Stephen Brown thinks the marketing industry is slipping when it comes to accountability. He wants to make sure his agency doesn’t do the same.
Brown, president of Toronto-based Fuse Marketing Group, said while the digital communications agency has always played in the results space, “we haven’t hung our hat as much as I feel we need to… I want to up Fuse’s focus on accountability.”
So, with Fuse’s 10-year anniversary approaching in Jan. 2013, Brown wanted to get more narrowly focused on delivering actual results to clients to be ready for the next 10 years.
While Fuse is an integrated marketing company, more than half of its business is digital, so Brown said it has the capacity to measure and quantify the effectiveness of its work.
“The value I can offer my clients is a little less ‘Hey, isn’t this a cool idea?’ versus ‘This is an idea that’s actually going to deliver the leads or sales or traffic you need.’”
This mindset is conveyed in Fuse’s new positioning statement, “Reimagine Results,” created by the agency’s in-house creative department. The rebrand also includes a new logo, which was designed by the Toronto-based AmoebaCorp. “It’s a new Fuse,” said Brown. “I wanted a new face as well as a new mantra, a new approach and a new attitude.”
The agency’s management team also outlined 10 new key points of differentiation as part of the rebranding. They include “to be different,” “to have an opinion” and “to dare to take chances.”
To that last point, the shop took the somewhat bold step of issuing a “call to results” e-mail to more than 400 clients, business prospects, industry contacts at other agencies, suppliers and vendors. The e-mail asked recipients to share one of their business challenges and the results they want. Fuse will select one entry and execute an integrated campaign for free to hit the submitter’s goals.
The process will be documented from start to finish to monitor the agency’s solutions process with the focus on delivering – you guessed it – tangible results.
The challenge is accepting applicants until April 5, and Brown said last week that Fuse already had three good contenders from which to choose.
Is he nervous about this experiment in transparency and putting the agency’s reputation on the line? It’s more of an uncomfortable feeling, he said, but one that the agency needs. “The energy of taking more risks is fundamental to making this brand shift happen,” said Brown. “We’ve done great work, but we need more bravado and risk is part of that. So I’m happy to take the risk.”
