mUmBRELLA: Everything under Australia’s media and marketing umbrella

mUmBRELLA has been operating since the start of 2009 and is ostensibly a place to pass commentry about Australian new media and traditional media. Recently Simon van Wyk of HotHouse passed comment about the state of play of the interactive industry in Australia.  In his own words, it was a rant, but if had removed the odd expletive and lightened up on the caning of AdLand, it would have become a whitepaper. The facts that remain are that his viewpoint and observations whilst requiring the odd appraisal and scan with the Politically Correct meter here or there are so close to the mark, it’s not worth worrying about. The guts of it is that he has proposed an Industry code of practice for us boffins who profess to be a part of interactive. Brave moves, one which you must and are obliged to tip your hat in respect too and more importantly, we should follow, because they make good old fashioned common sense.

This caused a stir within the Areeba offices, as there are many experienced and veteran practitioners of the art who I rub shoulders with. The one which Simon & I had revisions on was point 8 – we think it should be reworked to be: “Our job is be enablers.  Our job is to enable our clients to better sell product to their customers”. Splitting hairs really, but none of us wanted to be caught on a Saturday selling product down at the local at the front line. I’ve been there before and it ain’t pretty. We’d prefer to be (pick one): 1/ out on our bikes 2/ playing the PS3 3/ down at the pub 4/ with the family. Or in my case, all of the previous. At once.

Guest post: Interactive agencies need to stop being advertising agencies
Simon van Wyk, MD of HotHouse, is over advertising agencies

Industry Code of Practice:

1. I will always propose the least expensive, simplest solution to any problem.
2. I understand Google is the homepage and I will ensure everything I do is sensitive to this fact.
3. My job is to facilitate business. When I start talking brand dialogue it’s only because I can’t find a way to really add value.
4. My job is to help you with the interface between your company and the customer on the web. They are using the web for utility; my job is to find that utility wherever it may exist.
5. We’ll be clear about the returns.
6. We have a chance to do things better to improve from our learnings.
7. The Internet has changed the world; let’s make sure we treat it with the respect it deserves.  It took us many years of TV to develop the technology to skip ads.  Let’s not clutter our communities and forums with useless messages that add no value. Consumers want to hear from companies who are relevant to their circumstance; let’s work with that.
8. Our job is not to sell our ideas to the client.  Our job is to sell the clients product to their customers.

Digital Agency Structure

I was watching the Gruen Transfer on ABC tonight and as usual, was suitably impressed, entertained and intellectually stimulated all at once. It is a great show. In saying that, I thought I would have a look at the website itself and was drawn to their section titled Adworkers. It lists out the different roles within your typical ad agency -

Ad Agency

• Production Manager, Flash Developer, Copy Writer, Art Director, Creative Director, Strategic Planner, Account Executive, Account Director, Personal Assistant, Managing Director, Finance Director & The Founder.

More pertinent are the summaries attached to each – succinct, accurate and precise. Working within a digital services agency as I do at Areeba, it has become more apparent that digital as a career is so young and immature relative to the more traditional realms of sales, operations, accounting, law, medicine, engineering and the arts that we have a bit of a task in explaining ourselves to a client about how we work and why. Ad agencies have been around since the 1850′s and if you tell someone off the street that you work for one, most people have a reasonable idea of the field of endeavour. They might not understand exactly what you do, but they get the context.

Digital is different. There are dozens of niche areas of endeavour, expertise and excellence in this burgeoning realm. To name a few: ad serving, portal management (think working for Yahoo!, Google, Ebay, Amazon, Sensis, Bigpond), social networks, data mining, data planning, customer relationship management (CRM), media buying, analytics, search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) strategy, design, development, campaigns, brand relaunch & alignment, stakeholder engagement… The list goes on.

From a digital agency perspective, structurally, there are similarities, but due to intent, there are differences to your classical ad agency. Web sites by their very nature, are a technical discipline, because if you build a website, it’s not just the visual that gets taken into consideration from a brand perspective, it goes deeper into the usabilty and the enticements that keep people engaged with your site that start to play a part. Websites are a derivation of software development, which has to take into account human interface aspects like usability, accessibility, ease of understanding, communications and audience assessment. Kick in there technical considerations. Think on this as one: Internet Explorer 8 was released last week. But consider that there are still 25%+ using IE 7 and 17%+ using IE6 (as at 26th March 2009). Then take into consideration this: if a website works on IE6, then it’s highly unlikely it will work properly on IE8. Introduce Safari on Mac. Firefox. Chrome. Opera….. That is ONE technical consideration. Next: Flash. Version 8, 9 or 10? Next: Javascript. Next: Form’s validation. Next: Data interoperability between website capture database and legacy environment like SAP, Oracle or Siebel. Each of these systems cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to deploy.  So back to the digital agency structure.

Many liken web studios to a software development house.

Yes & No.

• Yes: technical rigour, testing, rollbacks, disaster recovery, code standards, compliance and then the digital hallmarks of usability, accessibility and legibility, which had their underlying foundations in software development.
• No: Brand preservation. Brand extension. Brand enhancement. Brand iconisation. Campaigns. Engagement. Loyalty. Retention.

Software dev houses don’t give a toss (generally) about brand – a logo in the top left corner will suffice. People in Marketing, Corporate Comms, Public Relations and Sales WINCE at this approach because it detracts from the overall cohesive message of a unified, cohesive and consistant company.

So. To the digital agency structure. In my experience, they are structured, one of two ways, depending on the skew of their origins – technical or creative:

Software Development Agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Director, Operations Director, General Manager, Commercial Director; Alternatively CEO, COO, CTO/CIO, CFO, CSO
• Production Technical – Solution Architect, Senior Developer, Developer, Analyst Programmer, Programmer, Delivery/Release Manager
• Production Creative – Design Manager, Senior Designer, Mid Weight Designer, Designer, Junior Designer
• Production Compliance – Strategy Manager, Project Manager,  Senior Business Analyst, Usability Engineer
• Sales/Account Management – Business Development Manager, Inside Sales, Pre-Sales, Account Manager, Account Executive

Creative Services agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Partner,  Creative Director, Strategy Director, Planning Director, Group Account Director, Client Services Director,
• Production – Executive Producer, Senior Producers, Producers, Senior Data Planner, Data Planner,  Flash Developer, Database developer, Senior Art Director, Art Director, Senior Designer, Designer, Junior Designer

Digital Agencies can be either of the above or a hybrid of the above. In addition, you can count as additional roles that pop up by the uniqueness of web: User Experience Architect, Digital Strategist, Engagement Manager, Digital Planner, CRM Strategist, eDM Strategist….. Areeba is unique in that we don’t really have an account layer, preferring to get those senior individuals in the industry who actually enjoy dealing with the clients directly. If you are a developer, you deal with the client. If you are a creative, you deal with the client. If you are a business analyst, you deal with the client. if you are a digital strategist, you deal with the client.  If you are part of the executive team, you deal with the client. No hidden mushrooms or low level juniors hiding in the background working in the sweat shop. Works for us.

So in saying all that, what is my point? Ad agencys are turning to digital, because its the new “it” thing. It’s also where the money is shifting too, driven by the clients who want a tangible measure on their dollars spent verses the result gained. From a marketing and PR perspective, the internet is able to empower clients so much more from an analytics, peer permission and social network context, that the dollars being spent are miniscule and a raindrop compared to where we will be in the next 5 to 10 years. It is only the start of the evolution that is igniting our industry and the first step in this is to get our clients to better understand the value that the industries staff and the digital agencies themselves are able to offer.

Regardless of the structure of your agency, or the agency you are engaging, I see it very firmly that it is our job  and obligation  to communicate the value and worth of each and every staff member across the business, so that the old fashioned values of trust, value, friendship, loyalty and understanding are met. Simple.

Information Architects Japan – Web Trend Map 3

This is very cool. Using the Tokyo Subway as an overlay, the uber smart dudes at Information Architects Japan have listed out close to 300 of the WWW  most visited and influential websites. Each train line represents a trend which the site portrays i.e. social network, news etc.

Interactive version here: http://informationarchitects.jp/start/

Information Architects Japan - Web Trends Map 3

Facebook – one step closer to real life

Kiwi judge follows Australian Facebook precedent It seems our progressive Australian Court System isn’t the only one in the world wading into the virtual reality of Facebook and its 170 million plus inhabitants with virtual writ in virtual hand. A New Zealand court – the High Court no less -  also deciding it was possible – and legal – to serve court documents to an individual who failed to turn up to face the music at their appointed hour. This case is following on from a landmark case which occured late 2008 in Australia as reported here in the December 12th 2008 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald – Australian court serves documents via Facebook

The old fashioned means of writing a letter, stamping the envelope and Australia Post being subpoenaed to disclose the address and contents of the recipient and sender under court order has just moved into the digital world. Emails have long been held as legally enforceable in court, it seems Facebooks ‘closed garden‘ bulletin board status is crumbling that little bit more and ‘privacy’ as most people perceive it is just that little bit less. Look out Facebook residents, your world just got more real again, as opposed to an escape.

Harsh Truths about Corporate Websites

Passed onto me today by a work colleague, an excellent insight into the derailments that can occur with large scale web projects if you aren’t keeping your eye on the ball. It’ll whack you in the head and knock you out.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/10/10-harsh-truths-about-corporate-websites

1 – You need a seperate web division
2 – Managing your website is a full-time Job
3 – Periodic Redesign is not enough
4 – Your website cannot appeal to everyone
5 – You are wasting money on social networking
6 – Your website is not all about you
7 – You’re not getting value from your web team
8 – Design by committee brings death
9 – A CMS is not a silver bullet
10 – You have too much content