Operative Blog

Marti Funk (Sportgenic), me, and Steve Patrizi (LinkedIn)

After going attending iMedia in Austin last week and spending lots of time with VPs of Ad Sales & Media Directors, one thing is still clear.  It’s really hard to get in front of an agency to influence an RFP.  It requires effort, research and diligence…and since all those things sound like “work”, too many media sellers take the easy way out; just trying to get on the RFP.  By just trying to get included in the circulation of a document that’s already been co-authored by your competition, you are setting yourself up for certain failure.  Failure may be too strong; you may get a small spend, but most times, you’ll never hear back from them or if you do, you may hear something like, “you weren’t the right fit” or “we went in another direction”…sounds like a interview rejection. 

Now, in defense of media teams everywhere, there are some real obstacles to influencing the agency.  Last Monday morning down in Austin, I attended John Durham’s (Catalyst SF) panel titled, “Trading Places”.  This is where 4 heads of media sales got on stage with 4 heads of media buying to air their issues.  The publishers brought up great points around why its so hard to get in front of and deal with an agency:

1) David Blumenfeld mentioned how “agencies are always looking for that outside the box idea, but make sure it’s inside the spreadsheet.” 

2) My favorite one was the cream cheese incident by Carter Brokaw from Meebo…where you get a meeting with a power person at an agency to join your pitch and the only person there is a junior media buyer asking “where’s the veggie cream cheese?”  They also came to the meeting without a pen or notebook. 

3) And of course, the classic, “We need you guys to really surprise us on this one, get creative and we need a response from you by EOD tomorrow.”

So now what…it’s hard to get a meeting with a decision maker, it’s hard to get the lion share of the budget, it’s hard to influence the RFP and when you do win the biz, it’s hard to keep them coming back.  Here are some thoughts to help you navigate through these erratic waters:

1) Getting a Meeting with a Decision Maker:  people with the “power of the pen” are often getting lots of emails and calls.  Hundreds per day.  Sorting through the clutter is time consuming and usually emails are just skimmed for pockets of interesting ideas.  If you are sending an email or leaving a voice mail, make sure you are giving someone a good reason to call you back.  Find out why their previous campaigns failed, if they post a personal blog and what challenges their clients have had in the past taking products to market. 

That said, you can do all the right things and still not get the meeting, so then what?  Educate your media buyer to sell for you.  I had lunch with Darren Herman from The Media Kitchen yesterday.  “Don’t ignore the media buyer”, he said.  Most of the ideas he takes on are ones that are pitched to him from his media team.  If you don’t think your media buyer can share 3 compelling reasons with their boss on why you should be included, get back in there (and keep it simple, don’t overwhelm them with slideware).

2) Getting ahead of & Influencing the RFP:  I sat in Scot McLernon’s Upstream breakfast last week, also in Austin and this was a big topic.  Lizzie Widhelm, VP of West Coast Sales for Pandora Media sat on the panel and had some interesting ideas.  “Find the opportunities where there are not opportunities already.”  Like, if you wanted to sell to Coke, Pepsi or Gatorade, go to a food an beverage show since that’s where people are trying to figure things out.  “You won’t find many digital media folks there at all.”  Get your idea out early and plant that seed ahead of time at the right levels…by the time an RFP is under way with an Agency, that seed will be planted in cluttered soil and the chances for growth are slim.  

3) Keeping them Coming Back:  Back at an iMedia a couple of years ago, Randy Wooton from Microsoft Advertising Solutions said a “5% increase in customer loyalty can equal a 25-85% increase in overall profit.”  Ad serving language is often times foreign to a sales rep.  Make it easy for your sellers to report back to your client in business friendly terms & have all your data in one place.  This way, when you call on them to become part of the next big idea, you know what happened in the past, where things went wrong and what they could do better.  If you can’t influence the RFP, at least when you get it, having the information at your finger tips around what they paid, if it delivered on time and what you optimized for them during the campaign, can go a long way.

Although some of this may seem like actual “work”, keep in mind pain ripples within AND ouside your organization.   If you are frustrated, chances are, your customer is frustrated too.  Being prepared for meetings and helping to educate them on a consistant basis will often benefit you both.

So how are the explosion of alternate platforms changing the landscape of digital media and what impact is this having on the underlying data? Is there a sea-change going on that is altering the face of online marketing or are platforms evolving independently of each other? These were some of the questions our panel sought to explore in
Advertising Analytics and Contextual Media: Social Media, Mobile, Search, Video Search and HyperTargeting. Couple of people couldn’t make it – we ended up:

• Michael Boland, senior analyst and program director, The Kelsey Group, Moderator
• Paul Edmondson, CEO, YieldBuild
• Dan Halyburton, President, Radio Time
• Dr. A.K. Pradeep, CEO/Founder, NeuroFocus
• Benjamin Reid, VP, Sales Engineering, Operative

We had a number of interesting perspectives from the high tech (NeuroFocus) to traditional media (RadioTime) to networks (YieldBuild) to process and infrastructure (Operative).

And now for something completely different – no fun following Dr. Pradeep. We were treated to a demonstration of the NeuroFocus technology which measures brainwave activity of a test subject viewing advertising. The test person put on a ski hat with 22 electrodes connected to their brain and watched a Mountain Dew commercial. The audience observed in real-time when the user was highly engaged with the creative and when attention fell off. Unclear how this is used in the digital marketing space but certainly an entertaining demonstration.

A lot of conversation revolved around the relatively recent phenomenon of having more data than we collectively know how to manage. This can range from the buy side having multiple exposure, engagement, performance, brand, interaction, conversion, loyalty metrics all captured in a single campaign, to the sell side managing inventory, sales effectiveness, discount management, sell-through, campaign status, discrepancies, page and slot effectiveness, invoicing etc. How do we make sense of it. We all agreed that building better bridges between buyer and seller are important as well as agreeing on shared success metrics. We focused on different routes though – YieldBuild took a network and efficiency-centric view, while RadioTime focused more on organizing an audience to the marketplace. Operative looks at these challenges through the lens of open platforms that foster collaboration and clearly defined processes. We also spent some time on how the offline and online worlds are converging. There are clearly hurdles to be overcome in the internal structure of many org on both buy and sell side but equally important is the fact that the currency and processes each platform employs are dramatically different. As an industry, we will need to either harmonize the metrics and protocols of media sales or build bridges that will span both worlds to facilitate the process for all parties internal and external.

Another great panel I caught was the Advertising Innovation! Broadband, Mobile, In-Video, In-Game, Social Networks, Blogs and Podcasts http://www.digitalhollywood.com/09DHSpring/DH09Sp-Thurs6.html

• Jon Aizen, founder and COO, Dapper
• Matt Britton, founder and CEO, Mr Youth
• Chris Colinsky, Executive Creative Director, WhittmanHart
• Marissa Gluck, founder, Radar Research, Moderator
• John Montgomery, Executive Creative Director, Threshold Interactive
• Pete Vlastelica, founder and CEO, Yardbarker

This was an agency-heavy panel rounded out with some publisher and network representation. The focus was on where and if advertising works in a social network environment. The first consensus is that it’s not about performance, it’s about interaction. This is kind of a new bucket since we’re not really talking about transacting in volume (people are on SN for the connection and tend to stay with the content) or a large branding opportunity. But there are conversations happening between brands and end users. Couple of great takeaways:

Q: Who controls brands? Consumers? Marketers?

A: John Montgomery – Companies create brands. Consumers help SHAPE brands. The process is usually started with some internal ingenuity. Consumers create trends, not brands.

Q – How can publishers position their audiences differently to be part of the conversation?

A: John Montgomery – The better agencies know what’s coming down the pike the better they can plan against it
Matt Britton – more brands are thinking about becoming publishers. No one knows their audience better than publishers. Work with agencies to understand what makes your audience unique

From where I sit, this is just another reason that Ops should be sitting at the table with Sales/Planning and Product on regular basis, helping shape the innovation that can capture new campaigns in a highly competitive marketplace. Ad networks are definitely a key part of the revenue mix but ensuring that your company is driving new ideas that can be executed against flawlessly can make all the difference at the end of the quarter.

Check back to learn more about the Operative-sponsored breakfast at the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, Texas and White Paper on “How to Grow and Protect Revenue”.