Agency Elimination Software?

Mediapost has an article up today about VCs funding technology that will eliminate advertising agencies. They call the category "agency replacement software".

I can't take it seriously. Having seen all sides of the equation by working at public & private marketing services companies, VC-funded software companies, and public technology/media companies, I just do not think that the people touting "agency replacement software" understand what (g00d) agencies actually do or how (good) agencies actually operate.

From the article:

"Companies have agencies for public relations, buying media and planning marketing campaigns," noted [Greycroft Ventures, Partner, Ian] Sigalow, speaking at a venture capital panel on digital content at the OnMedia NYC conference Tuesday. "We're looking at companies that let them do these agency services in-house."

What better way to improve processes, than through automation? I won't argue that point.

And I won't argue that most agencies use way too much labor, too little process and too little automation to solve problems.

And I won't argue that there are thousands of agencies out there who survive simply because they execute a process at a price cheaper than the client would do so themselves. (in fact, this is driving an obsession in agencies with outsourcing, crowdsourcing - anything x-sourcing)

But agencies are not solely about executing process. Agencies are about expertise, knowledge and experience.

Did Intuit say "Quickbooks is Accountant Elimination Software"? No, because that would have made their software DOA. Intuit actually embraced accountants, built them features and now that all accountants are trained on Quickbooks, they have a fortified position in the market precisely because every accountant sets up their clients on Quickbooks. And I doubt that many accountants grumble about the good 'ol days of handwritten ledgers.

For a more applicable example, what about Adwords? Did Adwords eliminate agencies? Not at all. In fact, it enabled a specialist category of at least 2,000 SEM services companies globally. Did Marin Software eliminate agencies? Nope. They empower the SEM services with technology. And because they worked with agencies, they were able to quickly fortify a solid position in the marketing instead of languishing like so many of their competitors who thought they would eliminate agencies.

Here is the question: Instead of alienating a potential customer-base of the earliest of early marketing technology adopters, why not change the focus to enabling agencies with "marketing automation software"? There are at least 5,000 agencies in the US alone. There are at least 500,000 independent marketing consultants in the US. There is a market for this because I bet you'd be hard pressed to find many people in those groups who love doing the manual labor.

I think "agency replacement software" is a joke. It is naive. And it will cost a lot of tech companies who have great ideas to languish. The winning marketing tech companies who succeed will be those who embrace, empower and automate agencies and their relationships with clients.

Conclusion: The irony here is that in the past 10-15 years, agencies have proliferated and so long as people want to a. work in marketing, and b. want to work for themselves, agencies will exist. And the companies who decide to empower these individuals, will succeed and prosper.

A plan to combat "guaranteed SEO"

One thing that happens in the SEO biz is that there are a lot of companies who peddle "guaranteed SEO" results. I covered it in a formal way on our Thrivepoint blog. But maybe there is a better way to go about exposing these guarantees?

Basically, the game goes like this: An SEO company contacts an unsuspecting mark... er, marketer and offers them a guaranteed #1 ranking on Google and Yahoo. The client only needs to pay a monthly fee and "poof!" they are number 1. The catch is that the keyword is usually some obscure keyword that no one is actually searching for and probably no one is trying to rank for. So the SEO collects their check, gets the client #1 and fulfills their agreement. And the client gets... nothing. No traffic. No new customers. No nothing.

I've tried to explain this to people before, but a guarantee is always a lot more interesting them my long-winded explanation about how search engines work. So as of today, any client with a proposal from an SEO firm that guarantees rankings will be publicized on this blog with their very own text link with the targeted keyword as anchor text. Basically, I hope to preempt the silliness of guaranteed placement on obscure keywords by showing the client that if they do rank, they will not get any traffic, leads or sales.

By the way, have you heard of XOJET? They are a very interesting Aircraft Charter Rental & Leasing Svc in San Carlos. It's worth checking them out.

9/24/09 Update: A couple of questions from friends came up and I thought I would clarify. What I did is link to the client's site with the anchor text being the keyword the SEO company guaranteed rankings for. If enough people were to do the same thing on their website, the client's site would eventually rank for that site because no one else is optimizing for that keyword (because it has ZERO traffic associated with ). It's basically link spam -- which is what these guaranteed firms do -- and by targeting words no one else wants, it's easy to guarantee results, show the unsuspecting client that you got them a #1 rank and collect the monthly recurring fee. Once the client shuts off the fee, the SEO guarantor removes the link spam and your rank goes down -- then they come back to you to show that your ranks went down and try to win your business back. There are much sounder ways to go about SEO for companies like XOJET who do Aircraft Charter Rental and Leasing.

A proposal for College Football

The following is a proposal to improve the college football championship.

The key requirements for the proposal focused on:

• Ensure competition determines the champion;
• Eliminate ambiguity in the declared champion;
• Maintain the excitement of the college football regular season;
• Maintain the unique bowl game structure and excitement of college football;
• Maintain each conference's independence.
  

The proposal:

• Implement a 16-team, four-round post-season playoff;
• The teams in the playoffs will consist of each of the 11 conference champions and five wild cards;
• Each conference can name its champion as it chooses (ie. via regular season round-robin play, via two sub-conference champions meeting in a conference champion, etc.);
• The five wild cards will be selected on the basis of ranking in the BCS. A team will be a wild card if it is a. not a conference champion, and b. one of the five highest ranked BCS teams that is not a conference champion;
• The playoffs will be seeded exclusively based on BCS rankings. The highest ranked BCS team will be the #1 seed; the second highest BCS team will be the #2 seed; etc. Conference champions may be seeded lower than non-conference champions;
• The playoffs will be initially scheduled by pairing the #16 seed against the #1 seed, the #15 seed against the #2 seed, etc.; after the first round, the games will be scheduled based on the highest remaining seed playing the lowest remaining seed, the second highest remaining seed playing the second lowest remaining seed, and so on.
  
• Round 1 will be played the first weekend after Thanksgiving; round 2 the next week and round 3 the following week;
• The Championship and a Runner's Up game will be played on New Year's Day;
• The Championship will be between the last two remaining teams. The Runner's Up game will be played between the 3rd and 4th remaining teams;
• Location of Rounds 3 and 4 will be rotated each year between the four BCS bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange);
• Location of Rounds 1 and 2 will be rotated amongst other bowls;
• Bowls that do not have a scheduled playoff game, may schedule a bowl game between non-playoff teams based on whatever existing agreements may be in place.

Other notes:

• Conferences and teams retain autonomy on conference membership;
• Teams should reduce regular season schedules to 10-11 games to account for additional games at the end of the season;
• All bowl payouts remain the same (ie. a team advancing in the playoffs may collect multiple bowl payouts).

Update 8.7.09: ESPN has their own proposal.

Challenging Paradigms: Browsers and Music

7/3/09 UPDATE: Going back to Firefox today for five reasons. 1. Chrome is failing to bring up many websites that I know are not officially down. I am getting "Oops that page does not exist" multiple times for facebook.com, twitter.com, etc., 2. Chrome has an annoying habit of opening up a new browser when I click the tab. The reason is that it is very easy to drag a tab to reorder them or you can drag it out of the tab row to open a new browser window. What happens is that I am clicking so quickly, I end up dragging it down slightly and it constantly is opening up new windows. Not cool. 3. I still have problems getting certain applications to work correctly in Chrome like flash video players, ajax menus, etc. I click and nothing happens. Not a big deal if it were isolated, but I can't get it to work on properties like Blogger.com which Google owners. Not good. and 4. RSS pages render as gibberish. Not a big deal, but in Firefox, they render RSS pages with a lot different options for subscribing; Chrome does not do that, and 5. I was speaking with a friend last night who recently had a meeting with Mozilla; he mentioned that they were a really cool organization and it reminded me that I agreed and that Firefox just released version 3.5 and I want to try it.

5/13/09 ORIGINAL: Today I am giving Google Chrome another shot at winning my heart over. Last time I used it, I did not like it, but my browsing habits have changed and so I might like it better now. Note, I think the reason I am giving it another shot is their video shorts available on the Chrome YouTube channel. I do not know for sure, but it's pretty much the only reason why Google Chrome has been top of mind for me over the past couple of weeks.

I'm also for the first time giving Pandora a real shot. Last.FM has been my music destination of choice but I want to take my music with me and Pandora offers a mobile app for the Blackberry. Having already parted with the idea of "owning" music files, the next paradigm shift is in tracking music. While Pandora will let me bookmark songs, it does not let me track every song I listen to and how many times I've listened to it. That part is disappointing because when I use Last.FM, I really enjoy looking back at my most listened to tracks because it often is different than what I think it would be. That said, I think I'd rather have portable music... I'll be testing that assumption over the next few weeks.

Post-Script:
Google paid 11 companies $10,000 each to produce a 1-3 minute video about Chrome. They then posted the videos to Youtube to monitor how many times each was watched; the 'winner' is being rolled out into a TV campaign. Here is the video I would've like to see them use for the ad campaign and here is the video which they did convert to a 30-sec spot.

For a single spot, I think they went with the right choice. The spot is easy on the eyes and mesmerizing. For a campaign consisting of multiple ads, I think Defenders in Tights would have created something recognizable in any media format... oh well

The Internet

Just had a funny memory today:

Back in 2007, I was at Google Zeitgeist. I was the smallest fish in the biggest pond. Heads of movie studioes. Media personalities. Politicians. And me, EVP at a 50person search engine marketing shop.

Next thing you know I get a text from a coworker telling me Al Gore is sitting right behind me. Before I have a chance to look, Chocolate Rain comes out on stage and starts singing, well, "Chocolate Rain".

Next thing, I see Al Gore walking away with his cell phone on his ear. He then leaves a few moments later. Later I find out he had just found out he won the Nobel Prize.

I do not know what this means except that the internet made this unique set of circumstances possible and Al Gore invented the internet. ;-)