Innovative marketing agencies are hatching big ideas for small firms without breaking the bank

Behind every cloud there’s a silver lining, or so the proverb goes. At the start of 2009, UK marketers were told to expect the year from hell—when times are tough, the sector tends to bear the brunt of initial budget cuts. Last January, Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, the financial information service that compiles the Bellwether report, painted a gloomy picture. “The Bellwether shows an alarming rate of corporate retrenchment as the recession deepens, with spending on marketing being cut at a rate far greater than ever previously seen over the survey’s nine-year history,” he said.

But the agencies contacted by Director at the tail end of the decade said they had enjoyed a fairly good, and in some cases successful, year. The general feeling was that if a company was innovative and quick-thinking enough, it would not only keep its head above water but maintain and win new business.

They agreed that it was about adapting to a changed market. As Chris Murphy, chairman at Balloon Dog, says: “I don’t mean this to sound smug or complacent, but we’ve had a good year [2009]. Talking to my peers and other agency owners, I think those that haven’t adapted to the times have by and large caught a cold. Those that have faced up to change have prospered while those that have been inflexible have found it really difficult.”

A report by the agency, London Advertising, appears to bear this out. Its Global Marketing Sentiment Index 2009, a survey of attitudes of people within marketing, assessed at which stage of the recession they felt their market had reached. It showed that executives were leaning towards more optimistic thinking than was widely expected at the time, and that it was the resilient and inventive companies that continued to seize opportunities.

Co-founder Michael Moszynski says: “We did the first index in May, and it was showing signs of not being as depressing as people were thinking. By early autumn, there was a significant change. The band of despair that had been quite strong in Europe had begun to break down.”

Despite the optimism, there’s no doubt that this recession has changed the marketing landscape. Adrian Coleman, founding partner at VCCP, believes that with more fragmented budgets, clients are looking for a larger return on investment. Costs are “microscoped” in great detail, he says. And while people are still spending, observes David Bloomfield, a consultant at PHCMarketing, the recession has forced them to think “very carefully” about where they spend their money. Consequently, agencies are obliged to think about how they take their big ideas and apply them, as Murphy describes it, “quicker, slicker and cheaper”.

 “Companies come to marketing agencies because they want good, creative people and strategic planners who can advise them on which markets to target, and with what message,” he explains. “The difference now is that they want it cheaper. That was the bit that we had to face up to.”

And that’s good news for SMEs. It’s long been assumed that the chances of smaller firms making a marketing impact without blowing their budget are slim to none, especially during a credit crunch. But these days, everybody is looking for something for less. And they’re getting it.

Different types of media are allowing businesses to become more innovative, even on a small budget. Coleman says that even traditional channels to market, such as TV, are within reach. The cost of a TV campaign, he says, has decreased “so much so that I’m seeing more and more media schedules with TV absolutely at the core”. Canny brands are doing fewer things, better. “So instead of having posters, radio, digital and TV, they’re doing three things particularly well and in a targeted way.”

Even PR, he adds, is having a renaissance. “Apart from paying an agency a fee to get some stuff out there, it’s very cheap and effective. It’s not just about an idea but also about what journalists are going to write about. How do we feed stories into that and get more exposure?”

But there’s no doubt that a sophisticated internet is proving an ever-popular medium of choice. It has opened up routes to market that are cheap, fast and can generate vast amounts of awareness, almost instantaneously. With businesses more selective about what they spend their money on, they’re more receptive to experimenting with new things where they get better value for money.

“And online is an area, relatively speaking, where you can creatively experiment at a lower cost,” says Murphy. “You don’t have to spend a quarter of a million pounds on the media to see if it works. And you can measure it to the nth degree, in terms of who’s visiting and how long they are staying.”

At VCCP, Coleman says it has been producing viral campaigns for clients “on very small budgets”. They are significantly cheaper than a TV production, he reasons, and “if you get it right, and it’s the sort of content that is good enough to get passed on, you’ll find that a lot of people are seeing it.”

He points to the success of a campaign the agency produced for the government to fight binge drinking. “We shot a viral ad for about £30,000. Half a million people have seen it in eight weeks.”

The Net is not a miracle solution, though. Always remember that the role of marketing is to tell consumers in the best possible way that what you have is valuable, advises Bloomfield. If it’s the wrong message, to the wrong audience, at the wrong time, it’s not going to work. “My fundamental theme is stick to the basics,” he says.

He mentions retailer Marks & Spencer as a case in point. With its “Dinner for two” offer, he says, M&S worked out how to appropriately repackage and restyle its product. “It’s switched on, and has marketed its products to fit the climate.”

Marketing need not be expensive, he adds. If you ask simple questions and don’t get too wrapped up in complex answers, then you will find opportunities that may have previously escaped your radar. “It’s not just about grabbing people, but understanding them. Be aware of your audience, and tailor your pitch to suit. If customers don’t know what you’re doing and what you’d like to do for them, it could be dangerous. Don’t make assumptions.”

Targeting is everything, agrees Murphy, no matter what marketing communication you’re employing. “If you’re a small business you have to work even harder on a small budget to know who you’re talking to, and know absolutely what your objective is. That way, you can direct your spend, even if its modest, in the right direction.”

Viral marketing is not without its pitfalls, adds Coleman. If the hallmarks of good marketing are engagement and creativity, then you’ll stand out for all the wrong reasons if you come up with a poor campaign. “What good viral campaigns have got in common is that they’re all entertaining,” he says. “It’s an added value for somebody watching it. Historically, viral activity was just really irritating. Make it entertaining, or engaging, or don’t bother because people are going to think even worse of you.”

Stuck for inspiration? Then take a look at some of the innovative ideas that companies from Vietnam to Australia have exploited, suggests Moszynski. “We looked around the world to find examples where businesses have used marketing in an effective way, without necessarily large budgets to do so,” he says. For example, in Vietnam, swallows’ nests are a delicacy that can be sold for $1,000 (£603) per kilo. So an enterprising real estate company began marketing particular properties to homebuyers as being attractive to swallows. ‘Buy this house and it won’t just be a cost but also a revenue opportunity’, it said. “That was a clever bit of thinking,” says Moszynski, “and it didn’t cost much to implement.”

 
Case study: comparethemarket.com

“I can tell you, it’s been unbelievably successful,” says Adrian Coleman, co-founder of VCCP, the agency that created comparethemarket.com’s Russian meerkat Aleksandr Orlov. There are a lot of small furry creatures promoting things in advertising, he says, but how many have 500,000 friends on Facebook, and 30,000 followers on Twitter?

In September 2009, The Times reported that the campaign had driven up traffic to the deal-finding website by 83 per cent since last January. Market share of comparethemarket.com jumped, but its three main rivals lost ground.

Before alighting on the market/meerkat concept, Coleman says “we researched it to death”. And, he claims, what sounds like a wacky idea on paper had “some rational sense”.

He explains: “The word market wasn’t very memorable. That was our problem—name recognition. And if you look at some of the advertising in that sector, it was some of the dullest I’d seen. The premise was to come up with a strategy that burned in somebody’s mind, that was synonymous with comparethemarket.” It had to have personality in order to engage. The outcome is what he describes as “populist advertising”.

Michael Moszynski, co-founder of London Advertising, echoes Coleman. With so many comparative websites all offering the same function, he reckons it was about the salience of the name. In essence, getting consumers to remember the name first. “Because the client agreed to that strategy,” he says, “the solution that emerged made perfect sense.” That it was witty, endearing and funny made it even more memorable.

His conclusion? “More companies now recognise that the persuasion model—giving people the facts—doesn’t necessarily need to be communicated in advertising,” he says. “What the advertising does at its best is create emotional engagement.”