fashion icon.  For instance, a YouTube channel features Barbie’s show from the Mercedes-Benz fashion week, among other content.  Through the YouTube channel, a microsite, Twitter account, popular Facebook page, display advertising, paid search, and a blog written in Barbie’s own voice, Mattel has worked with Razorfish to connect with women across the entire digital world.  I also like this example because it shows how you can embrace Social Influence Marketing in a strategic way – it’s not just about creating a Facebook page but stitching together several touch points in context of a larger digital marketing effort.

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?

The RFP process will always be demanding.  Making a decision to partner with an agency takes careful consideration.  I think the bigger issue is making sure clients and agencies ensure they are the best fit for each other beyond the RFP process.  Agencies should differentiate themselves more clearly, which makes it easier for buyers to choose among alternatives.  Agencies should also talk less about themselves and more about their clients’ business problems.  For their part, potential clients can increase their chances of finding the right agency partner by ensuring that the senior-most decision maker owns and leads the selection process.     

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

The agency of the future is a hybrid consultancy and agency.  The agency of the future should challenge its clients with fresh ideas that improve the client’s business.  The agency of the future should also build experiences, not generate one-way messages.  The agency of the future also helps clients become more responsive to their customers through creative forms of marketing like Social Influence Marketing (or employing social influencers and media to meet one’s marketing and business needs). 

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

Agencies need to do a better job providing their clients fresh insights into consumer behavior.  Focus groups need to give way to ethnographic research combined with measureable web-based analytics.   My Razorfish colleague Andrea Harrison recently introduced Social Influence Research, a new approach in which we study consumer purchasing decisions in context of their social relationships.  We’re all social beings, right?  So we need an approach to understand our clients’ customers in context of their social worlds.  With ideas like Social Influence Research, Razorfish seeks to address marketers’ unmet needs.   

7.   Who do you admire and why?

I admire George Harrison and C.S. Lewis because they expressed their spiritual journeys through their art.  I admire Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page because of their passion for innovation.  Their legacies transcend their guitar playing.  Jimi Hendrix was the movie equivalent of scriptwriter, actor, director, and producer.  He didn’t break rules; he made new ones.  And Jimmy Page figured out how to use the studio to create layers of sound that no one else has touched.  Whenever I’m collaborating with a group to try out new ideas, I draw upon them for inspiration.

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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!

Idris Mootte blogs at Innovation Playground.  I read his blog regularly because of his broad perspective and intelligent view on the world.  Well, that and he puts great pictures in his posts.  And simple minds…well, I forget the saying.

In a post this week called The Rise And Fall And The Coming Transformation Of Madison Avenue. What About The Future Of Advertising? Idris spins a cautionary tale about the current state of the marketing industry and it’s one worth listening to.

We’re in a time that I’ve repeatedly compared to the golden hour in emergency medicine.

Remember the mid 90s in advertising?  As the internet became a relevant marketing channel, clients asked, so what do we do about the web? and a lot of agencies stared at their feet.  They didn’t have a good answer that really served the client—for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that digital media didn’t fit the traditional agency infrastructure.  As a result, marketing became more fragmented.  Nothing truly integrated, although it was widely promised in many a pitch. 

Digital agencies became adept at analytics and tracking ROI where traditional media just didn’t have the same capability for measurement.  Traditional agencies offered up web “solutions” put through their specific filters.  Web shops tried to work out branding in lieu of traditional agencies and the geeks just didn’t deliver.  So the client was left with competing (and contrasting) advisors each vying for their attention (and their wallets); while customers went off into their own corner and started talking about the brand.

To date, no one’s been able to bring these disparate groups back together; and we’re on a collision course that’s going to fundamentally change the way marketing is done. 

Here are some of Idris’ observations:

In just a few years, you can expect the whole advertising industry to be in full crisis mode, driven by continuous innovation.”

Forward-thinking marketers are embracing new models, which are being shaped by digital media.”

Twenty-first century marketing will instead be only about customer engagement and adaptively integrated marketing (not a new word but hardly delivered by agencies).”

Big marketers such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever are expressing frustration with the way ad and marketing firms are structured.”

Many marketers say it is tough getting different agencies to understand the new world order, let alone [work] together.”

Next week there’s a new series on this blog profiling some agencies who’ve heard these warnings and are doing something about it.

I don’t have a name for it yet, but it was borrowed, with permission from Aaron Strout at Powered and his series called Experts in our Industry.  You can check it out at http://blog.stroutmeister.com/ to see what I ripped off.

And thanks, Aaron for your advice and input on kicking this off!

I hope this new series is useful to you as a reader.  I hope it starts a lot of discussions.  I hope you’ll invite your friends, clients and colleagues to subscribe.  And, most of all, I hope it brings a lot of recognition to some pretty smart people who deserve to be emulated.

Razorfish recently published their 2009 Digital Report.  180 pages of forward-looking (and forward-thinking) trends in the digital world.  A few points that stood out:

1.  Emerging technology will not kill advertising but it will change it forever.

2. For a growing number of brands the digital experience is becoming as important as the physical product.”

Then a look at the trades any day of the week and you see their points in action:

Not reading TV Guide:  Mr. Askins said the Air Force will spend at least 85% of its enlistment marketing dollars online, because its target audience of 17- to 27-year-old males is “not reading TV Guide like they used to. They’re living online.” 

Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million to Web From TV:  Decision Driven by Need for More-Efficient Ad Rates.”

In the immortal words of a great philosopher, Forsest Gump  ”That’s all I have to say about that”.