In a continution of our effort to see what smaller marketing agencies are saying about the Publicis/Omnicom merger, we asked MD of marketing agency Incite, Kristian Gough what he thought about the upcoming move and how he saw it affecting the industry.

The Publicis Omnicom Group will boast a forecasted £23 billion in share value and 40% of the global advertising market if regulators approve it. Big deal.

However, the risks of the large merger are easily translated into advantages for independent advertising and marketing agencies. For example, the complicated process of orchestrating a merger can be a cause for concern for clients who will be anxious to avoid any negligence of their brand’s needs during the process. Incite found new business potential in the following problems:

Problem #1 – Bigger is not better

Ask the experts. See what the smaller marketing agencies are saying...

The merger between advertising agency giants Publicis and Omincom is one of the biggest happenings in the industry for decades. We asked three MDs of smaller marketing agencies what they thought the impact would be for clients and how the landscape could change.

Jonathon Palmer is the Commercial Director of digital marketing agency, Blueleaf.

Jamie Mollart, Director of Advertising and Marketing Agency, Rock Kitchen Harris, is calling all creative folk to arms in a world of cold, hard stats.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently; how does an advertising or marketing agency maintain the focus on creativity in a world of monitoring?

We've pilfered a great bit of content from the Guardian that we thought was too good not to share.

How do you go about briefing your marketing agency? Are you committing some deadly briefing sins? Improve your briefs with George Foster, who, as Founder and Creative Director of Integrated Design and Marketing Agency, Gravitas spills the beans.

People often ask me how to brief a design or marketing agency.

Last week, we asked a select group of marketing agencies to comment on the Google AdWords Campaign update and how they forsaw it affecting the industry.

Here, Neil Brown, Head of Search and Conversion at Comms and Marketing Agency, Cogent Elliott shares his views on the changes.

Experiential marketing has claimed its rightful place at the top table. This should be celebrated says Nick Adams, M.D of Experiential Marketing Agency of the Year, Sense London.

Just by looking at how certain industry awards are dominated by experiential campaigns, it’s clear to see how marketers from all sectors have embraced the once, relatively new, technique.

Whether as a marketing agency's lead discipline in an integrated plan, or vital supporting component, experiential can being applied at every key stage of a brand’s development.

Many positive characteristics have fuelled this growth, but two aspects are especially relevant in today’s trading conditions:

1. The convergence of experiential with digital techniques is providing another means of ongoing consumer dialogue and further amplifying a live experience. This has in part, helped draw a line through the scepticism that experiential can’t reach the masses.
2. The capability to be reactive, that is to say, getting impactful activities out to market in the shortest of lead times which in today’s trading environment has become increasingly important.

But how? Will the steady growth in investment continue and how can we defend our position in a landscape which sees marketing agencies and marketers constantly bombarded with new and different consumer touch-points?

Education remains an ongoing priority and there’s still a real need to get brand owners to reappraise experiential’s role. All too often I hear about clients ignoring the most robust and impressive campaign results, in favour of a comfort factor provided by a more traditional, but less effective channel.

But a much broader challenge is how all experiential practitioners package our discipline in terms of what it can deliver, in an accessible way to brands and media planners alike, if it’s they who are recommending which channels will fulfil a client’s objectives.

Keeping it fresh

Let’s never lose the creativity and excitement of such a high energy and impactful discipline, but at the same time we must ensure we never trade on this alone and put tangible results at the forefront of how experiential is planned by marketing agencies and sold to clients.

Much like a catchy jingle doesn’t secure budget for a radio Ad, brand owners decision’s mustn’t be clouded by a desire to see their brand on the proverbial ‘live stage’, however bold, engaging and tempting the marketing agency’s presentation. I frequently meet or hear about brands excited about trying a new experiential strategy without fully understanding the commercial reasons for their decision. Tempting as it may be for agencies to spend the budget, long term growth of our sector has to come from agencies behaving with commercial responsibility and pragmatism in advising their clients.

Where next?

Take a look at digital marketing’s exponential rise and some parallels can be drawn. It’s frequently debated as to whether brand owners are investing in social for the right reasons, based on clear objectives and measured KPI’s or a simple desire to marginally increase their Facebook likes.

My own belief is that some social media investment is a result of the band wagon analogy but as the plethora of digital opportunities evolve, those succeeding long-term will be able to provide clear connections between consumer engagement online and hard, measurable commercial gains - offline.

Experiential marketing has to leverage its maturity and become more strategic in applying our trade, offering clients greater understanding of what a campaign will achieve and if and how this fits with brand challenges and objectives.

So from the experiential marketing agency perspective, there’s never been a more important time to scrutinise a brief and provide a quantifiable solution - that campaign X will drive Y incremental sales, increase key brand health scores by Y%, gain trial amongst X genuine new users, or whatever the hierarchy of objectives.

Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects are recording over a 450% increase in qualified leads, says Garry Davis of Digital Marketing Agency, Grow Online Marketing, specialists in Marketing Automation. Here he tells you all you need to know.

Marketing automation can bring a host of significant benefits to organisations keen to target their marketing more accurately – but too many companies don’t yet know about this exciting new technology.

What is the definition of marketing automation?

Marketing automation is a term for software that is used to capture the data of the people who interact with your brand online and then nurtures those leads until they are ready to be converted into sales.

The way marketing automation software works is to record the email addresses of everybody who fills out a form on your website and then by ‘tagging’ all their other activity, from the pages they look at on your website through to their engagement with your social media profiles. Using this technology, marketing automation software can build a more comprehensive picture than ever before of how people interact with your brand. It’s the next step that makes marketing automation software so exciting, however, because it sends follow-up content to those leads based on their individual habits.

For example: a travel agency sends an email to its database containing a pdf attachment of its latest brochure. Joe Smith is one of the recipients and clicks through to open the brochure. He’s interested in holidays in Greece, so he goes straight to that page. He has previously visited the travel agency’s Facebook page. The software has tracked all of this, and is able to send him automatic follow-up messages containing offers on holidays in Greece, and incentives to become a fan on Facebook. The travel agency is communicating with Joe based on his actions and preferences, thus achieving a unique balance between inbound and outbound marketing.

Are you one of the advertising or marketing agencies whose Adwords dashboard has been cluttered with notifications of the impending Google update?

Perhaps some of the 6 million already upgraded legacy campaigns (equating to almost 75% of all active campaigns) belonged to your advertising or marketing agency.