Tim points out that if you read a typical web site or agency brochure, you get essentially the same message: ___________ is a full-service, diversified marketing communications company serving a wide variety of clients, from health care to high tech. We offer integrated solutions to make our clients successful, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda.As I have noted in previous posts and white papers, a strong brand identity should contain these four elements -- it should be unique or differentiating, believable, relevant and true. There is nothing differentiating about being "full-service", "integrated", or wanting to "make our clients successful", although they may be believable, relevant and true. So is it surprising that clients have trouble distinguishing one agency from another?
One agency that has built a unique brand identity for itself is Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. They do excellent creative work, but their truly distinguishing characteristic to me has always been their creative and unorthodox use of media and promotions to garner buzz for their clients, especially Burger King. Their hidden camera prank called Whopper Freakout in which they pretended to discontinue the Whopper to gauge customer reactions was a creative way to demonstrate customer preference over the Big Mac. But their use of a longer form video on the Internet was a great way to integrate television and web video. The campaign generated millions of views on YouTube, a Grand Effie for the agency, and double-digit sales increases for Burger King. Another unorthodox promotion that demonstrated their out-of-the-box thinking was the Subservient Chicken (http://www.subservientchicken.com/). To some critics, the promotion was confusing/weird/stupid/sophomoric yet five years later it is still creating buzz and has garnered over 450 million hits according to Adweek Magazine.
Recently, BooneOakley in Charlotte (http://www.booneoakley.com/m/) has been generating a lot of buzz with their innovative use of
YouTube as their web site. Personally, I'm not wild about the cartoon storyline or the difficult navigation, but the idea is brilliant . . . and differentiating.BooneOakley will not appeal to every client, but they aren't trying to. As they say on their home page, they are "a full-service ad agency for those who dare to do daring work".
Defining your agency brand means not only deciding what you are, but also what you are not. That's a hard decision for many agencies to make, but it must be done. If you don't have a distinctive philosophy, distinctive capabilities, or a distinctive way of doing business, then your agency is a commodity. And commodity agencies have only one way to distinguish themselves from one another -- a lower price.
If you transform your agency from a commodity into a distinctive agency brand, you will most likely exclude some potential clients. But as Tim Williams points out that's OK because the ones who are attracted to you will be strongly attracted because you offer something they want from an agency. And that can give you a competitive advantage over those full-service, diversified marketing communications companies you may be competing against.
CP+B and BooneOakley aren't agencies for every client, but as Bill Cosby once said "I can't give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: try and please everybody".
