28 February 2007

Conservative Party plans new recruitment drive



This new recruitment mailing is being developed for Central Office - it targets lapsed members and Conservative supporters - with a view of growing its ranks in the run up to the next election.
by David Patrick

23 February 2007

Helping new clients to find us

Defining who is most likely to want to do business with us is one of the hardest challenges we face. OK - we start with geography: who's on our patch?; we look at sectors we have some expertise in; we look at who's moving where and wants to do things differently.

But there's another approach that needs to be cominbed with the sector/geography/'who's moving where' one. That approach is based on profiling the individual you are targeting: what keeps them awake at night, what do they feel will make the most difference to their job; how ambitious are they; how do they buy...

By getting inside their head and understand what makes them tick that's what gives insight into how likely they are to want to work with us.
by David Patrick

21 February 2007

New campaign breaks



This is the first in a series of creative executions for GE in support of the London 2012 Olympics
by David Patrick

19 February 2007

Pitching for business


W&K have this take on pitches:

"The AAR recently published their annual new business league tables for the UK. Martin Jones of the AAR commented that an agency should aim to pitch 10 times a year. An article in Campaign this week follows this up with some more numbers: agencies should expect to convert one in four pitches and an average pitch will cost an agency around £50K in out-of-pocket costs. (i.e. external costs, not in-house costs like people's time).
Given that most pitches these days seem to last four to six months, that would mean that by half the way through the year, an agency should "ideally" be aiming to have four or five live pitches underway simultaneously, have racked up £300K in costs, have expected to win nothing and presumably to have all their staff working nights and weekends in order to make this possible. Ah, the heady thrill of new business!
This all sounds like madness to me. If this is what's seen to be a good way to run a company, then no wonder this business is screwed. Surely it's better to pitch less and convert more often?"


Pitching less often and having the balls to walk away from pitches is what we are trying to do. We need to work with clients to get them to run pitches in a more professional way: clear briefs, regular conversations with the pitching agencies and post-pitch objective feedback.
by David Patrick

16 February 2007

The way ahead for agencies


For quite some time we've been exploring how our remuneration as an agency can be based not on hourly rates but on how we add value to the service clients buy from us.

Ad agency, Anomaly, seems to have found a way. They've abandoned time sheets and charge either a fixed fee plus a share of the incremental revenue they help generate or take an equity stake in their client:

Founder Carl Johnson says "We don't want to own services, but intellectual property. Anomaly is also vehemently opposed to selling time. We charge based on the value of ideas. We have two different price strategies: value pricing for us and for the client, and payment based on results. We're not in the advertising business; we manage consumer brands and some form of content."

With thanks to Fallon for this.
by David Patrick

14 February 2007

Meeting the team from Google



The Google agency support team hosted a breakfast seminar in central London this morning to talk about the help available to agencies and the tools that they provide.

It was certainly a very slick, well organised event with perhaps 30 agencies in attendance. We're taken on a whistle stop tour of AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Earth, Google Maps. What caught my eye was a new programme called JumpStart. Specifically aimed at agencies it gives us access to a team of Google AdWords specialsts who will advise on how best to implement new campaigns based on their campaign goals and level of spend. Effectively it will enable us to become instant experts as we get access to their considerable collective expertise. And it's all for free! (Well, for 30 days anyway).
by David Patrick

Lifting the lid on agency life

by David Patrick

13 February 2007

The challenges facing us over the next decade

Sir Martin Sorrell spoke at the IDM's annual lunch today. He spoke for 50 minutes without notes both on the strategy that WPP has adopted for the next 5 years and the global trends in politics and population growth that will impact on marketing over the next decade.

His key messages were:-

The shift in economic power from West to East
The diminishing supremacy of traditional advertising
Increased focus on direct, accountable marketing
The continued influence of the Web

Two points he focused on were that organic growth is best and on the importance of getting internal communication right. In fact he singled out the latter as his most important challenge. But then I suppose with 97,000 staff across 106 countries and having grown by acquisition rather than organically it must pose an enormous challenge.

It was slightly odd then that he chose to stress the importance of organic growth over acquisition. Organic growth, he said, though slower is easier to manage. Don't just look at acquire but look to take on staff, train them, retain them and grow organically.

At the end of his speech he was presented with an honorary fellowship at the IDM. Well deserved and well overdue.
by David Patrick

9 February 2007

A lunchtime run with a difference..



by David Patrick
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