« August 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
September 14, 2007
Making change happen faster in Adland
It seems like a lot of blogs ramble on about things that the author thinks should happen or their opinion on what did happen.
This role of reporting or offering opinion is all well and good, but in some ways I think it's follows traditional journalism a little too closely. For those of us interested in being agents of change, what if we put a little more effort into writing in such a way to practically help the process of change actually happen.
Got your client to make the leap to skip TV in the ad budget and plunk it down on online? How about sharing that with the rest of the group.
I find that anecdotal stories are often more persuasive than a stack of research, especially if it's a story about a recognizable brand and the story ended well. And if the client is leaning towards it, it just might the nudge to get them to take the leap.
So, here' my short list of ideas:
1) Make plans when you are budgeting to allocate to online advertising well up front of developing the campaign media plan.
Halfway through the year or the campaign is not the time to come up with some brilliant strategy for the use of online. In fact, it may take you a couple of years to win the battle, but keep bringing it up. Change takes time.
The best conversation I ever had with a client in terms of results of getting more focus in online advertising went something like this in a budget meeting:
"I'm thinking this year I'd like to spend half our ad budget in online media. Whaddya think?"
And there's been no looking back since then. It's been a wonderful success all around.
2) When you're pitching that big online media plan in the planning meeting, have some strong creative concepts to go with it.
Let's be honest. Budgeting is a rational process but like any decision, it's also emotional. If you're pitching an idea, be excited about it! And have a really good idea so other people can get excited about it too!!
Everyone loves to work on new and interesting things as long as they don't feel like it's putting them in a risky position. You need to create enthusiam and be able to make it happen.
If you can't do those two things, you're not going to be able to move the yardsticks.
3) Allow yourself extra time to execute the new big idea.
If it's a big idea or novel, you probably haven't done it ten times already. So, allow yourself some extra time to make it happen. The last thing you want is be late on delivering the big idea you got everyone so excited about. It's nice if it's a positive experience all around.
4) Make a big deal out the results once they come in.
We're trying to change old patterns of doing things. It needs to be crystal clear to all involved that this new way of doing things works so that it ultimately becomes the way that things are done.
You can tell a lot about an organization's priorities by where the resources are allocated. Go and fight for you piece of it. Once you do that, you can make all your best laid plans come to be.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 1:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack