Well there has been no slacking at codegent towers over the holiday season. Even on New Year's Eve half the office is still here finishing off bits and bobs for the various January campaign launches we are doing for our clients. Dedication to the cause!

2009 looks like an interesting and tough challenge for us all, but one we are relishing. We expect clients to be looking very hard at what they are getting for their money. It's something we've always believed is important but never more so than now. We're an ideas-led agency but we always make sure that they relate back to the client's commercial requirements. We call this process a "Return on Ideas" and it's something we're looking to refine over the next few months.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone
Mark, David and Luke

PS We couldn't sign off without giving you a little pressie now could we?

Feel free to play with Youth Music's Elf band and slap down your very own remix of Jingle Bells whilst you catch up on what Youth Music have been up to in 2008.
http://seasonsgreetings.youthmusic.org.uk/ »

And if you have experienced the embarrassment of a card turning up from someone who failed to make your own list all is not lost! We knocked this little app together in one day as a proof of concept for our latest gizmo, the "Snapper"... more on that one in January :)
http://lastminutexmascards.appspot.com/ »

I chaired a round table at the IDBG Marketing Directors Strategy Meeting last week on the subject of corporate blogging. There were two key things that we wanted to look at:

1. How should brands approach the subject of blogging? Should they even be blogging in the first place?

2. In what ways should brands be working with other bloggers who may have an influence on their customers?

I’ll talk about the first one today and follow up with the second one next week.

The panel of brands represented at the table was an interesting one: it included representatives of companies such as Bowers and Wilkins, CNN, Comet Group, Endsleigh, Hodder and Stoughton, Microsoft, More Than and T Mobile. Some of these companies are doing interesting things with their blogs.

We began by talking about our own experiences: I admitted that our Codegent blog sometimes became a bit of a sales tool and was often written by the usual suspects, even though the blog is open to everyone in the company to contribute to and is not policed. So, note to self: less bragging about how great we are and more industry observations and insightful witticisms. Maybe even have the balls to criticise people now and again.

The over-whelming feeling is that blogs have become incredibly influential over the last few years. One attendee explaining that they treat bloggers with the “same deference as they treat journalists”. With this in mind it makes absolute sense to have some degree of involvement, but without turning what you do into an overt drive to increase sales.

But hang on a minute, we’re all a cynical bunch really, aren’t we? Can blogs from corporates rather than individuals ever be anything ‘more than’ a sales tool? More Than (see what I did there in the previous sentence) believe that they can. With their Living Blog, they write, not about insurance, but about green driving. The site is a genuine attempt to raise a debate around this important area which, although loosely associated to More Than’s products, is not directly related. In other words, by writing a blog about green driving rather than a blog warning of the dangers of inadequate insurance, More Than believes it is able to maintain credibility.

Microsoft, too, allows its staff to blog about issues that their customers might be interested in. The very popular and respected blogger, Robert Scoble (pictured), “Scobleizer” is a geeky employee of Microsoft. He apparently isn’t “policed” as such, but in a strangely relevant post this month he talks about the question of whether what he and other corporate bloggers might say reflect on the companies they work for.

Hodder & Stoughton talked about their multiple blogs that are written both by authors and by staff. We discussed whether negative comments should be responded to. The feeling was that it depended on who was writing the blog: a member of staff might have thicker skin than an author who is being directly attacked.

This led onto whether a blog could be used for crisis management. We spoke about PA Consulting’s handling of the loss of data for the Home Office and their subsequent radio silence for three weeks afterwards. Everyone agreed that starting a blog just to deal with this would have been a mistake, but given the fact that PA Consulting already have embraced the internet with their Second Life  presence, arguably they should have already had a blog. According to Robert Scoble in his Corporate Weblog Manifesto, you should “Post fast on good news or bad” and “If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast.” But in a world where you have demonstrated publicly how useless your staff are at holding onto information maybe opening up a public forum where they can talk about it isn’t the smartest idea.

Last time, we looked at how the Social Media omnipresence is changing consumers' behaviour and concluded that marketers need to change their mindset and techniques to shift from traditional marketing to more of a conversation: a real dialogue with their audience.

It seems to us that most marketers and web users are talking at crossed purposes these days. Marketers are still broadcasting interruptive one-way messages, speaking loudly to target audiences and controlling the message. The video above is a good example of the traditional marketing model, reaching out to a large volume of consumers through messages without listening directly to the needs of the customer.

But forget about your monologue if you don't want to be abandoned. Instead let's create a dialogue between your clients and you. Dell finally managed to do this and have significantly improved their customer service, you should be able to as well!

Web users have fully adopted social media tools that enable them to create, share, discuss, and participate online. This results in empowered users who can say anything they like about brands: the good (Zappos) and the very bad (Taco Bell).

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about these conversations happening online, on blog comments, on customer reviews, on feedback platforms... They are taking place with or without you and travel even faster and further than you think.

So what should you do? Don't ignore what people are saying about your brand, a bad customer experience leads to a bad reputation which loses you money! Furthermore, if you're not part of the conversation, other people, competitors, are.

The best communicators start as the best listeners (Brian Solis – Social Media Manifesto). It is no longer what you say about yourselves, but what they say about you! So LISTEN to what people are saying then analyse what is being said and why. Only then should you ENGAGE and PARTICIPATE.

Some tips:

• Think like a customer and talk to them with a real voice.
  Don't make them feel small!
• Be transparent and honest: if you are wrong, it's ok to admit it.
  Honesty is rewarded and it will bring back customer trust.
• Provide your customer with tools that they are happy to use and help them accomplish what they want (suggestion platforms, voting system, blogs, comments, video sharing...)
• Create opportunities to make them feel owners of the brand. They can become your strongest advocates!
• Think of Social Media as a long-term strategy not a one-off communication campaign.
• Remember this is a two-way communication so be prepared to relinquish some control.

If you engage people by building relationships, you can expect your customer service to improve significantly. In addition to helpful feedback on what you currently offer its also a great source of fresh ideas, free R&D!

According to a recent study published by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone, consumers are enthusiastic about companies involved on social media platforms as it opens new channels to interact with the brand. So what are you waiting for? Start now before it's too late!

Someone described us as a “boutique agency” the other day. I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with that description because boutique sounds like something that’s small and expensive. But the concept of working with a digital-only agency versus one that does a variety of marketing disciplines is one that people talk about a lot.

I’m going to be biased in favour of our own set-up, but my view is based on my own real experiences over many years. There are a few myths that are banded around about the benefits of one approach over the other. These are a few of them:

Going to a one-stop shop ensures joined-up thinking

I’m not saying this is the case for every agency, but what I have observed is that each agency within a so-called  'integrated' group will have its own P&L and its own interest in not sharing the love around. If one part has a budget for the year from one of their clients, they are really loathed to give it away to anyone, even if they are all part of the same group. Your DM agency is unlikely to recommend that this year you divert a larger part of your marketing budget to digital – because it will reflect badly on their own business unit’s P&L.  How do you think the excuse that you missed your targets this year is because you were bolstering the Group elsewhere going to go down?

Bigger is better

Imagine, all those experienced directors from all those marketing disciplines all thinking about my business? Er... no. I worked for a large agency where everyone tended to operate in silos. OK they were big and some of the people there were bright, but the client might have one person fresh out of University really thinking about their business. He or she may get a share of a designer and a developer, but again, experience and expertise was a real lottery. Unless you had a lot of money to spend. But please don’t ever think that in a large agency the CEO sits down on a Monday and applies his or her enormous brain to each and every one of the campaigns going out that week.

Multi-disciplined means multi-expertise

Again, not always so. A lot of agencies will offer digital because they see an opportunity to cross-sell to their existing clients. I’m talking here more of agencies whose real expertise lies in something else. This may work for a bit of an HTML newsletter here or there, or a flash microsite, but ask them about database-driven content or video delivery and watch them reach for the “I’ll get back to you on that one” excuse.  I tend to think of it like asking your plumber to build you a shelving unit. Yeah – it all kind of falls under the same broad umbrella, but really wouldn’t it be better to get a carpenter to do that?

So, if being a boutique means that we are digital specialists, that we are small enough that the senior people are able to really care about each and every one of our clients, then I guess we are that. And if a boutique means that we have some soul and passion, where the department stores recycle the same old shit just to make the figures work, then I’m happy to be a boutique agency every day of the week.