There has been lot’s of discussion in the creative agency world about the impact of digital marketing and how agencies should respond.  It appears every agency from advertising networks like BBH to traditional DM shops like OgilvyOne to creative hotshops have put “Digital at the Heart of the Agency.”

Only this past May Alastair Reid reported in Campaign a reasonably balanced article about the increase in digital awards being won by traditional agencies, and brought out the classic Goodby turnaround in the US a few years ago.

But whose really been winning?

Looking at the 2008 NMA Top 100 that was just released last week, we see that Digital agencies have seen another year of solid growth — averaging 20% across the list.  In his introduction Michael Nutley also makes a balanced argument for the state of the industry.

But maybe we are being too analytical — if one uses the simple measure of headcount over the last 5 years, we can see where the growth has been and inferr that this represents shifts in revenue.

The top digital agencies have had an amazing run since 2003.  I take 2003 because it is 5 years ago and it was solidly after the collapse in 2001-2.  From ad hoc conversations I think that agencies like AKQA have gone from say 120 in 2003 to over 350 today — that is 191% growth in London alone.  Dare was probably about 60 people in 2003, and now reports having 174.

I’ll need to do more digging to get good numbers but here is a basic table I’ve pulled together from industry articles and league tables and rough memory.  It will be interesting to check in another year’s time.

They say blogs are written for the blogger — I know I’m working too much and neglecting my blog when all I have is “ego posts.” That said, if you get an ego moment might as well share it.

Marketing Direct - Power 100: Top 10 Digital DM Players

Marketing Direct’s survey of the 100 most powerful people in UK direct marketing.

With recorded pre-tax profits of almost £6m in the 12 months to March 2008, the company has achieved a lot in a short space of time, winning Digital Direct Marketing Services Supplier of the Year 2007 at the Connect Awards.

2. PETER RILEY, FOUNDER AND CREATIVE PARTNER, 20:20 GROUP

Last year, Peter Riley ranked fourth in our list of 10 digital direct power players. Since then 20:20 Group has continued to innovate, and has been rewarded for its efforts. Laughing at comments about his “healthy ego” (”Well, my Mum says it’s true …”), Riley and his group has been courted by many large agencies in recent months.

Over the past year, 20:20 has won a place on the COI roster and led the digital strategy and creative work for the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ teenage pregnancy and safe sex campaign. It also won the brief to launch the Terminator TV show on Virgin 1, while its work for PlayStation has notched up awards including a Cannes Lion and two DMA Golds. Meanwhile, Riley converted a Grade 2-listed East End church to house the company, and says he has currently got his eye on another property.

3. MARK PATRON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, RED EYE

Veteran direct marketer Mark Patron is proof that data geeks can make the best digital gurus. As CEO of online marketing company Red Eye, he is championing the integration of traditional DM principles with digital approaches. His passion for bringing measurability and accountability into the online arena was pivotal in Red Eye sales reaching £4.4m last year, up from £1.7m in 2005. Red Eye was also listed in The Sunday Times’ Tech Track 100 league table in 2007, confirming its position as one of the fastest-growing new technology companies in the UK. After 14 years at Claritas, now Acxiom, and having launched DMjobs.co.uk, Patron always has his finger in numerous pies and is described as a “master of reinvention” and a “serial entrepreneur” by peers. “He just keeps coming back for more,” says one.

4. JOHN BAKER, JOINT MANAGING DIRECTOR, IRIS DIGITAL

There is no doubt that John Baker is a heavyweight in the world of digital DM. Previously head of digital at OgilvyOne, and now joint MD of Iris Digital, his unassuming manner belies enormous industry knowledge and know-how. At OgilvyOne, Baker was a member of the management partner team that won Campaign’s Direct Agency of the Year - in large part due to its strength in digital marketing. Not content with routinely winning business from digital pure-plays, he oversaw the introduction of an email marketing group and the hiring of Skip Fedura, ex-director of European operations at Digital Impact, to lead the initiative. Baker says he was attracted by Iris’s “entrepreneurial nature” - and that he is looking forward to “big growth”.

In classic fashion in the first week you start a new job, there is a pitch.

Can’t say it was a wholly digital pitch but it was more then digital in parts.

And we won which is always great.

It was also a case of seeing the power a great copywriter can bring to a creative solution.  So often in digital agencies “creative” is thought of as “design.”  It makes sense when you think of the importance of interface and craft in good digital work, but none the less when you see a strong idea with fantastic writing it shows.

Now the real fun begins.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/790246/Iris-Worldwide-lands-20m-Hertz-Europe-account/ 

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=59978&d=258&h=262&f=3

I’ve always been impressed by the information that Dave Balter and the team at BzzAgent share through their BeeLog.

It makes sense — no confidentiality is broken and it allows people that are evaluating the company (clients, potential employees, partners) to educate themselves about their business and be smarter when working with the company. It also broadens the number of people that can give their input into what the company is doing — input which generally makes the company smarter.

It also a great tool for management — a forum for instant public recognition. Whether putting someone’s “name up in lights,” or “naming and shaming,” a company blog is a sort of a light-weight version of the more traditional atomic bomb, the press release.

Here is a great example BzzAgent did thinking about how they are working with their advisory board.

Basically the team at BzzAgent inserted a joke slide in their advisory board presentation entitled “Investor / Advisor Litigation Update.” Clearly a title that should get peoples’ attention. And of course under half noticed the slide or commented on it in their feedback to the company.

It is the bane of the world we’ve created that no one has time (or being busy has become fashionable?) and that business people don’t read, they only scan. Pretty soon we’ll need comment buttons on the bottom of e-mails and powerpoint presentations where people can indicate they actually reviewed them.

Advisors Advising

Posted by Dave Balter

August 21st, 2007

Since early 2003, BzzAgent has had an Advisory Board.

In the early days, before we had an official Corporate Board, we met a few times and we worked with a number of individuals to help us with specific projects such as patenting our WOM process and the best approach to certain partnerships. But as the company accelerated, and we’ve added board members, executives and staff, it’s been immensely difficult to utilize this group of experts. Individually, each would gladly help if we reached out, but as a whole this cluster is relatively distant. [more]

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.

• Amy Vickers
• guardian.co.uk, Friday April 20 2001 09.32 BST
• Article history

Abby Hardoon, Host Europe
Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology
Adrian Baker, DoubleClick
Alex Dale, Virgin.net
Alex Kovach, Lycos
Andrew Crane, Inweb
Andy Hobsbawn, Agency.com
Benjamin Cohen, CyberBritain
Bill Allan, Thus
Bob McNinch, Netscalibur
Brent Hoberman, Lastminute.com
Carol Dukes, ThinkNatural
Charles Nasser, Claranet
Cliff Stanford, Redbus
Danny Kelly, 365
David Gerken, Ask Jeeves
David Harby, Nokia
Derek Wyatt MP
Everton Wright, Darker Than Blue
Fiona Coughlan, Macromedia
Gary Lockton, DeepGroup
Gavin Patterson, Telewest
Geoff Sutton, MSN
Hugo Drayton, Hollinger Telegraph New Media
Jason Drummond, Virtual Internet
Jennifer Mowat, eBay
Jerry Roest, NTL
John Baker, Organic
John Pluthero, Freeserve
Jonathan Robinson, NetBenefit
Katherine Everett, BBC
Lord Cope Mark Bennett, Graphico New Media
Mark Curtis, formerly of Razorfish
Martin Turner, Peoplesound.com
Martyn Lewis, Youthnet
Michael Murphy, FT.com
Oliver Roll, Microsoft
Richard Latham, Bluewave
Rick Latham, WHSmith Online
Ricky Liversidge, Adobe
Rob Lawrence, IBM
Roger Green, Emap
Roland Perry, LINX
Shaun Johnson, Netscape Online
Simon Preston, World Online
Simon Waldman, Guardian Unlimited
Stephen Balkam, ICRA
Steve Frazier, Amazon
Steve Smith, Dresdner Kleinwort Capital
Tamir Garip, SohoLondon
Toby Robertson, e-street
Wayne Lochner, Affinity Internet
Willie Black, Nominet

ORGANIC OPENS LONDON OFFICE

San Francisco - Organic, the preeminent builder of online businesses, today announced that it has opened an office in London, to service the burgeoning European Internet market. Just as the company’s offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, Organic’s London office will offer a complete range of interactive services including e-commerce site development, strategic marketing and technology consulting, interactive design, and media planning and placement.

John Baker, previously director of strategic planning of Organic’s New York office, has been named vice president, managing director of the London office. Fred Fields, also from Organic’s New York office, has moved to London, and has been appointed to the position of senior director of operations.

One of the London office’s first clients is boo.com, a U.K.-based global sportswear retailing site that is currently the highest-valued Internet start-up in Europe. Organic will provide interactive design, front-end application development, e-commerce strategy, media buying services, and globalization of the boo.com site to launch in five European countries and in the U.S. in mid-1999, with additional markets to follow.

“London needs an experienced online business builder like Organic to help multinational companies and promising start-ups to go online,” said Ernst Malmsten, CEO of boo.com. “Working together with Organic we are building an end-to-end online business that will revolutionize the way our customers buy sportswear. It’s always a thrill working with people who ‘get it.”

Another client of Organic’s London office is Hewlett-Packard, for which Organic is creating the design and strategy for its European e-commerce initiative. “Organic has proven themselves a true partner,” says Emmanuel De Rycker, Hewlett-Packard’s European E-Business manager. “They understand our pan-European strategy and sensitivities, and their execution is flawless.”

According to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., European Internet commerce is predicted to reach 69 billion U.S. dollars by 2001.

“The European market for e-commerce is about to boom, and London has a pool of Web-experienced talent that will help us build a solid presence in the center of this flourishing e-commerce marketplace,” said Jonathan Nelson, Organic’s CEO. “Our expansion to London will enable us to service existing clients that have a presence in Europe, as well as to seek out new clients with global aspirations. In addition, we are looking to obtain and nurture European start-ups who want to develop global and local online businesses.”

Organic, London contact information: John Baker, vice president, managing director, 70 Salusbury Road, London NW6 6NU UK; Phone: 0171-644-2600.

About Organic

As a pioneer in the industry, Organic ( http://www.organic.com/ ) has been helping clients build online businesses since 1993. Its integrated structure, comprehensive capabilities, strategic insight and experience has enabled Organic to create unique and effective e-commerce and communications solutions for its clients. The company offers expertise in: e-commerce site development; strategic marketing and technology consulting; online advertising and media placement; public relations and enhanced online communications services; research services; interactive design and production services; and software development. Organic’s clients range from global brands and e-commerce category leaders such as Starbucks, Iomega, Lucent Technologies and CDnow to non-profit organizations such as Impact Online. Organic has offices in London, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.