John Hingley, CEO, Andiamo Systems

MM
Not just a blank slate, but a completely different mindset.

JH
Exactly. In some ways, like me with my experience. They’ve seen the mistakes in agencies. They’ve seen the good things. I think they know when to zig and when to zag much better than they ever have in their careers. They also have the flexibility all the way up.

This is a company where the president of the company is the Number 1 believer in the use of, importance of and measurement of social media. So it’s coming all the way from the top down. The people he’s brought on are as enthusiastic and passionate about social media as he is.

It’s more of a cultural phenomenon and an organizational one than anything else. So, clear lines of responsibility and a sharing type of environment that doesn’t exist in a lot of traditional agencies. That’s the biggest difference.

I had a boutique agency. I wasn’t a WPP or a Publicis or anything like that. But knowing many, many people in companies like that, I think that the best chance they have of achieving what you mentioned-a more global understanding and use of this data to do better media planning-would be to either start a new group, focused just on that, or acquire a company that already has that as part of its culture.

MM
That’s the big argument that’s going on right now. Right?

A lot of the mainstream agencies have a print-and-broadcast body, and they’ve got a digital arm. Right? The conversation is, should you have a digital body with a print-and-broadcast arm. Right?

JH
Exactly.

MM
This actually reminds me-eerily-of how television disrupted the agency business in the ’60s. Prior to the ’60s and prior to the mass-adoption of television, you had large, old-line agencies-BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicon. They’d been around really from the automotive industry and/or the packaged goods industries that grew up in the 1910’s and 1920s. They were primarily a print shop. They did print, magazine, glossy 4-color display ads, newspaper ads-with a little bit of outdoor and a little bit of in-store packaging. But primarily, they were print shops.

TV came along and it completely disrupted the marketing value proposition. About a third of those old mainline agencies made the transition. We still know them today as Ogilvy-Mather, BBDO and so on.

About a third of the agencies retreated back into becoming strong shops for regional retail chains. Leo Burnett would be a great example of just somebody that “got” TV. Right? They made it their culture. Really, to say, “We are going to build brands around broadcast spots and great storytelling.”

We’re seeing that same kind of disruption today. There’ll be about a third of the mainline agencies that make the shift. And a couple of those are going to be probably Publicis and WPP. They really get the notion of a digital corpus. They get the notion of a digital services platform.

Publicis is most remarkable in that their CIO is driving a Six-Sigma-like methodology into all of their IT services. It’s called, “CMMI.” Capabilities Model Integration.

It’s the same process methodology that all of the Indian outsourcing firms use to deliver their enterprise solutions. That allows companies like KATA consulting services to make the outrageous-but nonetheless substantiated-claim that we can deliver ERP to global enterprises on time, at budget, 96.4% of the time.

That’s really a really rigorous management process control framework. Those agencies-the Publicis and WPPs are probably going to make the change. That really calls attention to the fact that a certain number of these mainline agencies today are simply not going to make the transition. They’re not going to give up their print-and-broadcast core, and shift basically to a fast-cycle, analysis-driven methodology that we’ve been talking about today.

There’ll be another third, 5 years from now, that will just kind of rocket out of nowhere. Like AltThinking. Companies like that will be the next Leo Burnetts of the Web 2.0 world.

This calls attention to something that you and I were again alluding to or getting into a little bit earlier-in terms of the dubious tenure of many CMOs today. Specifically, many CMOs today do not get digital interactive. Nor do they get social media. They just don’t. It’s not in their body. They haven’t had experiences of it and so on.

That suggests that over the short-term of this next 2 or 3 years there’s going to be a career fast track to a senior director or a vice-president of interactive or a vice-president of social media that’s a function of all of these good analytics that drive the ideation process. That drive the voice of the brand through a series of soft launches. It will ultimately have the data by which to optimize the entire media mix. It will be able to think through the execution of a strategy as an analysis-driven engagement.

Can you speak to the notion of the career track that social media analysis now starts to light up and/or open up?

JH
First off, just over the past year, go to LinkedIn or ZoomInfo and do a search on “job title” Including social media.A year ago, if you would’ve gone in and done a search on peoples’ job titles with social media as part of their title, I can almost guarantee you’d've gotten a handful of matches at best. There just wasn’t any type of sole responsibility or authority. Now, social media planning, social media evangelist, social media marketing director, etcetera are all very hot positions in more forward-looking companies big and small.

If you go do that search now, actually “Social Media Manager or Director of Social Media” is a pretty popular title.

That’s a really telling shift. I don’t think this is a passing fad. I’m not a big fan, overall, of too many C titles. Like Chief Revenue Officer, Chief This Officer. Chief That. I think some of those were born out of the dot-com era.

But when I see as many social media analysts and social media evangelists-just the breadth of titles and the number of folks that have that-not just as part of their responsibility, but their sole responsibility due to that job title… It’s actually staggering.

That means it’s turning from a part-time hobby to a crucial element of the business. I believe that positions people that are at the forefront of this space as being uniquely qualified. As you mentioned, in a very fast-track fashion. Maybe being at one firm or agency for a couple or three years, and probably leaving that company when they get opportunities 2 or 3 levels up in a different company-just by virtue of having that much focused experience and capability under their belt.

MM
If I was looking to hire a “Social Media Manager”, tell me what I should look for in terms of experiences and capabilities. What should their résumé look like?

JH
Good question.

I do think that experience at either an interactive agency or experience with work at the client or brand level-at the VP level-being very involved in interactive marketing would be key. I’ve seen that you’ve got your print people and you’ve got your television people. You’ve got your this people and that people.

Folks that actually come from and have exhibited experience and skills on the interactive side will come into the picture with a much greater understanding of at least the potential uses of using social media analysis to help drive multichannel promotion. Also, just the knowledge of, “Hey,here’s how we can leverage Facebook for this promotion.” So it’s also practical uses of social media to drive market awareness and campaign impact in an ongoing fashion.

That’s something that you brought up a bit ago that I didn’t touch on. There’s the short-term focus versus the longer-term. “What is word-of-mouth and how is word-of-mouth around your brand over the long-term?” versus just the little spike that you used to get after a TV commercial or a radio spot or whatever it might be. So, interactive marketing would be a chief one for me.

Additionally, working with global brands. As you mentioned, social media knows no boundaries. It’s everywhere. Having someone with true global brand experience.

Also, and this may be a bit biased, but I do believe that folks I’ve seen actually make some of the best use of this data, at least-understanding the data-do have some direct marketing or database marketing experience…how to actually put the data to effective use, and drive measurable results.