For those member of my family that are still wrestling with what exactly digital advertising is, this is a good dose of our current thinking.  The panel session focused on measurement and the audience was mostly publishers so I talked to that, but also managed to bring in some of the Brand Journalism case studies and Nightlife Exchange.

Thank you Vizu and Scribemedia for the invite to the panel.

http://www.scribemedia.org/2011/07/12/creative-agency-as-business-consultant/

If you feel like giving up a whole 30 minutes and hear the agency perspective on the shift of advertising dollars from traditional to digital channels, here is yet another BIG chance!

Panel was moderated by Dan Beltramo, CEO & Founder of Vizu and consisted of
Paul Gunning, CEO Tribal DDB,
Carl Fremont, EVP / Global Media Director at Digitas, and
myself (sitting in for Bob Jeffrey).

Interesting highlights from my perspective?

• It is harder to move marketers from TV spending then print or radio part because it works and part because it is fun for marketers
• Local can replace print for retailers that need to cover specific metropolitan areas
• Media is all being measured and recession has forced ROI conversations about each media channel
• New IAB units are driving excitement clientside and in the industry.  Real campaigns versus simple banner ads
• Innovative multichannel ideas throw the whole media plan up in the air

Here is the archived stream: http://www.livestream.com/digiday/video?clipId=pla_1980fdee-ea17-4b7a-87e9-636bb512d30e

Great agencies win alike?  Just got a MediaPost email and noticed I recognized two agencies listed. 

Revenue cures all ills.  Well done to all of the teams!

It is amazing how quickly time can speed up when you start a new job.  New people, new patterns, new ways of working all pile up to speed away weeks.

So at anyrate here is the announcement on the jwt.com site. Very Exciting.   John Baker, President Client Services, JWT NY

More Info

John joined JWT in late 2010 as President, Client Services for JWT
New York. He is a respected interactive agency veteran who started in
digital marketing in 1995 at a little start-up agency called Modem Media
and has worked in both London and New York.

Amazed by the
choices technology gives marketers, John has led digital strategy for
clients such Barnes & Noble, Hertz, Unilever and Royal Mail, and has
worked with start-ups ranging from boo.com to BzzAgent. He helped build
Organic’s New York and London offices, was a jury member at Cannes, and
led digital in direct marketing agencies Proximity and OgilvyOne. Most
recently he built the iris Digital team in London and was part of the
management team for iris in the Americas.

A fairly avid science
fiction fan, John likes to remind people to pay attention to the near
future fiction out there, it tends to come true!

Contact

john.baker@jwt.com

Websites

• 
  MediaPostA great source of internet news with really well curated update emails.

• 
  TechcrunchThe easiest way to keep up with the internet startup culture.

• 
  Accelerating IntelligenceThe site of Ray Kurzweil and his Turing Test challenger Ramona.

For the last few years we’ve been working with Coty across various brands, but most recently with Rimmel helping build awareness for their products in the US.  “Get the London Look” is the international tag line, so we went out and found 10 active video bloggers and asked them to interpret the London Look for their US audiences.

Rimmel London wanted to raise its awareness in the US using online. It worked with marketing agency Iris, which partnered with youth network Ruby Pseudo to find ten American brand ambassadors.

“Developing a social media presence has provided us with a forum to have a direct dialogue with our customers,” says Rick Goldberg, VP of US marketing at Rimmel London. “To truly connect, though, we need to earn the attention of our audience with the content we put out there. It’s not enough simply to have a presence. We know they don’t always want to hear from us alone, so we engaged ten creative, fascinating women to provide their
thoughts on trends, London, cosmetics and creativity.”

The girls have been set ten challenges over ten months, finishing on Rimmel London’s tenth anniversary in the US. “We can link the content they post in their social worlds through Rimmel London’s social media profiles, plus content from rimmellondon.com,” says Goldberg.

he campaign more than doubled the number of mentions of Rimmel London online within three months, increased the number of monthly visits to rimmellondon.com from 32,674 to 50,639, and increased the site’s number of monthly unique visitors from 27,943 to 45,108.

iris unveils new regional management structure for Americas

May 12th, 2010

iris has announced the introduction of a new regional management structure for the Americas, as it looks to strengthen its capability across North and South America.

The team, led by iris’ joint global CEO, Stewart Shanley, will see key figureheads assume new regional roles as part of the restructure in addition to senior management relocating from the London office.

The new regional management team for the Americas, who will all take up their roles immediately, will be as follows: Stewart Shanley, joint global CEO and co-founder of iris; Sean Reynolds, joint global creative director; John Baker, who will relocate from the UK to take up the role of regional digital director; Ben Essen, who will also relocate from the UK to become head of planning; Matt McRoberts, head of business development and Zeyd Rahman, new business director.

Shanley said: “Since the launch of our first US office in 2005, we’ve focused on building our capability and client base. This is a market that is driven by scale, stance and distribution and the benefit of being independent is that we can invest in the geographies and disciplines where our clients need us the most. We now have full service offices in New York, Atlanta, Portland and Miami which has helped us attract clients like Coca-Cola, adidas, Coty and Sony Ericsson.

“The new team sees us combine some of our best-in-class talent from across the network in areas such as digital, planning, creative and general management. This core group of experts will oversee their discipline across the region, ensuring that all our US clients have the benefit of this top quality talent collaborating on their campaigns,” Shanley continued.

Regionally, the agency has offices in New York, Portland, Atlanta and Miami, the latter of which services Latin America. An immediate focus for the new team will be maximising opportunities around iris’ latest offering – the fast-growing Atlanta office, which works with some of iris’ key clients, which include Sony Ericsson, Coca-Cola and InterContinental Hotels Group. The Miami office is fast becoming known as a creative hotshop for South America thanks to recent campaigns like the Johnnie Walker responsible drinking TV commercial starring cricket legend Viv Richards.

iris, which has 17 offices in 10 countries, made the decision to decentralise the global management structure and implement the new organisation in order to help the agency grow in four key territories – Europe, America, China and Asia.

Of the restructure, Ian Millner, joint CEO and co-founder of iris, said: “To stay successful, you have to change as you grow. The new regional management structure will help us expand more quickly and drive the development of marketing services as we look to establish the agency model of the future which is smarter, faster and more flexible in delivering true integration.”

iris was set up by Millner and Shanley in 1999 as an alternative to the traditional networks. Today, the agency provides fully integrated solutions for clients through its specialist offerings spanning advertising, digital, sponsorship, experiential, PR, DM, CRM and strategic consultancy services.

iris’ American operation works with blue-chip clients including Sony Ericsson, Sony, adidas, Hertz, Office Depot, Coty Inc and Time Warner, and was ranked 5th in the large business category of Crain’s Best Places to Work 2008.

Great little piece of PR work by one of our strategists.  It is a great campaign and innovative approach.  Well done Luis and the whole strategy team.

Iris Digital tries no advertising conversation-only strategy

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 26-Mar-09, 12:20

LONDON – Iris Digital is experimenting with bypassing traditional media buying and using only social media conversations to promote a competition for football fans to win tickets to a Sony Ericsson VIP party.

The strategy involves the agency seeking people out on Facebook, Twitter and football forums and blogs instead of buying targeted media.

more

Was asked to write a piece for Revolution – which has always been one of my favorite interactive industry magazines.  Ironically the article isn't available online, so I've put up images of the scans below and pulled out my piece. Great to get iris Digital in great company and see other names that have been in the UK biz for a while.  Though adding the ages seems a little unfair — since I met a good few of them 10 years ago I now know they were in fact 12 when they started. Just dug up some of my original comments as well.  It is too bad the last question didn't make the magazine — although I should say Kim Benjamin did a great job. Here it is:

Digital is not famous for having people in positions of power, making hard-nosed business decisions. How do you see this changing?

Digital is still a relatively young specialism so it isn’t surprising that high profile digital leaders aren’t in the headline grabbing positions of power — unless you are talking about digital businesses like eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Facebook or Google. That said these leaders’ decisions get quite a bit of attention and impact both the digital and traditional business significantly. Things will change as the current generation of business leaders moves on. Today we’re in the position where every business says “digital is important”  and “digital is at the heart of our business” but like their advertising it is just a claim.  Very soon we will see a new generation of leaders that understand like Google it isn’t what you say, but what you do.  Or that like eBay network effects are very significant and not just a buzz word. And that the functionality on your website — a software development challenge — can make your business like Amazon. It is so much more then understanding how to make computers do interesting things, it is understanding a new approach to marketing and communication.

Yes, our very own George has made front page of Marketing, the client marketing industry paper.  I think it was both a front page quote and follow up article the next week.

Technorati Tags: iris Digital, George Nimeh

Matt Van Hoven over at AgencySpy gets to see a lot of agencies and definitely spends a lot of time thinking about them and writing about them.  As much as you can’t say it is high-brow journalism, it is entertaining.  And can be insightful.

Take this comment from his recent visit to R/GA, one of the most successful agencies (of any kind) in the last 5 years.

mediabistro.com: AgencySpy
“Here’s how it’s not a traditional shop. Technology plays a greater role here than we realized, typified by “technical creatives” who sit in the same space as the writers, artists and whatnot. Ideas come from everywhere, including the people who know how gadgets work. No writer/art director silos here.”

The key point here is that producing strong digital work requires more the smart creatives thinking about good digital ideas — it reaquires a structural change in how traditional agencies operate and a much stronger appreciation for the technical staff they currently keep in the basement next to the print production team.