The Art of Persuasion

The age of communities is here

2009-06-09T15:36:00.000Z

We at Yes Agency believe that communities are back – in a big way. Not the communities of old, where you used to pop round to your neighbour’s for a bag of sugar. But communities which we choose to be part of. Communities which reflect one of our many roles in life – partner, parent, friend, mentor, kick boxer, Stoke City fan, church member etc. We’re interested to see who your community is. And, how many communities you feel part of. If you have a couple of minutes, please take part in our brief survey. It should take you no longer than two minutes. We’ll publish the results for our online community to read by the end of the month...

Amanda McDonald

Memo to staff...

2009-06-09T10:14:00.000Z

Good news! We’ve been included again in the Recommended Agency Register this year.

We received extremely high marks across the board, with just one average score – for value for money!

Our highest score was in account management for which we mostly scored 100%, followed by creativity and professionalism.

More detail will be provided in the guide itself, or if we pay for advertising in the guide!

I’ll keep you posted.

Amanda

Helping to promote ethical savings

2009-05-29T14:52:00.002Z

Yes is currrently working with Nottingham Credit Union to promote their savings and loan plans to those who live or work in Nottingham. Many folk are sucked in to a downward spiral of debt with door step money lenders charging extortionate rates of interest. This often prevents their customers from ever getting out of debt. We are currently reviewing their suite of literature and are looking forward to helping to promote them over the coming months.

Becoming an Ambassador...

2009-05-29T14:24:00.002Z

This week I've been appointed as a SFEDI Ambassador. SFEDI is the organisation responsible for accrediting small business advisors. As an ambassador I'll be involved with helping to support those involved in starting or running their own business. One of the things I'll be involved with is establishing a road show event, in conjunction with the DMA, targeting small businesses to advise on direct marketing practice.

Igniting the creative spark even earlier

2009-05-15T15:18:00.003Z

Today David and I went to the launch of the Creative and Media Diploma in Stoke-on-Trent’s cultural quarter. We were excited to learn about the more collaborative way that the Diploma will work with education and business, hopefully yielding a selection of job-ready young people for us creative people to bring into our industry. The event was hosted by Jo Blagg at the Regent Theatre who is keen to bring together representatives from all areas of the city to make the new qualification a success.

Amanda McDonald

Credit crunch - data challenge

2009-05-14T11:50:00.003Z

There's an interesting opinion piece by Nick Backhouse (ex director of McCanns) in the current IDM Journal in which he looks at the effect of the credit crunch on the way marketers target customers. The 'recency, frequency and value' approach to modelling data now needs reviewing in the light of the downturn in the economy. Whether you're involved in financial services or retailing customers attitudes have changed significantly. They're more cautious about borrowing and more interested in getting value from their local supermarket. Although Nick doesn't develop an alternative approach to segmentation he does conclude that there are new opportunities for those of us involved in marketing to develop new thinking around targeting and segmentation.

David Patrick

A presentation from Staffordshire University students

2009-05-14T08:32:00.000Z

Today we tapped into some sharp young talent at Staffordshire University. As with all agencies, our 'house' work often struggles to win our attention and plays second fiddle to our clients' projects. So we created a competition for the Advertising and Brand Management BA students at Staffordshire University to suggest a 'big idea' for our new website. The ideas were very strong and we were delighted with the thought that the students had put into their creative work. We'll be developing one of the ideas over the next few weeks, thanks to the winning team - second years Lauren and Becky. A fine contribution was also made by the other teams who presented, and we'll certainly be keeping an eye on their development over the next two years of their course.

Amanda McDonald

Drumming up interest in deprived communities

2009-05-05T13:22:00.002Z

Our recent research report into how so-called ‘deprived’ communities operate has recently been featured in industry magazine The Drum. Our research delves into the reasons why communities that are perceived as ‘deprived’ often have the highest levels of cohesion. Which, incidentally, is something that many local authorities are encouraged to measure in their Local Area Agreements. The report also discovered from interesting insights into how these communities consume media differently to their more affluent peers. Feel free to call us to discuss some of our findings in more detail.

Return on Ideas

2009-04-30T11:16:00.000Z

There’s a significant disconnect in our industry between marketers and management. The marketing department is often criticised for taking a tactical approach to building sales without putting in place proper measures to ensure value and accountability. Management in turn is seen as too cost focused and criticised for taking too short-term a view of the role of marketing.

In a new report from the DMA, CIMA and the CIM, its author, Prof. Robert Shaw, goes some considerable way to improving relations between those who hold the purse strings and those tasked with marketing the business. ‘Return on Ideas’ is a bold attempt to “put the finance-marketing dialogue back on the rails”. It has developed the ‘Infinity model’ borne out of a study marketing best-practices from over 100 businesses.

The report finds that: “the best organisations have a positive creative tension between financial rigour and the marketing imagination”. It goes into detail to explain the factors which lead producing the greatest value from marketing spend:

• harnessing the marketing imagination to create value adding ideas
• predicting how much financial value these ideas will contribute
• delivering and demonstrating that value really was created
• establishing learning that will improve future ideas, predictions and results.

There’s a lot of thought-proving material here. Business success, as is rightly pointed out, happens when all the key players’ interests are effectively aligned to create value. This needs to happen in an environment where four key facets are allowed to develop and flourish: freedom, rigour, people and processes.

This report needs to be studied by those in senior marketing roles as well as board directors and those in finance. It advocates a well thought through and substantiated series of processes to maximise the return on ideas and to get better results from having finance and marketing working closely together.

Read Return on Ideas here

IDM Annual Lecture by Don Tapscott

2009-04-29T14:33:00.002Z

Digital guru, Don Tapscott, gave a lecture at the Annual IDM Lunch last month. He talked about how "differently the new net generation grew up, how differently it thinks and behaves – and how it has now arrived as the bright new talent in our businesses. In his presentation Don unveiled how the wikinomic generation will influence the nature of business, the marketplace and society as a whole."

A video of his presentation is now available here

QCA awards Yes new national curriculum project

2009-04-17T15:54:00.003Z

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have just awarded us a new project to communicate to teachers the process for testing school children at key stage 2. This is likely to be an difficult one, as our initial research among teachers showed strong antipathy towards the national curriculum tests. Our activity should go some way to establishing the paramaters and schedule for managing these tests.

A new, yet familiar, face at the agency

2009-04-14T13:23:00.004Z

Kirsty's, who's back from a stint on the client side, returns this week working on QCA, LSC and ConstructionSkills. Welcome back Kirsty!

Community Marketing Gets an Academic Platform

2009-04-06T16:16:00.002Z

I am working with my colleagues at Staffordshire University (where I lecture every so often on Advertising and Brand Management) on a paper to be submitted at a conference organised by the European Foundation for Commercial Communications Education (the educational arm of the European Association of Communications Agencies).

The event focuses on The Future of Commercial Communications Education in Europe, and our community marketing methodology will be presented as part of a section entitled ‘Business-Academia Partnerships – learning to deal with a chaotic media landscape and global consumers’. Watch this space to see how the great and the good in the academic world respond to this new approach to marketing.

Amanda McDonald

Running the Stafford Half-marathon

2009-03-18T15:37:00.001Z

It may be my slowest half-marathon for years but... ...one of the most satisfying. Having trained only seven times in the past five months (two of those times being in the last week) and having set off like a ‘scalded cat’, doing the first four miles in sub seven-and-a-half minutes each.

I soon realised that this was going to be tough. Finishing in 1hour 49 minutes and 15 seconds (well over a quarter of an hour off my usual pace), I was elated to be still smiling at the end, although this pic in Victoria Park in the finishing stages perhaps doesn’t represent that well.

Pete Brown

Yes Woman

2009-02-13T16:58:00.002Z

The reputation of a ‘yes man’ is not a good one. From this moniker you would deduce that the man in question is feeble, lacking in opinions, bereft of conviction and a creep of the highest order. Not so for Danny Wallace.

His book ‘Yes Man’ (and the recent spin off film starring Jim Carrey) shows you that a simple change in perspective can result in a whole world of opportunity opening up. The book and film are based on the concept of seeing the impact of saying ‘yes’ to everything. Clearly there is room for some unfortunate experiences (cue a hideous scene in the film with an elderly lady).

However, overall, the word ‘yes’ overhauls the lead character’s fortunes simply by encouraging him to widen his scope and embrace everything that is offered to him. As an agency specialising in the art of persuasion, and even being called ‘Yes’, we’ve had to develop the persuasive skills to get people to yes (and sometimes getting them to ‘no’ quickly can save on unnecessary investment).

Like Yes Man’s central character, we inhabit a world full of jaded consumers who are often reluctant to be sold to, and often resort to saying ‘no’ before examining the facts. It’s down to us therefore to use all the tools at our disposal to cut through and clear a path for ‘yes’. So, am I happy to be a ‘yes woman’? I can confidently say yes.

Amanda McDonald

New streaming music site now open to all

2009-02-13T13:04:00.001Z

Spotify is a recent addition to music streaming services that's now available to everyone. It's easy to use, has a huge catalogue of tracks and best of all it's free! You don't own the music, it's simply streamed to your PC. It's funded through ads which you hear intermittently between tracks. Best of all you can easily share links to playlists and tracks with other users.

Google continues to grow despite the recession

2009-02-02T11:14:00.015Z

Interesting post from Ryan Scott with eight reasons why Google continues to do well, with their revenue up in the last quarter of 2008:-

Internet usage has grown globally by 16% year on year (Internet World Stats) – more users means increased usage of Google and greater opportunity for revenue.

Google lifts their longstanding embargo for bidding on gambling and alcohol based terms – bidding wars for this lucrative traffic could reportedly net Google an extra £300 million a year!

Emergence of universal search makes natural listings harder to achieve – Paid search provides reliable shortcut to traffic for advertisers.

Google Suggest - Google, by pre-empting searches with ‘most popular’ cues, has said to be slowly killing off the longtail. This potentially means more people coming through on fewer search queries. In turn this bottle necks traffic by almost forcing people into higher demand keywords. A knock on effect of this being an increase in revenues on ‘costlier’ keywords.

Growing reputation of SEM as a ROI focused sales tool - 80% of advertisers cite their search spend will increase in the next two years (European Interactive Advertising Association 2008)

Declining markets drives up advertiser demand for traffic- more competitive and aggressive bidding means higher CPCs.

Advertising Opportunities – Google’s innovative means of planning and delivering adverts to end users continues to grow (almost daily) The invent of Google 3PAS, Ad Planner and the pure global reach makes it an attractive medium when budgets are squeezed.

The festive season! – People spend more during Q4 with online shoppers spending £4.67bn online last month, up 14%% on 2007.

Peer reviews and how not to do it

2009-02-01T19:53:00.012Z

This is a great Dilbert comic strip taking the mickey out of a short-sighted view of managing peer-to-peer reviews. It smacks of the recent Belkin scandal where they were involved (indirectly) in paying for 5-star reviews of their products. [Thanks to Andy Beal for highlighting this]

Out with the old and in with the old (again)

2009-01-27T14:29:00.000Z

There’s been a lot of talk lately about new methods in marketing. Many agencies have re-packaged themselves as digital marketing shops, and even more have started up offering clients lots of ways to maximise ‘new’ media. It occurs to us that even though there are lots of new channels to reach our audience (largely through the internet), the methods are actually just the same as they’ve ever been.

In fact, good old-fashioned marketing skills such as generating insights, developing compelling creative, getting under the skin of the target audience, setting up measurement criteria from the outset and measuring and evolving ad infinitum are still as relevant as ever. And, as the number of channels broadens, we need to ensure that our communications are in the right place, at the right time with the right message. Sound familiar to anyone?

Amanda McDonald

The dangers of excessive drinking

2009-01-26T18:54:00.000Z

We’ve recently produced this arresting image portraying the dangers of excessive drinking. The image is part of a series of ads and posters encouraging hazardous drinkers to seek help. Beautiful work by Nick, Jeremy and Pete.

What a luvverly pair...

2009-01-21T18:55:00.003Z

To celebrate getting onto the Learning and Skills Council marketing roster the team received this beautiful display of fruit complete with strawberries coated in chocolate. Yum

Introducing our Online PR specialist

2009-01-21T11:08:00.001Z

I’m Andrew and I’m the new kid at Yes – which is nice. Just thought I would pen a few words of introduction – Better the devil you know!

People keep calling me an Online PR specialist which is interesting as I rather like to think of myself as a regular PR man who has simply embraced the way the internet can put some lovely new tools in my box. Lots of my peers seem to put themselves on a pedestal with credentials as ‘Online PR Guru’ and implying huge barriers to entering the hallowed digital portals.

Good news for you, O’ prospective or existing valuable client, is the simple reality that we can explain Online PR to you in about 30 mins. Give you a working grasp in a couple of hours and turn you into a strategic genius in a couple of weeks. Bad news is that once you have this basic grasp you need to work very hard, every day, to keep up to date. That of course is where we come in – which is nice too.

A day to learn a lifetime to master – and none of us has had a lifetime to master it all yet as it only kicked off a few years ago and it keeps bloomin’ changing.

So my proposition to you is simple. Treat online activity like a Formula 1 car. No single thing you do will tip the balance in your favour, but pay it lots of attention (or better still pay a pittance us to pay it lots of attention) and, with fine tuning of a few different aspects of your online presence, mixed with a sensible amount of tried and tested ‘old school’ tricks (like picking up the phone to the odd journo) we can help to move you to the front of the race.

My time is now yours, so if you’d like to learn something new give us a buzz, send me your URL, buy me lunch and I’ll sing like a canary.

Cheers

Andrew
andrew.rastall@yesgency.co.uk

Brian Child talks to The Drum about how to thrive during the slowdown

2009-01-17T20:23:00.000Z

Making the most of online PR

2009-01-06T13:27:00.003Z

There’s much pessimism in the agency world about 2009 and the most common school of thought is that only the smart will survive. At Yes Agency, we’ve bolstered our offering with a new smart cookie in the form of Online PR Consultant Andrew Rastall.

Online PR nicely tops off our existing offering of direct marketing, advertising, literature, online communications and strategic marketing, ensuring that we can maximise the impact of our clients’ marketing activities in even more areas.

Plus, Andrew’s area of specialism – Online PR - dovetails perfectly into Yes Agency’s philosophy of measurable marketing. That’s not to say that he can’t also cover off the traditional stuff – Andrew has been a PR Account Director for over 12 years in a variety of the country’s leading PR agencies, and had a fantastic track record in delivering creative and effective PR campaigns for a range of clients from leisure retailers through to leading brands.

We’re looking forward to adding even more value to our offering using Andrew’s skills over the coming months.

David Patrick

Wanted - peer review. Only confident brands need apply.

2009-01-04T13:38:00.000Z

At Yes Agency, we have been observing for a while the impact of peer to peer relationships on everything from media consumption through to making a purchase. That’s why we developed the Community Consult tool to engage with sub-groups within communities to create brand advocates and really harness the power of peer to peer.

Nowhere is peer to peer more prevalent than within online communities. Who visits a holiday destination nowadays without seeking the opinion of at least 10 vociferous online reviewers that they’ve never met before? In fact, who even spends £5 on a film without consulting their peers online first?

With peer to peer recommendations and reviews influencing purchases of £5 to £5,000+ then only the most courageous brands will be leaving this aspect of their marketing to chance. Whilst you clearly can’t influence what people have to say about your product or service (apart from ensuring consistently high quality of course), an Online PR strategy should include a high level of peer review management.

Very few marketeers have the time (even if they have the knowledge) to monitor this, never mind give people additional opportunities to trial their product, supporting online advocates and managing the online filtering of relevant promotional material. That’s why, the best option is to employ someone to take this pressure off your hands. Thus, the rise of the Online PR consultant.

Watch this space for more information on Yes Agency’s new Online PR Consultant, Andrew Rastall....

Amanda McDonald