Quick Update – Second University Assignment

Integrated Communications plan:

So I’ve been extremely busy recently, and I thought I’d share my latest piece of work with you all.

Let me know what you all think:  IMC DONE – PDF

James

Agile Marketing Mayhem

The last conference I attended at Marketing week was taken by Ottokar Rosenberger (Marketing Director at Betfair) and Ashley Friedlein, (CEO of E-Consultancy) and revolved around the topic of agile project management. It was there belief that agile project management is the way all agencies should conduct their work, replacing the traditional waterfall process with rapid iterations.

MAYBE AGILE IS BETTER, BUT IT IS NOT BETTER FOR ALL!

Bringing the customer into the boardroom

Aviva CMO, and Mothercare Non Executive Amanda Mackenzie, held a conference on the Thursday afternoon of Marketing Week 2014, that was geared towards making your customers your number 1 priority. Obviously every succesful business aims to do this, but how you achieve this is often quite a difficult task.

Agency lifestyle management – Avoiding Pitfalls

Way back in June, I attended marketing week live in London and was lucky enough to listen to Andy Portsmouth and John Owens conference about agency management. Andy Portsmouth is the Marketing director for Vision Express, whilst John Owens is the Chief strategy officer at Dare.

Vision Express and Dare have worked closely together, through changing the direction of Visions marketing strategy to capitalise on the higher end of the Glasses market, as Specsavers have dominated the lower end. After several marketing attempts that emulated the brand and service that Specsavers were advocating, Vision and Dare realised that they should change this and since then have created adverts such as the one below:

This advert encompasses all that Vision is about, and highlights how it is creating a strong brand around taking vision seriously.

6 Fundamentals of great social media management

The 6th conference I attended at MWL14 was led by Julia Monro, head of social media and PR at Pret a Manger. Julia has had a seemingly fortunate business career however it is one that is extremely aspirational. As a graduate at M&S, Julia wanted to takeover/get involved with Social media and thus became an online marketer. This position, which involved video, social media and creating content elevated Julia to the position of Community manager, closely followed by a further promotion to the position of social media manager. This elevation took place over a 6 year period (2008-2014) and Julia has now sought pastures new in her role at Pret.  So whilst this experience could be a one-off, it does show that progression in large corporate business is possible, even if you may need to be in the right place at the right time.

Maintaining a Client-Agency Relationship

In a theatre packed full of digital marketing agency executives, it was enlightening to hear Dominic Grounsell (Marketing Director at the RSA Group) put focus on the client, and what the client wants, something I think is more valuable to an agency than telling them how to be succesful etc. Maintaining a client-agency relationship is not only beneficial in regards to ease of use, but is also far cheaper, more personable and quicker than inviting agencies to pitch. Dominic argued however that even though these benefits are so visible, agencies still believe their clients are simply going to throw them out, potentially because or three main client types. As I have worked for an agency and am now working with an agency, I believe I understand what an agency wants and doesn’t want, what they do and don’t want to know, and how they want to be treated on a personal level.

So I am trying my up most not to be any of the following characters:

Creativity in the digital today

First Conference of MWL 2014

I arrived at Marketing week live at 9:18am after bundling my way through London’s underground in rush hour. I felt like a seriously lost sheep! But I made it, early and before the majority of others did, so I’m classing that as a success. After depositing my bag in the hidden cloak room I began to amble (somewhat aimlessly) through the show and rather fortuitously arrived at the super stage, the destination of the first conference I was attending that day.  Yet again, I was early, 2nd to take a seat In fact!

After relaxing for 15 minutes, the conference started and was led by David Pemsel, the Deputy CEO of guardian news and media. I had listened to several business professionals in the news industry before and for some reason I always felt like the speakers were hiding something or not telling the 100% truth. Yet David Pemsel was the complete opposite! An eloquent and informative speaker whose main focus as a digital leader was openness. He promoted an open philosophy of communicating information with three main principles: transparency, multichannel and story tellers. This method would help to create a two-way conversation between publics and could be used both internally and externally. The open philosophy however is built around the currency of trust (which is again a nice phrase to consider) and when combined with innovative story telling, can make for make for a really successful user experience, that will make them want more from your company

Furthermore he continued by highlighting that the 5 Ps of Marketing (people,product,place,promotion, price) are no longer holistic and instead his approach is based around a sharing Economy, mobile proliferation and being a digital native. The term digital native really interested me as it is something that you could ask your colleagues at work and see whether they were a digital native, or instead a digital immigrant, looking in and wanting to be part of the revolution.

So the social revolution is a trust revolution but social is not simply an add-on, it is now fundamental to your everyday business existence. David concluded with a really simple marketing summary: in today’s day and age, digital marketing is about giving you things you didn’t know you wanted!. A really simple statement but something that every business owner and employee can aspire to achieve in today’s digital ecology.

James

Marketing Week Live 2014

The Countdown has begun!

On the 25th and 26th June, I will be attending my first Marketing Week Live exhibition at the Olympia Grand in London. The event has four main conference stages, and this is my real interest and purpose of attending this event. I want to be able to listen to experienced industry experts about a wide range of topics, that could not be heard anywhere else.

There are four conferences happening every hour so choosing which ones to go to has been difficult, however I think that this is my final list:

Wednesday:

10am Creativity in the digital today (David Pemsel, Deputy Chief Executive of the Guardian News and Media)

11am Can responsive web design be engaging (Andrew Towers, Head of product development at the Trainline)

12am Taking the transience out of client-agency relationships ( Dominic Grounsell, Marketing Director at the RSA Group)

1pm Aligning Social and Brand for ROI ( Simon Nicholson, Media Director at Honda Europe)

2pm Putting Innovation at the heart of growth in a cluttered market (Mike Magee, Vice President of Marketing at Mars Chocolate Uk)

3pm 6 Fundamentals of great social media management ( Julia Monro, Head of social media and PR at Pret a Manger)

4pm Brand friend forever (Sarah Mansfield, Uk Media Director for Unilever)

Thursday:

10am Creating power brands to stand out from the crowd (Ed Pilkington, Marketing and Innovation Director at Diageo)

11am Getting the X factor in Mobile (Nick Dutch, Head of digital at Domino’s)

12am Building great client agency relationships (Andy Portsmouth, Vision Express and John Owen, Dare)

1pm Ten latest trends in website and user experience  ( Jamers Cherkoff, Course Director at CIM)

2pm Stories aren’t just for kids! (Bernadette Andrietti, VP and Marketing Director at Intel)

3pm Bringing the customer into the boardroom (Amanda Mackenzie, CMO of Aviva)

4pm Engage 6-24 million visitors online per week (Simon Swan, Head of marketing at the Met Office)

If your still with me at this point you’re doing well! But what I hope I have achieved, is a list of conferences that are both relevant to my current situation at Bridgnorth Aluminium (Such as Branding and ROI) as well as visiting talks regards agencies, social media trends etc, as this is where I wish to work in the future. From my perspective, I am most looking forward to the conference regarding client-agency relationships, as I have worked both with and for an agency, so Andy and Johns views will be fascinating.

I will be tweeting throughout the day, and attempting to summarise each talk within the 15 minute breaks in between them, but If I don’t, it’s because I’m drinking Relentless or stressing about where I should be next. All that I can confirm is that I will have a large notepad with me so there will be some comprehensive blogging going on after both days.

This is my first experience of such event and I seriously cannot wait for it to start so if you are interested in my views during the event follow my twitter at: @__jamesellis__ . Also look out for my swanky badge! I wish it didn’t have the Intern bit on it though, what a mistake that was. I could have gotten away with being the marketing director or even the CEO!

Only 7 days to go! Best get booking a ridiculously expensive train journey!

James

 

 

 

My Digital Marketing Agency Experience

I am currently on my Year In industry as part of my 4 year Business Management degree at the University of Birmingham. As I wanted to stay local to home, and within the Birmingham area, there weren’t that many marketing positions available however I managed to secure an Account Managers role at a rapidly growing Agency on the outskirts of Stourbridge.

I really did think that this was my chance to prove to myself that this is the industry I want to be in, combining both my Degree and personal interests in the process. Yet it’s not all that simple!

I started the job and all the employees were so accommodating, except one, the owner! Although he had interviewed me and offered me the job straight away, it seemed as though circumstances had changed, and the company I thought I was joining had vanished.

The first two weeks of the internship were amazing! I interviewed a Managing Director of a large PR agency, as well as attending video shoots for a large Birmingham based auctioneer’s. Yet whilst this was so promising, back in the office it seemed as though there were problems and we as employees weren’t being told about them.

When I joined, I was trained by the current intern who was an incredible character, and by the sounds of it, she had kept the ship above-board in the time she was there. I was replacing this intern, along with another intern who would join me as a second account manager. The team was therefore 11 strong at this point, and it seemed like a great basis for an agency to work.

What was however concerning , was the amount of existing web development work the agency had taken on to re-do in a new format. This meant that the projects that were generating a constant cash flow, were not being fulfilled as the majority of the working days were taken up on amendments of prior mistakes. Without this cash flow being generated, it was inevitable but not obvious that the business would begin to suffer, and this would come in the form of employees.

So at the end of month one, in the style that resembled Sir Alan Sugar, the owner told myself and three other employees that we could not be kept on, as our wages could not be paid. This shock of  “what the hell do I do next”, could have resulted in me returning to University and graduating in 2015. But I had set my mind on a year of experience, that would differentiate me from the next candidate and I immediately spoke to a local organisation which I had a contact with, and who had already offered me a role 2 months before. In the space of 4 days, I had lost a job, and gained another one at a bigger and more secure firm, with a greater wage and that was closer to my home. Although it did mean that my marketing aspirations for the year were somewhat extinguished, as I agreed a role in dreaded FINANCE!

My role has however involved working with the sales and marketing team at my organisation and offering my experience of marketing agencies to them. I now have a small-scale project that I have been tasked with, and this involves liaising with a digital marketing agency. So if you like, I have gone full circle. I have felt what it is like working for an agency, and now I am experiencing what it is like to work with an agency. On first glances, it seems that working with an agency is easier than working for one, however I still so very dearly desire a job at a marketing agency, so that I can prove myself in that environment.

You could say that I have the same unfinished business that the Dutch National football team had, except they’ve just finished it! I still believe I have unfinished business within the creative industry, unfinished business that hasn’t even started yet!

James