I promised a bit more on this topic (and Rex asked for it) so here we go....
First off, read Rex Hammock's comment on that last post. Rex was referencing a project his firm did for a client.....a client, not his on firm. Yes there is a great deal of 'learn by doing' going on in agencies everywhere and it's something I've always advocated. Rex's team benefited from their knowledge of not only how to use the tools, but to 'use' them for a client.
That client experience now gives Rex a leg-up on competitors. For the next job that requires those services, Rex can say, "here's what we did for client x". Why is that important? Well first off somebody paid you to do it. Second, as we all know, things can sometimes get sticky in the heat of battle, and that experience always pays off.
Like I said before, referencing your own internal or personal blog is not the standard anymore. Sure it shows you can work with the medium....but can you use the medium to achieve objectives for a client? Can you measure those achievements and then build/evolve the program for the client?
It's a similar adoption/business curve to the early days of the web. At first the teams that could 'do' the work were getting the jobs (remember those awesome web designs from the IT guy). As more firms became savvy with the tools, the work began to go to those that could do the best work.
Got to catch a flight...still a bit more coming....
Visitor Comments
Hi Josh -
While I do not disagree with you that the most relevant experience is related to *actual client results* I don't see that many firms claiming "We blog, thus we are experts." Am I missing something?
The fact that so many agencies are starting to blog, tweet, etc. is something we should only applaud, yes? There will always be frauds & phonies and they'll be known as such in the end. There will also be plenty of firms who try/fail/try/fail and yet *ultimately* do great things, and I don't fault them for the trying (or even the failing - unless they habitually fail to learn the important lessons).
Meanwhile, most agencies are not allowed to talk publicly about the great work they have done for clients. So the "public" stuff we see can't always be viewed as the be-all/end-all of that agency's capabilities.
We can all do a better job of "running the run" yet also need to remember that we're engaged in a marathon, not a sprint, eh?
Posted by: Todd Defren | June 12, 2008 11:54 AM
Yes it is a marathon, but training for a marathon and completing the race distance are two different things.
Posted by: Josh Hallett | June 12, 2008 1:12 PM
Thanks, Josh. I couldn't agree with you more about learning things "from the heat of battle." Because I've always been a curious early adopter of social media tools, I must admit that I've been frustrated in the past when I couldn't get clients to drink the Koolaid. Worse, I'd be in meetings where I'd hear pitches from other companies who were pitching social media "features" as technology solutions or "search optimization" strategies. Rather than beat our heads against the wall, we started trying out our theories on our own site (hammock.com) and tried to keep it real simple, using Flickr, Google, YouTube -- things that even the CEO of a client had heard of (well, maybe not Flickr, but Google, they definitely have heard of). Last holiday season, we decided to incorporate a social-media experiment in an annual tradition we have -- sending out T-shirts, asking the recipients to upload a photo of them wearing the shirt to our website. Using the Google maps API, we mashed up the photos and a world map - http://hammock.com/tshirt/ .
That, even more than the 35+ blogs and blog-like things on our site, helped us convey that we can help clients tell stories in new and different ways. We now have people asking "can you do one of those map things?" without ever actually "pitching" it.
So, I agree that you need to have real, client work to legitimize your claims of understanding what I call conversational media. But displaying what you can do on your own site is useful, as well -- and it's a little like building a portfolio. Do something for a non-profit, if not on your own site.
Frankly, Josh. I've seen marketing firms -- even those who claim prowess in online, digital work -- who have a blog with three posts that hasn't been updated for months. My advice to them is this - Take the blog down and claim that you understand social media rather than leave it up and prove that you don't.
Posted by: Rex Hammock | June 12, 2008 2:13 PM