Social Media Impact

How social media affects media agencies

Facebook was born in 2004 as a simple directory of profile pages for Ivy League students. Twitter emerged one year later, imploring people to chirp what they’re up to. When these social platforms launched, few people understood the promise they held for marketers and the opportunities they would bring for brands. Five years later, we have Facebook Pages, branded Twitter accounts, pimped out YouTube pages and badges on Foursquare.

Social media has had an incredible impact on a brand’s marketing program, but often the brand works in tandem with a media agency to perfect its communication and create its approach on these innovative new platforms. Social media has forced agencies to work quicker, longer and harder — all while keeping up with the newest Facebook features and location-based app. Its impact on agencies and their work can not be underestimated. We spoke with three agency representatives who describe exactly how social has affected the way their agencies work.

• David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at 360i
• Cassel Kroll, social strategy director at MediaVest
• Grant Owens, vice president of account planning at Razorfish

Let’s start by defining a media agency because there seems to be overlap in Venn diagram among social agencies, media agencies, marketing agencies and advertising agencies — is that blurry to me because I’m not in it, or is it blurry to everyone?

Kroll: We used to talk about media agencies primarily in terms of about print publications and television. About 10 years ago, we started to see a shift to digital. … In the last few years, with the real blossoming of Facebook and the evolution of Twitter, social media has become more of a player in how brands are engaging with consumers through social media. And just like 10 years ago when [agencies] were thinking about how to integrate digital, we’re now starting to think about how to integrate social in our strategy as well as our campaigns. And technology is moving incredibly fast.

Owens: We’re not a media agency, we’re not a developer. The lines between what an agency does have been blurring quite a bit, and social media has exacerbated that because social is a pervasive layer. A lot of stuff happens under our roof, and it’s a lot harder to draw a box around who does what, even within our own organization, let alone with our partners.

Berkowitz: Really, it comes down to defining “media.” And now social media is an incredibly important part of the media, and it has changed the nature of what a media agency is.

When Twitter and Facebook started becoming widely used, was there a resistance to embrace it in campaigns?

Berkowitz: In 2006, a lot of the questions we were getting from clients were things like, “Should we be blogging? What’s MySpace?” We got H&R block to be one of the first brands on Twitter. It wasn’t common yet, but we figured that if it made sense for clients, we would do it, even if we didn’t see it as a realistic revenue stream yet.

Owens: We certainly had to hit a level of critical mass, but after that point, we just saw it as a space in which to innovate. We saw people being creative in those mediums and wanted to align with that creativity and inspire and incentivize it … so we drove our clients strategically into them. From very early stages, [Facebook and Twitter] were part of the way thought about connecting and doing things that were engaging.

Kroll: We try to look at where the consumers of our brands are and how best we can carry on a conversation with them where they are. Even in the earlier days, a lot of fans created pages [for brands] on Facebook, and the question changed from, “Do we get involved here?” to “How do we engage with them where they want to be and how do we help create the environment for them to converse with the brand?”

How does social media fit into a campaign –- is it something you tack on at the end or has it become integral to the campaign?

Kroll: It’s thought of as an integral piece. When we’re creating a campaign, we think how social is going to play into that and how we’re going to measure it to make sure it’s impactful. And we want to create an experience that’s shareable — that’s social. Especially as Facebook Pages evolve to emulate the user profile page, brands are becoming more personable -– consumers are engaging with a brand as someone they know, so we try to keep that experience going.

Owens: Social is pervasive in everything we do — I can’t think of a project in the past 12 months where it hasn’t been an assumed part of the exercise. And even where you don’t think you’ll find social media, there is a social media layer on nearly everything, and that’s just a function of the technology being available. Any exercise that we do increasing an experience for a brand in this day and age includes social media. It just has to.

Berkowitz: Social is pretty well integrated in terms of what we do. Early on, the social media group co-opted the customer insights team, which integrates feedback from social, whether it’s a specifically social program or not.

How does your agency structure the social media team? Is there one point person for each project?

Kroll: We don’t really have a separate social media team. … It’s been ingrained within our culture. We try to live by integrating it throughout, so Mediavest is really proud of the fact all that all of its strategists and planners are cross-athletes who understand mobile and social and digital, so it’s become a part of the overarching, holistic planning process. In that way, I think we’re a little different than [Razorfish and 360i], since we’re involved in developing the overarching strategy, whereas these guys get to play with the nitty gritty of the campaign.

Owens: We’re a bit of a hybrid. We do have social experts who drive that portion of our business, but they’re not able to be on every team. Consequently, each team member, whether he’s in planning or UE or creative is, as Kroll says, “a cross-athlete,” but we pull in those experts when need be.

Berkowitz: We do have a growing social media team — we now have more than 20 community managers. Having people who know what to say and when to say it is a lot different than anything else that other people are doing. Digital word of mouth influences marketing, so we’ve brought on people who are building a lot of relationships. And then we have social media strategists and digital media strategists, but as someone who works with all of them, I have a harder and harder time knowing who’s who — that line’s blurring a lot.

Kroll: You used to be able to see very delineated pillars between what was accessible via mobile or web or television, and now the platform is sort of becoming agnostic — it’s more about the behaviors that people are doing through their preferred platforms. Because of that I think we’re seeing social become more of a horizontal engagement instead of being pillared into a separate section.

Are the teams at your agency less delineated than they used to be?

Owens: I think a lot of agencies are still ramping up their social staff — as David mentioned, in community management — and those people tend to be more delineated for us as well. But at the strategic level, it is becoming less delineated. Everything is driven from the same insights and business objectives, and then you farm out production responsibilities to specialists or where the best skill sets lie — but that’s farther down in the tactical process. So in some ways it’s more blurry, and in other ways it’s more distinct because there are certain skill sets that are growing.

What social platforms are winning out with clients?

Berkowitz: For a lot of our clients, the default communities are Facebook and Twitter, and then there’s YouTube. We have constant discussions about Foursquare, and then there are flavor-of-the-month platforms. In the CPG and shopping spaces, Shopkick comes up a lot — we’ll see if that’s still the case in six months. In the next month, I imagine that most of the meetings will mention Color. We’re seeing a lot of interest in GroupMe and Beluga after SXSW. It varies by who the client is, what makes sense for them and where all the buzz is.

Owens: I’m finding increasingly that success is driven by two things — the category that you’re in and the consumer segment you want to talk to. For Mercedes Benz, we found a terrific connection with brand enthusiasts on Twitter, and we’ve arguably found a great connection with loyal brand owners on Facebook. Then Mercedes uses private communities for people who really want to pierce the veil of the brand. It depends on what consumer segments you’re trying to reach, and we’ve definitely found nuances between the platforms.

Kroll: I would agree with that. A majority of our brands are on Facebook, but you have to think about where their consumers and brand advocates are and where they’re already having these discussions — and then find organic ways to integrate into the conversation without it feeling forced or unnatural.

How else has social changed the way your agency works?

Kroll: Social media has changed the way we think about campaigns. Campaigns used to have a start date and a stop date, and with social media, it becomes more of an always “on.” You can’t engage in a conversation and then just drop out of it, because you have people who are engaged with you.

Owens: The mistake that agencies made from a consumer experience standpoint 25 years ago was to separate creative and media into two silos — social media has exacerbated that need to bring those two back together because consumers want to experience things that marry the two. When I do a creative brief to our team, I’m briefing tech, UE, creative and media all at the same time — and that’s because of social media. I’ve noticed a whole lot more war rooms –- people used to be comfortable in their cubes and you’d do the waterfall approach, [but now it’s more collaborative].

Another thing that’s changed at Razorfish is the speed at which we work. The pace of producing content has become much faster and there’s a 24/7 approach to getting things out there — social media is something that can not wait. We do trends analysis almost on a daily basis now. … From a research, planning and creative interaction standpoint, we’re always on and always tapped in to the pulse of the audience. And that fundamentally changes the way we plan against creative and media executions. The Rebecca Black experience could come and go in a matter of weeks, and it could be a great opportunity for a client to add to the conversation, but you don’t have a month to figure out how to execute it. Social changes us as an agency, and it challenges the client to change, too — client approval processes have been condensed.

Berkowitz: A few years ago you could get away with people being “too cool” for social media. … You can’t have people like that around anymore. They need to get the core changes in consumer behavior and time spent online and mobile and social media. You need everyone to appreciate what’s happening, and ideally taking part in it.

With all the new tech and startups, how does everyone stay up to speed?

Owens: We have specific social media experts in every regional office, and they are constantly bringing in partners and doing lunch and learns about new technologies, and we have training schedules that allow people to deep-dive into topics that interest them. We also have “affinity groups” that are like an extracurricular activity so you can explore something that interests you –- non-profits and social media or location-based services.

Kroll: We do the same — we bring in people who are doing interesting technologies and we have conference calls and lunch and learns and bring in brand teams to think about how they use a technology and discuss what’s coming down the road. It’s collaborative and curious, and it’s fascinating to watch.

Berkowitz: Training and learning is a bigger and bigger investment here. We do lunch and learns and we have a bar in the office, so companies can come sponsor happy hours. We also use internal wikis and video-training modules, and we do “Bagels with Berky” every other week for people who want to wake up a little early and talk about the newest innovations. In the last one, we talked about Color, and Facebook Polls and Google +1 will be talked about in the next one. That’s one of the biggest changes at the agency — we’re all doing do much and consuming so much and the phone is always ringing, so carving out time to really think is one of the biggest challenges we have, even though it benefits us so much.

How do you think your agency will change in the next 5 years?

Kroll: During the dot-com era, knowing HTML was a skill that could get you on the fast track, but now it’s something you need to know in order to deal with digital, and I think the same is true for social. It’s still so new that being able to grasp it and not only understand how to set up a Page, but the nuances of engaging and the larger marketing and media picture allow you to have a strategic advantage. But 5 or 10 years from now, that will be so commonplace. There will be some other cutting edge material.

Berkowitz: We’ve evolved from a search marketing agency to a full-scale digital marketing agency. The biggest change that’s now bearing through is the role of mobile and how that’s playing a much different role than social did. For us, anyone coming onboard is going to need to have some appreciation for and familiarity with mobile marketing. We’re including mobile as part of every major program we’re planning. Within a few years, everyone in every department will need to understand the implications and opportunities in mobile inside and out.

Owens: Right now we’re at a point where it’s still very valuable to have social media experts, so these folks are tapped into all the tech innovation and platform innovation, ans we’ll bring them in to spur and inspire some of the ideation. But in the future I think we’ll hire fewer experts and more generalists.

I also predict a much smaller agency. Tech is allowing some of the more day-to-day tasks to be more efficient and automated, and consumers are becoming part of the creative process with us, so the burden of creative processes may go down a bit as we start to co-create. I think [the agency] will become a more strategic core or nucleus of individuals who are finding ways to engage consumers, without having the big research methodology.

Source: Mashable

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