Become the Hottest Agency In Town
What's truly unique about your agency? The services you provide? The creative you produce? The results you achieve? The awards you've won? Nah. Those things can certainly bring attention your way, but all good agencies have similar stories, so yours probably aren't that unusual. The only thing that's truly unique about your agency is its personality. And whether it's hip or not, it's the only thing that you can use to generate huge buzz, immediately.
A client of my first agency once said, “Working with Creation Chamber is like working with a bunch of robots.” As a company, our attitude was very much “Let’s get the job done and done well.” While that’s a valuable attitude (we were, after all, the hottest agency in town), we reached a point where we found it necessary to evolve by also making our services fun, engaging, educational and unique. In short, increasing our value-add. So, I spent some time drafting a basic structure for what I called our "Experience Process."
The Experience Process
Experience Marketing is a term that started gaining attention several years ago. It refers primarily to a set of practices that allow a player in an otherwise commoditized (or soon to be commoditized) market to continue to price itself above its competition by increasing the value (or perceived value) of its offerings. Web development continues to evolve into more of a commodity and that's a trend that you can buck for your agency. By making your services more of an 'experience' than a 'process,' you can alter effects of commoditization for your business.
In the brainstorming session, I introduced a concept called E³. This is a program I was taught by a previous employer, who happened to be a former CFO for Eli Lilly (one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies). The 3 Es stand for Educate, Excite and Expand and they are currently defined for us as:
» Educate
Educate customers about the Web and about maximizing the results of their projects.
» Excite
Build excitement for your services and capabilities by engaging clients in a fun and unique experience.
» Expand
Expand the opportunities for repeat business through long-term client strategy and evolution of clients' systems.
I used E³ as the backbone for our experience/process, but I relied heavily on the input of the team for ideas on how to build that strategy. The initial session was a true brainstorm (scroll to the bottom of this post to download the notes) -- everyone throwing out all ideas (good, bad, ugly) to get the juices flowing for subsequent strategy sessions. To give the team a few very basic examples of experience marketing, I offered some teasers:
- Kick-off meetings: we need to give away Creation Chamber schwagg, meet in more fun places (roof top patio, on a Frontier jet, on Invesco Field, etc… any place that will provide inspiration for the client in question), start with some warm-up games/exercises, special guests/speakers -- Paul Rudd (his sister was one of our account executives) -- more toys, food, drinks and white-boarding. The Art of Innovation (Ideo.com) is a great book on such things. And what about a Creation Chamber reality show, a la The Restaurant, Wing Nuts, American Chopper, Airline, etc.?
- We need to provide a better description of how we do what we do. Right now, our strategy with clients is "sit back and enjoy the ride… we'll let you know when you need to do something." It would be better for everyone if clients were educated on our process at the beginning, so that they understood what was waiting around the corner.
- During projects: we could spend more play time with our clients… take them to games, out for drinks, to an AMA luncheon, etc.
- End of projects: Big launch parties (again, at cool venues), great gifts, Dom Perignon, all project files delivered on DVD with a machined titanium disc case featuring our laser-etched logo.
Use Other Industries For Inspiration
Experience marketing is all around us:
- Bananas foster prepared tableside
- Hot nightclub vs. hole-in-the-wall pub
- Listening to an MP3 vs. seeing the band in concert
- Benihana
- Las Vegas
- Would you prefer to share 3 Honda Accords for a bachelor(ette) party or take a limo?
For another good example, consider Southwest Airlines. They’re known for their clever and humorous versions of the standard pre-flight announcements. “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight XXX, to YYY. To operate your seatbelt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seatbelt, and if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised. In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with two small children, decide now which one you love more."
Take every component of your process, validate that it’s effective and then convert from a task into a memorable experience.
Obviously, you can get really silly with some ideas, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Your primary objective will be to come up with ideas that enhance the quality of your process, but you can also make changes that simply increase the fun of the experience. After all, not many of your clients have jobs as interesting as yours, so the more you make their experience enjoyable, the more likely they are to spend future dollars with you. Plus, clients who have fun will tell their friends about it, and that leads to more clients for you.
Take-Aways
There are only 2 ways that you can be successful in this business:
- Produce amazing results for your clients
- Provide an amazing experience for your clients
The first requires having the right people on your team, having the right opportunities to put your team's skills to work and having a strong process. Most importantly, it can take years of such work to build a portfolio that demonstrates your agency's value.
Understanding your agency's true personality and injecting it into everything you do -- from pre-sales to post-launch (and internally) -- can be accomplished now. A great experience doesn't require 12 months of analytics after you release a site -- clients (and employees) will tell others about it the day it happens. You'll build buzz -- and more importantly, value -- immediately. And you'll be amazed at how quickly word spreads about your agency.
Downloads
Still not sure how this could actually be put into practice? Get the juices flowing by downloading the original Creation Chamber brainstorming notes my team came up with in '07 (as usual, unedited):
Experience Marketing Brainstorm Notes (60 KB)
*****
I'm curious: how have you used experience marketing to generate buzz for your operation? Chime in through the comments below!
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