Q & A: creativebrief founder on the future of advertising

Matching a client who is looking for a marketing campaign with the right advertising agency is often a hit-and-miss affair. It often boils down to gut instinct and connections more than anything else. Tom Holmes, the founder and chairman of London-based creativebrief recognised a gap in the market and founded the company to connect clients with marketing budgets and agencies. Today, creativebrief manages the only online database of UK (and global) advertising agencies in the world, comprising over 1 500 case studies of brand marketing activity.

In the last two years alone, the company has been asked to work with over 80 major international client companies, generating over US$1-billion in reviews, across all marketing disciplines and sectors.

Holmes spent most of his childhood in Africa, studied at Grahamstown’s Rhodes University and became a professional actor in Cape Town before leaving South Africa to make his mark in the advertising industry in the U.K.

Memeburn posed some questions to Holmes on the work that he does, the future of advertising, and social media.

Memeburn: Where did the idea for creativebrief come from?

Tom Holmes: I realised that choosing the right commercial partner can be critical to achieving business success. However, finding that right partner can prove time consuming, confusing and expensive. A lot of my working life in agencies had been wasted in unproductive new business meetings, spending money on speculative pitches with clients that lacked clear objectives.

Creativebrief was born from that realisation, as the first service of its kind to connect buyers and sellers of marketing services, saving parties time, cost and confusion.

MB: What are you most proud of achieving professionally?

TH: Firstly, to leave an established and well-worn industry and create something entirely new that challenges the very make up of that industry, and secondly to see that concept come to life and to start to make that industry better.

To challenge the received wisdom of the way connections used to be made between clients and agencies, and the subjective and expensive consultancy undertaken to bring together a small group of the same agencies with the same clients in a sort of self-serving club.

MB: What are the dangers of outsourced marketing work, especially on a global scale?

TH: Any outsourced marketing work needs very careful management and that starts with selection of those outsourced companies. A lack of knowledge of the supplier base, and a lack of an objective and transparent selection methodology are the main dangers in starting to work with an outsourced resource.

On a global stage, the lack of uniform briefing and evaluation, the lack of knowledge sharing and lack of centralised contract negotiation happens in many, many global organisations.

Much can be gained through globalisation and central management, but much can be lost through imposing strategies devised from the centre to a world view without consideration of local or regional cultural and economic differences.

MB: How has social media changed the marketing world?

TH: It’s taken the “digital revolution” to another scale. As if the web wasn’t a big enough challenge for many global and local brands in terms of customer acquisition and retention, brand building and positioning, the rise of social media threatens to run away with the customer. The biggest challenge presented lies in reputation management – social media channels allow brand and corporate reputations to be debated, shaped and publicised outside of brand control on a scale never experienced before.

It changes traditional marketing by taking control away from the advertisers and gives it to the consumer – it makes engagement king and permission-based marketing essential.

MB: Is there a case where a company should stay away from social media?

TH: I guess the answer to this lies in what the company has to fear from social media and why. The problem with staying away from social media is that your customers may not. If there is a conversation about your brand, you should be involved.

MB: What’s so special about media companies in the digital age, where effectively every company is now a media company on the web? Is it as compelling as it used to be for companies to advertise with specialist media in this case?

TH: Well… precisely because every company is potentially a media company, the need for specialist planning and managing campaigns becomes even more vital. If companies restrict themselves to their own media platforms, they cannot reach those not engaged or execute across a broad enough spectrum.

More choice out there means management needs to make the right choices.

MB: Is the advertising model broken in the online context? Companies would rather spend money on their own websites, SEO, apps and their own content rather than advertising on external media. In some cases companies have bigger online presences than traditional media – so why would they spend it on an external media sites?

TH: If you only spend media budgets on your own platform, web and SEO, then you are in danger of defining your market very narrowly and limiting your potential. Contrary to what the hype around website marketing would tend to suggest, more external media is being consumed than ever before in more channels.

It is doubtful whether you can build or maintain a mass market product or service by yourself and through your own web channel.

MB: Is the future of online advertising CPC?

TH: Cost-per-click has a powerful, measurable delivery certainly and is important in many applications and especially for customer acquisition marketing.

However, if online advertising is to maximise its true potential, then it needs to deliver on brand building, awareness, perceptions and tie into other channel message delivery.

Cost per acquisition is another step down the line.

MB: Do you believe the future lies in “full service” agencies that can do everything, or in specialist niche shops?

TH: This talks to the issue of “integration’” of course.

Creativebrief’s Paul Duncanson, a former marketing director himself, would not trust an agency model that says it can do everything with excellence.

We know the inherent conflicts that lie within traditional media agencies and their adoption and presentation of lower margin online media solutions. Similarly, many mainstream creative agencies will claim to service the digital channel with creative, but all too often this is shaped from an offline start point.

Also, many non-specialised online agencies have no real detailed knowledge about this sector, nor do they necessarily have a strong desire to promote the channel.

We are firm believers in specialisation and excellence first and foremost — then getting these channels to work together, utilising if possible a media neutral planning resource.

MB: What kind of campaigns work best for the mobile web?

TH: Short, to the point messages. Consumers do not have the time or the attention to be wooed slowly and to be engaged in too much story. This is a medium for value-based, easily understood concepts and propositions and thus the sort of campaigns would be around promotional redemption, offers and action based marketing.

MB: Is there one thing that you see clients doing wrong over and over again in their branding?

TH: There are many things! And history, as ever, repeats itself.

However to be specific, change for change’s sake is a common mistake…this can come from a new marketing director’s insistence that part of his/her job must be to change agency, to make a break whether it’s required or not.

This often leads to confused branding messages, duplication and reinventing the wheel, which is wasted investment and damaged relations between agency and client, not to mention the long term damage that can be wrought on an expensively established brand proposition.

The opposite can be equally true, whereby clients never or rarely assess their agency relationships, both missing opportunity and consolidating sub-optimal performance.

MB: What does the perfect client/ agency relationship look like?

TH: In short, one that works well out in the market and back in the office. The way to achieve this is to start the agency recruitment process properly and to then regularly manage the agency performance and capability.

Mutual respect and understanding is, of course, at the core of successful relationships and can only be established if the selection was correct in the first place. And a follow-up agency management process that helps both parties improve and profit from success.

MB: Where do you see the web going from here?

TH: Highly targeted, local, video and interface integration.

For the short term, a period of catch up for some companies in terms of the marketing employment of the web and all its constituent parts, and also an acceleration in applications from B2C to B2B marketing.

For example, whilst the speed of change at the forefront of web development and usage is impressive and will set the standard for the future, there still remain huge challenges in ensuring that the wider populations are connected with high speed internet access – even in developed nations such as the UK, there remain up to a third of households with slow or no connection to the internet.

MB: And Africa? How big an impact can the mobile web have on the continent?

TH: Mobile use is exploding in Africa. This will be the first opportunity for many to access the web.

One of the great things about technology and mobile/internet-based technology is that the affordability and pace of delivery means that less developed infrastructures can leapfrog typical maturity cycles and compete with the most developed infrastructures almost overnight, given some connectivity issues.

So the impact that the mobile web can have on Africa is immense and potentially quite rapid, especially as far as the business and marketing communities are concerned.

MB: Will print advertising die entirely?

TH: Print will never die, at least not in my lifetime! It’s both a lifestyle and a communication issue – lifestyle because wherever you are some situations will always lend themselves to non-digital consumption. And in terms of communication some things are just better placed on the printed medium as they are permanent there at any time, they have a richness and a quality, much as traditional print film has over digital camera technology.

MB: Future trends in marketing?

TH: User-generated content. Participation. Brand ambassadors in online communities.

In the short to medium time period, more and relevant engagement must be a main theme. It is no longer sufficient to push brand messages out to audiences that have been developed by marketers in isolation of meeting what consumers want in their lives.

Consumers will no longer engage with a brand if the campaign is what the brand wants to say only and doesn’t give them something that entertains, amuses, engages or adds value. The communications revolution has put paid to brand-led messages alone and created an audience that is much more discerning and judgemental, but also one that will reward the canny brand marketer to a greater extent.