New business agency blog

There was a feature in Campaign’s Media section on 13th November which exactly mirrors our own experience of the market during 2009, particularly in recent months.

Cormac Loughran and Euan Hudghton, the new biz head honchos of Mediaedge:cia and PHD respectively are musing about the unprecedented number of new business opportunities that have come about as a result of the economic downturn (Cormac states that almost 10% of the market is at pitch).

And it’s not just the media planning/buying discipline that’s seeing this trend – it’s across the board. The logic to this is simple but obvious; in a tough economic environment all brand owners need to achieve the maximum value from their marketing budgets. They want fresh ideas and a streamlined service and they know that there will be plenty of agencies falling over themselves for the opportunity to prove they can deliver this.

Agencies that have rested on their laurels by relying on incumbent accounts may find themselves in a very precarious position going into next year while those with a coherent new business strategy will be reaping the rewards – and this is the message we’ve been sending out all year.

Did anyone see the article in ‘Marketing’ (dated 11th November 2009) on field marketing?

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read the article, in summary it said that brands with tighter promotional budgets were now turning to field marketing to get more of an emotional connection with their consumers. In particular, smaller brands that may not have the budgets to launch large-scale TV advertising campaigns are really jumping on the bandwagon. This means more and more briefs are up for grabs in this area than ever before.

As a new business agency that has had great success with representing field marketing/experiential agencies, this article ties in nicely with what we are hearing from decision makers at the current time. For them, field marketing is all about making noise without the need for costly advertising budgets and our clients do nicely out of this!

Experiential marketing is now everywhere. In a variety of industries, companies have moved away from traditional ‘features’ marketing toward creating experience for their customers. In an ever changing, demanding world, consumers dictate the way their favourite brands relate to them. With this in mind, the pressure mounts for brands to come up with more innovative ideas in a bid to drive sales.

Has anyone got any firsthand experience of this either from the brand side or agency side? What are you finding?

Most people would agree that selling is an art, referring to “the art of persuasion” or “the gift of the gab”. At Alchemis we wouldn’t dispute this. We provide our staff with the best sales coaching in the business but know they have to be made of the right stuff in the first place, which is why we only employ experienced sales people.

Selling is also a science. Since the turn of the millennium we have made over 1 million calls (setting over 14,000 quality appointments in the process) to every conceivable type of company or organisation on behalf of our clients, who in turn range from big to small, new to established and cover every conceivable marketing discipline.

Not surprisingly we have learned a thing or two about how to generate new business wins for our clients along the way. This volume of activity alone would not make us experts though, it’s through the appliance of science to the vast amount data we have at our fingertips that we have been able to really benefit our clients.

We think that a new business agency should have the combination of experience and software to ensure they arrive at the best campaign strategy and direction for clients from the start, have the diagnostic tools to identify where change is needed if a campaign’s success does fall below expectations and possess the insight to put a campaign back on track quickly.

Every New Business Agency will offer a client the chance to spend a little to win a lot. If it were really that simple it would be a no-brainer for agency owners but where there’s chance there’s risk. At Alchemis we think that 23 years spent helping marketing agencies grow through good times and bad, accumulating a vast amount of knowledge and experience along the way means we leave less to chance than our peers.