In this series on managing the digital revolution, Ari Aronson and Stephan Argent collect insights from both the agency and the brand sides of the street.
This week, Marketing contributor Ari Aronson reaches out to Anomaly president and CEO Franke Rodriguez CEO to get an idea how the agency is navigating its way through the digital marketing revolution.
We’ve seen a shift from stand-alone digital agencies to a more integrated agency offering. How has digital impacted your org chart and agency offering? Is digital a separate P&L?
Digital is not separate and we only run a single P&L. Given that we started the company with the specific intent to be a solutions-oriented agency driven by progressive thinking and with an innovative approach, digital has always informed the types of people we hire and the type of work we make. I guess the most pronounced and recent impact digital has had on the org chart is the number of community managers and social media strategists we have to hire (in fact, we’re looking for three more right now – do you know anyone really good?)
As far as our offering, digital has forced us to continue to push the boundaries of what we can make in-house and how quickly we can make it. 7th Floor, our in-house studio, is filled with tinkerers, gadgeteers, and swiss-army-knife MacGyver types who 3D print, prototype, sew, build and shoot things at the speed of sound. It’s pretty exciting.
What’s your vision for the future of digital in your agency?
To continue attracting and retaining world-class talent — people who think fluidly across channels with a desire to crack big ideas first, and then bring them to life where they make the most sense for consumers. Digital will be like oxygen for an agency — impossible to exist without it permeating everything.
What are the unique and creative ways digital is impacting traditional mass work?
I think a lot of traditional mass work today is digital and vice-versa. For example, we did a film for Johnnie Walker called “The Gentlemen’s Wager” with Jude Law. It was big, it was bold, it was beautiful and it was long (over six minutes). It’s gotten over 20 million views online and linked to a fashion website where viewers could purchase various luxury items featured in the film. That’s mass and digital isn’t it?
We shot a Super Bowl commercial for Budweiser a few years ago called “Flash Fans” which was named the Greatest Hockey Commercial of All Time by Sports Illustrated. Here’s the thing though, it only played on TV once and it’s lived online in the digital space ever since and that is where nearly everyone experienced it.
Are clients open or cautious when it comes to pushing digital boundaries?
It really depends on the client. I find in 2015 nearly every client — certainly the ones we talk to and work with — know they need to push the boundaries in order to drive real engagement with consumers. And digital is a great space to do that. In Canada specifically, budgets are tighter, dollars have to go further and results are becoming increasingly more important. To that end, given digital solutions often allow for quicker speed-to-market and tend to be more measurable than other mediums, it’s a really great place to start and so we find our clients are very open to that.
What advice do you have for senior marketers when it comes to getting the most out of their traditional and digital agency partners?
I’d start by challenging all clients to step back and really consider whether you need both a “traditional” agency as well as a “digital” agency. We tend to believe that unless it’s a juggernaut client with incredibly large budgets operating in a specialized category, a single progressive agency — positioned well and treated as a partner — is a much better option.
In the U.S., given the population size and the scale of marketing budgets, often a few agencies are essential for big brands and big clients, but in Canada I don’t think that should be the default.
How can clients help your agency do even better work for them?
Trust your agencies and treat them like partners. Share equally in both the successes and in the failures. Recognize that as clients, you get out what you put in.
Let me be more pointed for a second please… Expecting world-class, category-leading work from your agency on a shoe-string budget and against accelerated timelines based on an uninspiring brief, followed by vague feedback and underpinned by a lack of clarity around what the real business problem is doesn’t work. It will never work. There’s an old saying that clients get the work they deserve and there’s more than a germ of truth in it.
Three words that describe your agency culture.
Ambitious. Collaborative. Loud.
We’re a team of international misfits, united by an almost idealistic ambition to continually raise the bar in Canada for our clients and for ourselves. We want to create things no one has created before and in doing so change people’s perceptions of what an agency looks like, acts like and what an agency can do or make.
Ari Aronson is founder of Ari Agency, a boutique executive recruitment agency specializing in digital
