Posts tagged "relationship"

I was once told across a crowded meeting room that maintaining the divide between business and personal life is important. “It’s business, not personal” still rings in my ears today.

Now I am part of our own agency, I feel I can stand back with a little more authority and give thought to this mantra.

The idea that what I do during the ‘day job’ is very different to who I am on the weekend, is one I have at times aspired to but never really succeeded at. I find it impossible not to be worried at home by worrying office stuff, or for a successful workday not to give me the foundation for a great evening out with my mates. Thus far the flick of the switch on the No. 38 to Angel has eluded me.

The strongest and best relationships we have are ones where we allow ourselves to be human, working alongside other humans, who worry, laugh, err and create… whether that’s at home discussing broad beans or striving for patient-integrated Rx strategy.

Being ourselves and keeping it personal was built into the agency culture from our earliest plans. The business side made Barclays happy and ensured we had rigour and efficiency. But by valuing personality we don’t break people down and rebuild them the ‘hive’ way, or force a process on a relationship. All actors are free to contribute ‘their’ way adding to what we are as an organisation.

What we want most is for people to say that we understand them at a personal level: what they want, where they plan to be, what they love, what they don’t - not just the business of the brand, political situation and process.

Because of this our business could never be anything other than personal.

We have been thinking about agency-client relationships this week, with a request from procurement to build a multiagency-relationship-measurement thing. That is, something that gives visibility to the relationship status between the agency and the brand team.

It’s typical for an agency to be measured primarily by its output. But if you agree that a brand’s health is the key to organisational profit and the quality of your agency-client relationship is a major driver of brand health, then the health of that relationship becomes a key driver of your profitability.

I did some truffling around and found a great article written by Douglas T. Moore from General Mills which just seems to hit home. (More than that actually- I think I would really like the guy.) We plan to use his ideas for our relationship measurement tool. Doug has given us seven areas to work with:

Top-to-top trust - Trust between decision makers enables everyone to take bigger risks and grab bigger opportunities. It does this by speeding up problem-solving.

Agency talent - The best minds in the agency create brand ideas, never letting process, politics, or even budgets get in the way of great work.

Focusing on talent doesn’t just mean recruiting the best. It means finding them, developing them and above all giving them great reasons to stay. Stability is critical, rapid change at an agency can create problems.

Client talent - The great ones realise they shouldn’t ‘manage’ the relationship. Instead, their role is to inspire with the sense that anything is possible; make sure the strategy is insightful and simple; recognise talent and shape it; sell it through client personalities, fears, and politics.

Ideas atmosphere - Cohesion, openness, trust, sharing, and a willingness to dream. The key is creating a collaborative, ideas-driven atmosphere at the core of your partnership. Act like a start-up (easy for us to say). All ideas are welcome. Success is rewarded. Team is sacred. Speed and strategy is fundamental.

Money as a positive force - Passion gets business going… cash keeps it flowing. If your deal is too good to be true, it probably is. Top talent needs to be compensated as such. Equally the agency needs to work with what the business can afford. Consider incentives at an appropriate scale. Try a pilot, put ’significant’ money into an incentive pot, tie specific, quantifiable objectives to it, and track performance changes.

Lots of conversations about what matters - Agreement on the path to brand success is crucial for all - and I mean we must really, really agree, not ‘meeting nice’ agree. Relationships can drag all kinds of ’silent’ issues around for months, sometimes years. Senior leaders on both sides must keep talking about where the brand needs to go and potential worries around trust or ideas.

Shared disciplines - Semantics and language can hinder or enable progress. No matter how many agencies businesses may work with, it’s essential to embrace each unique culture. But having a common framework for discussing brands, strategies, projects, and simple things like clarifying roles and responsibilities, makes a huge impact in success rates and speed.

I love Doug’s list and everyone in the agency is excited by his points. Soon we hope not only to put them into practice, but have ourselves measured against them.

There’s a really interesting new theory circulating called transmedia planning. A quick background: transmedia storytelling was a trend identified by the cultural academic Henry Jenkins, where entertainment brands used different media streams to tell pieces of a story or plot. Transmedia planning was born when a number of strategists, including Faris Yakob, adapted Jenkins’ theory for the marketing world.

TMP places control in the users’ hands by asking us to “Allow your audience to assemble your brand story”. It’s an interesting evolution of 360° marketing where one idea is expressed uniformly by multiple channels. TMP allows ideas (or parts of ideas) to reach consumers from a slightly different point of view, but deliver consistent value and meaning around a brand.

Hive’s business plan adopts a transmedia approach in the context of the important changes happening in healthcare. You don’t have to have read our recent blog comments to know that informed, or partially informed, patients are increasingly the norm. Growing access to different information sources gives patients more control over their treatment. The web allows communities to form and discuss treatment and results. Consumers are showing they need more than shallow promises and that’s where TMP fits the bill.

We have to remember though that the transmedia concept evolved in an unconstrained consumer world. In its purest form, TMP can’t apply directly to prescription brands because of the necessary limitations on patient communications. However, prescription drug users still form communities to share experiences about treatment, particularly those with chronic conditions. Using a transmedia approach here involves setting up the dialogue between prescriber and patient, but acknowledging that some of the dialogue and beliefs around the brand may also be acquired from less informed sources. The reality for patients/consumers is, the relative weight of advice sourced online vs the prescriber is not always as you would imagine.

Building relationships in any industry is about engagement with people. In the healthcare mainstream, the critical commitment may still be the prescriber’s. But it’s vital to remember that the prescriber is not the person experiencing the brand in a hands-on manner. Its time our communication to professionals and patients alike began to reflect that.