These are the STL blog notes from a talk I gave at the Telco 2.0 event in London:

We kicked off the workshop with a presentation from the new customer group: the advertiser. John Baker, Managing Partner at Ogilvy Interactive, highlighted several of the factors which would drive adoption of the digital and, especially, mobile channels from the advertiser’s perspective:

1. Cost – make it cheap (and simple) to advertise
2. Demonstrate audience growth
3. Illustrate customer responsiveness through this channel – i.e. show a clear ROI to advertisers
4. Be patient! There is a need for cultural change amongst advertisers. John highlighted this as a key barrier from the demand side for on-line and mobile advertising because brand managers and media buyers are measured and rewarded using metrics, such as Customer Reach, which do not easily square with the digital channels (where the focus is on engagement and interactivity).

Responding to these, John then suggested four areas of focus for Telco operators to add value:

1. Make it easy to buy advertising – simple, low-cost and standardised
2. Maintain growth of the on-line and mobile channels. In many markets this is less about adoption now (where markets are fully saturated for basic internet and mobile services) and more about HOW customers are using their PC and mobile. For example, growing content, entertainment and transactional services (e.g. mobile as a payment tool) is important.
3. Produce credible research demonstrating the effectiveness of these channels.
4. Educate the advertising community. It is not sufficient for operators to rely on a build-and-they-will-come approach. Instead operators need to educate advertisers on the benefits of their channel AND work together with advertisers to jointly develop solutions. The customer needs to be part of the development process.

Creatives coming in to interview always talk about “their book” or “their portfolio” — and can talk for 5 minutes or 5 hours on each piece.  They take pride and seeing as this is a big part of what we sell, they should.  I’ve always thought account people and strategist should maintain a book as well.  Even useless overhead locked off on executive row or in the ivory tower should has their personal projects.  Everyone at an agency needs to be attached to and proud of the work.

Here are a couple of campaigns I’ve been involved in at Ogilvy that I like and why.

Brand Republic Redesign
In my first week at Ogilvy I was handed a folder by Annette King as part of her transition notes – Haymarket’s brand republic was looking for an agency to help redesign their magazines / content portal. Great opportunity and high profile project.   After proving we were the right agency and working through that we couldn’t do the job for free, we kicked off a classic front-end site redesign with strategy, IA, design and functional specification for the Haymarket team to build.

I love the project because we were able to get a lot of community features integrated into the content of the site, got to redesign the brandmark, and came up with some fun interface ideas to allow quick browsing of content.

Brand Republic – Before

Brand Republic – After

Castrol Index

This Castrol Index site came about as Castrol realized they were spending a big sum on the Euro 2008 sponsorship and wanted to make more of it then supplying banners at the events.