In January, Coca Cola and Unilever announced that they would be shunning campaign media sites in favour of social media based marketing. A bold move, and one many others have followed since. However, I’m not sure it’s right to ditch one method of marketing in favour of another without fully understanding the consequences of doing so.
Let’s look back a few years. The Internet is the next big thing. Paper would disappear. People would communicate not by picking up the phone, but by email and IM (anyone remember ICQ?). Email marketing became the next big thing, and very quickly, businesses realised they needed somewhere to send the people who were getting their emails. Those places: campaign media sites. I’m not suggested that these mini sites are a good or a bad idea, but they exist, and to a greater or lesser extent, they work. So why break what works? Would you consider that offline (print, radio, TV amongst other formats) advertising had had its day now? Wrong.
What the industry has comprehensively failed to remember is that different businesses and different audiences communicate and consume the world in which we live in drastically different ways. If you ditched all advertising in newspapers and magazines because you decided that the next big thing was the back of your car because more people you knew saw the back of your car… well you just wouldn’t.
Offline marketing is just as important as online. Sometimes more so. Yep. We’re a digital production company, and I just said that. The Internet enables a new form of communication, not a better one. Because we live in a digital age doesn’t preclude the possibility for some amazing trans-format campaigns that truly encompass our social sphere, whomever we are, and however we choose to consume it. Because you have a Facebook account, does that mean that word-of-mouth advertising is now irrelevant because you can reach everyone’s friends through an application, or by looking at where people have checked in? Not likely. More, Facebook as a marketing platform should be used to augment and enable a more engaging experience than is currently being offered by the vast majority of brands. This is return on investment. Investment doesn’t mean cheap, and cheap doesn’t mean higher returns.
We’ve spent some time over the 10 months intrigued by just how many applications for social networks we’ve been asked to build, for some pretty high profile brands. That’s not to blow our own trumpet, but it is to serve as a warning thus: not one of those applications had the response expected of the people involved in creating the strategy. And again, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be done, but they should be created as part of a larger strategy. The only time these social media campaigns do work is when they truly engage the user in something that user is actually interested in. If you are a brand manager and you are asking how your brand might engage in these environments, I urge you to think carefully about the bigger picture – how does social media fit into the overall ethos of the business, and how does that ethos portray itself externally? Does the brand in question already have a loyal following? If not, why not, and could it realistically build one in an intangible world? If it does, how does that following consume the brand presently, and how would you engage these people to become your advocates? By the way, social media doesn’t automatically mean digital. Take the example of the neighbour’s lost cat. Muddles’ photo is plastered on every tree in the neighbourhood, and not a single email or Facebook group has been created. Turns out, Doris at number 83 had taken pity on Muddles and given her some milk. She saw the poster one day and came and knocked at the door, but you were out, so she knocked next door and next door again until she found someone who answered the door in the middle of the day. So starts the Chinese whisper of social media.
I’ve gone off on a tangent a little, but the point is clear (in my mind at least). Advertising today seems a little too “follow-the-leader” in its approach. What happened to the truly creative campaigns that took you from radio to TV to something in a shop window to the Internet and back again before realising you were deeply involved and so were all your friends? And why does a campaign need to have a use-by date? Surely a good campaign (and the brands that get this truly get it) is one that stands the test of time. And just as importantly, a good campaign isn’t one decided on by someone saying “we need more social media”, but by someone coming up with an amazing idea, whatever the medium. You need to reach your customers, not mess around with what everyone else is doing.
Being in business, and having clients to service, we’re often asked to quote for work, and not every quote turns into an order. That’s to be expected. Some are new or potential clients going out to multiple potential suppliers, of which we are just one. Others are existing clients and have a duty to tender their work for any number of reasons. The end result is that we get some orders, and lose out on some others. That’s a fact of life when you’re in business, and in my eyes is nothing bad. You can’t please all the people all of the time.
What I’ve found in the last nearly 3 years in business is what I can only call a correlation between clients’ sizes, the level of detail required in cost estimates, and the likelihood of that quote turning into an order. This is an exploratory article and I welcome comment; I’m interested to know how others in similar situations deal with this issue as I’m sure it’s not uncommon.
There is an amount of work involved in putting together a proposal or quote for work. We usually do this for free and we feel this is the right thing to do – for those that don’t turn into orders, the quality and attention to detail that we put into all our projects are visible, and we’re often asked to quote on further work, more often than not winning that work. However – there’s always a however – it’s not always like this. We’ve got a couple of clients, and I’m sure everyone does, that we spend a lot more time servicing than we do others, without the financial benefit that this should bring.
For the most part, I’ve found that this additional servicing happens during the quoting process – how much we’re asked to do, and how much turns into real work, and therefore money. I’ve talked to a number of clients about this, both large and small, because it’s something that I feel is a waste of everyone’s time. Why spend forever quoting for work if no-one’s actually going to pay for it to be done, and why keep asking for it if the money isn’t there to do it? There are answers to this, some of which I have, and some of which I hope you can enlighten me with. This is a learning exercise as much as it is an expulsion of hot air.
Trust
I’d like to think all our clients trust us to give them the best possible service and the best possible product that we can, and at a price that they feel is good value. I won’t use the word “cheap” because we’re not, and nor do I want us to be, as that would then reflect in the quality of our work too. Smaller clients often need to have more trust because they’re much closer to their own business and they don’t want someone else’s to jeopardise it. That’s completely understandable. I pick my own suppliers extremely carefully for exactly that reason. Larger businesses still need a level of trust, but because they’re dealing in big numbers all the time, they put less emphasis on the detail at the quote phase. Having said that, we have several small clients that are happy for a simple cost and time for the work they want done. If it feels right, they place an order. They trust us to be accurate.
Experience
Large businesses are experienced in dealing with external contractors, and therefore confident when a quote comes in that it feels correct. Smaller businesses may not be so experienced. This isn’t a complete truth, as many small businesses are started by people who’ve worked for large ones, but it does hold some value. Those with less experience though may well ask for more detail than is really necessary. Again understandable if you’re someone not experienced in a given field of work – we’re web developers, but don’t know how much it would cost to build an exhibition stand for instance, or why one exhibition stand in one centre would be more than another similar stand in a different centre.
Money
Clients don’t always have the money to do the work now. Just like I might ask my estate agent for a valuation of my property, even though I have no intention of selling it yet. However, my estate agent knows my property, and I trust him, so when I ask him for a ballpark, I’m happy with a top-of-the-head figure. What concerns me is the level of detail asked of us when we know the money isn’t available to complete the work.
So what do we do about the clients that we spend a lot of time servicing, but we either make very little money from, or even make a loss on. Do we drop them? Do we approach them about the problems? If so, how? What have you done in your business experience where issues like this have arisen?
I’ve no problem putting out detailed quotes, but I’d like to be more confident that these will turn into orders. For one client, we’ve put forward six or seven sets of detailed quotes this calendar year, and none of these have turned into orders. In the meantime we’ve continued to service them as valued clients, just as we do with all our others. Is this the right thing to do? In the hope that at some point soon, the work will actually come in? Do we charge for quotes – I know others have though I’m not sure whether it has proven successful or not.
Could we be more transparent? Maybe the solution is actually to offer a very high level ballpark estimate without the detail, followed by a more detailed quote if the client in question feels this is feasible with currently available funds. Although this doesn’t solve the problem that these clients want the detailed quote up front. I’m keen to try and reduce the amount of wasted work we do, without reducing the level and quality of service that we offer to our clients. Typically, I’d make a decision and run with it, but this feels a little more contentious and prone to serious consequence if we get wrong. I know I’m being very open in this article, but I feel this is the right approach. If you think you’re a client we’re not servicing properly, please tell me. I’d love the opportunity to discuss over a coffee what we can do in our business to better both the strong relationships we already have, and to bolster the weaker ones and turn them into strong ones.
I’m going to wrap up here, and ask for advice and experiences you’ve had and the solutions to the issues in this article.
Testing, testing, and more testing!
It is blindingly obvious that testing is utterly important. You can’t go live without at least some testing time. But what really is testing, and do we give it the space, time and money it deserves? That’s the question I’d like to ask of the whole industry, because I think the answer is a resounding NO! And that worries me.
First off, I’m going to look at what testing comprises of. What is testing? What are the options and their meanings in terms of time and value? I’ll look at what we’re prepared to pay for, and why this needs addressing, and I’ll ask why we’re not being more forceful about it.
Testing can mean many things, so I’ll keep it in the context of a web application in this instance. It’s a limited viewpoint I know, but it carries the same message across other disciplines.
In testing a website, we talk about functional testing, we talk about user acceptance testing, and we talk about User Interface testing. The latter two often work hand in hand, and are done prior to build, where functional testing traditionally happens after the build process and is about eliminating bugs in the system. Fine, but that only works to an extent. It’s the functional testing we’re talking about here. If the others haven’t been done prior to build, there are bigger issues that need dealing with first. Like why not?!
We’re given scopes to look through and quote for on a day to day basis. Sometimes they appear complete and other times they don’t and need some reworking. The complete ones almost certainly are not perfect, and have missed one or two bits of business logic somewhere along the line. These aren’t picked up until later in development, and only surface when an astute developer asks the question of his Project Manager. If they’re not picked up, they surface when a user of the site does something unexpected, at least something that the developers didn’t expect the user to do. And that’s usually where the bugs appear.
So what sort of testing can you employ and how does it help? Well there are two main options: manual testing, or automatic testing. You could put someone in front of a computer and ask them to run through every single possibility and flag bugs, then run through it again and again until there are no bugs, in each separate browser. You could alternatively automate the testing if you’re building the application in a framework that has the possibility of testing built into it.
The first of these two options, manual testing, is what is normally assumed. Unfortunately, it’s considered a case of going through the application or site after build and checking everything appears to work as expected. This is fine, but doesn’t really deal with the issue at hand – those pesky bugs that hide under bits of code you never thought to look under. If you choose to go down the route of manual testing, preparation is key – all scenarios must be thought through, written up into test cases and tested by a person, or people, independent of the project. Clearly, the people involved in the project need to be testing as well, but they can often be too close to the project to notice what are sometimes glaring issues. Sufficient testing means a full set of written tests, with results properly recorded step by step. This costs money; often half or more of the build cost. Doing any less than this can’t be considered to be sufficient.
If the framework of choice has a test suite, such as Ruby on Rails, there is a second option that costs significantly less, yet gives almost the same quality assessment of the project as does the manual process. Depending on the choice of test suites (many can be employed, each one testing a different facet of the application; e.g. separate front-end and back-end suites), they can be written to be readable by people not affiliated to the project, or those not on the project in a technical capacity. This means these tests can be peer reviewed and cross checked for completeness against the technical specification. Usually testing in this way happens during the build process, the tests being written before any code and then the code written to pass all the relevant tests. Two methods used here are Behaviour and Test driven development. The first tests that the behaviours expected by the user actually happen, and the latter is often used to test the business logic. Both can be used together. Automated testing costs on average approximately one third of the build cost. With it come guarantees that the application has been tested almost to destruction, with all kinds of possibilities tested out. If you want an extra layer of security, do some manual testing as well. Get people not involved in the project to run through the system and if anything is spotted, then it can be dealt with promptly. Again, tests must be written for these, and should detail behaviour that the user should experience. As long as the results are recorded, including steps taken, then this is well worth doing.
There is one further major benefit to automated testing. The tester doesn’t go away. If you update the application later down the line and you want to add some more functionality, you can quickly make sure that the changes you have made work, and more importantly, that all the previous tests still work. If you decide on the manual process because of a resourcing issue at the time for instance, remember that you’ll have to run through every single test again whenever you make any changes if you want to guarantee the same level of quality. This is the value in automated testing. Continuous, solid, quantitative tests that never go away.
If making sure your application is robust is this economical, why then is it perceived to be too expensive? I’ll make an analogy to motorcycling. I recently bought some new motorcycle gear that cost me nearly £900. I know I could have bought gear for less than £200, but I also know I’d be compromising my own life if I did so. Testing an application is the same, if a little less terminal. Usually though, it’s the first thing to be thrown out. You need to reduce the budget and the scope needs to stay the same, so the testing budget suffers. The issue is that the expectation is still that the application be fully tested. I think there is a certain belief too that the £200 gear will save your life. It may well do, but not before you’ve had a few skin grafts and organ transplants. Should we be prepared to pay more for this part of the build? Yes. If the budget does need to be reduced, it must reduce the scope, or the quality of the end product will be severely compromised, and for that there can be no guarantees provided.
I know this is something of a long post. It’s important that we understand the unequivocal requirement for proper testing, whether manual or automated, and that our clients are educated to that effect. They pay millions of pounds and dollars for software systems that run their organisation on the basis that the systems are tested and won’t break. Even so, they do sometimes break, if rarely. Even less often do they break badly. That’s testament to the amount of testing that they do. All software has bugs. It’s almost impossible to eliminate them all. Why can’t budget be put into testing these bespoke systems that are being built? Education. That’s all. The budget is there for testing, but if the knowledge and understanding of the whys and wherefores isn’t there, then the budget won’t be allowed to be spent on what appears to be a frivolous activity. This is why.
That elusive integrated campaign
They just don’t seem to exist. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason why not. OK, every now and again, an agency produces out of its proverbial hat a campaign it calls integrated that actually does some justice to the term. It just doesn’t happen all that often.
I’m not going to sit around naming names, but I will explain why I think it happens and what can be done to resolve the problem.
You want to reach a wide audience. You know you’re going to create within your “integrated” campaign a full set of elements: Radio, TV, Direct Marketing, Online, Outdoor. Because that’s how to reach your maximum potential audience. Isn’t it? Well yes, and no. Integrated campaigns are all about creating awareness, and then getting people to want to find out more information. In this day and age, that information comes from one place – the Internet.
Making an integrated campaign work properly requires communication. Whether it’s cross-agency, or just multi-discipline within the one agency, communication issues are rife. No one really talks to anyone else until they need the work done. I don’t really understand why, seeing as communication is what we’re all supposed to be good at in this industry.
So how do we make it work? Involve specialists. Involve them early in the project. That means specialists in each field that you want to use in your campaign. Planners and strategists are great, but the bigger picture isn’t the nuts and bolts of how a campaign comes together. You need people who understand what can and can’t be done in each medium to really push boundaries across the board. Oh, and to talk to each other. It’s absolutely imperative! Don’t talk and you end up with 95% of the integrated campaigns that are out there. Nothing really driving anyone anywhere from the TVC, and no one really knowing where to find the additional information. It isn’t just a case of making some banners that look a bit like the TVC. Sorry, it just doesn’t cut it.
So, to my mind, the important thing here is to consult early, with the client and experts in one room, and don’t be afraid to bring in outside expertise. If you feel you could benefit more by partnering with a post-production house for your TV side, a digital production house that can make valuable suggestions, a marketing agency that knows how to get the information you need to the people that need it, do it and bring them in at the beginning of the project. The money you spend here really will save you thousands of pounds later on, and it’ll win awards left right and centre. Don’t overload the meetings with a bunch of people who won’t be able to make the integration work – you need the experts, no more and no less. Involve a strategist to start with, and a planner once you’ve worked out what you’re doing. They’re not needed in between.
I know this is somewhat controversial, especially to some of the larger agencies – it’s a control issue; how do you relinquish control of the overall project and retain quality? That’s really the easy bit, but gets hidden by process. It’s about communication, it’s about pushing boundaries, and it’s about asking questions. Asking questions of oneself and of others. Are we really producing the best possible thing that we can? What could we do this time around that we didn’t do last time? Did we honestly learn from our past mistakes, or did they get consigned to a filing cabinet. And there you have it. We just don’t learn from the past. I’d love this to become a real discussion across the industry, and I think it’s something that might well start to make an impact on the industry as a whole, if we make it happen.
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