Time to market

The new agenda for the global marketer

Posted on: May 10th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Improve performance and demonstrate business value

The playing field for the global marketer is changing rapidly. And a new efficiency mind-set is needed to handle:

  • Globalisation, digitisation and evolving customer sophistication
  • New technology, channels and media
  • Procurement and financial constraints

Drive efficiency and show business value

To address these and align with CEOs and CFOs, it is important for global CMOs to focus on how to demonstrate business value and ROI to secure a strategic role.

This requires a systematic link of marketing investments to business value outcomes. And an understanding of how the business creates value, as well as how to drive efficiencies within an organisation and with external partners.

Because of this, the CMO has to respond to short-term demands to drive revenue, still keeping the lens on strategic customer segments and growth opportunities while maintaining a focus on brand promise.

Generate business impact

Historically there has been too much focus on qualitative outcomes. To earn a seat at the table, CMOs are expected to talk less about the “soft things” and more about how marketing investments directly impact the pipeline and the P&L.

Marketing data can be much more than a tool for developing budgets and tracking campaigns. Relevant performance data provides the C-suite with the confidence to invest in marketing and thus in the strategic growth of the company.

The issue is not just about making the most efficient use of resources. It’s also about speeding up the process of finding what works in one place and make it work everywhere

Expectations from the CEO

Based on research findings, CEOs expects their CMOs to address the following:

  • 77% find that CMOs keep talking about brand, brand values, brand equity etc. rather than revenue, sales, EBIT and so on
  • 74% find that CMOs focus too much on the latest marketing trends without demonstrating how these trends can generate more business
  • 73% find that when CMOs are asked to increase marketing ROI they understand this as a cost-cutting process with third parties instead of top-line growth generation
  • 72% find that CMOs are always asking for more money, but can rarely explain how much incremental business this money will generate
  • 70% find that they bombard their stakeholders with marketing data without relating it to the company’s P&L

Source: The FournaiseTrack June 2011

From these findings it is clear that there is a new agenda for the contemporary global CMO, and their focus should be around:

  • How to drive growth (revenue and profit) and create visible results
  • Creating a leaner organisation and reducing chain of command
  • Optimising processes and the marketing mix to improve ROI
  • Improving market impact and performance documentation

All in all, more focus on the P&L language and tracking of business effectiveness.

AdPeople solutions

AdPeople has for a decade worked with these issues and we have developed solutions to help solve these challenges – namely:

  • A centralised setup and process
  • Generation of global creative ideas
  • Localisation model for multiple markets
  • Workflow transparency for monitoring and auditing
  • Standardisation and automation of repetitive processes
  • Documentation and performance measurement of all activities

Challenging the traditional model

Posted on: May 8th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Get the best of both worlds

Today’s rise of procurement departments has led to a new agenda of accountability, forcing agencies to cut margins, amend working processes and become transparent.

At the same time, CMOs are under increasing pressure to justify marketing activity and performance. Clients are reasserting their power in the relationship with the agency.

We are far away from the “good old days” of the advertising industry where a typical view would be “The agency does the ads and the company focuses on its products…” - the era when agencies held the creative and buying power.

This has led to the phenomenon called decoupling, which is when a company separates and outsources parts of the advertising process rather than allowing the agency to control the whole supply chain. In this way, clients can get the agencies and production companies they want at prices dictated by the market.

Consistency maintained?

But decoupling is rarely the optimal solution that one might think. Agencies tend to have a long tradition of competence in client-handling skills and a sophisticated understanding of that relationship. They provide a critical buffer and the right environment for an approved idea to evolve into relevant and consistent marketing elements.

If a production house assumes that role, it will have to meet client concerns about the consistency of the brand message. This can detract from the creative process and take a production company away from its raison d’être.

So, if the client wants to decouple, it runs the risk of a fragmented brand message and varying degrees of consistency. Not just creatively, but in the whole scheme of agency services – from business affairs, legal issues, the acquisition and retention of knowledge, ongoing production deals and ‘continuity’ .

There is a whole lot that agencies bring to the table that sometimes clients don’t realize.

Lean-driven agencies

But you don’t have to choose between cost reductions and brand consistency. This dilemma can be solved without decoupling by using a lean-driven agency.

AdPeople is such a lean-driven agency – based on an efficiency mindset delivering ROI, rapid time-to-market and brand consistency to its clients. AdPeople has a thorough understanding of the marketing supply chain and has optimised each part of it by the use of lean processes and technology to support them.

AdPeople has more than 10 years of experience as a lean driven agency and a proven track record that defines the best cases of decoupling.

International Creativity

Posted on: May 6th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Your work is born global

International creativity delivered by a multinational crew in a single location – that has to be the ideal melting pot for ideas and concepts…

AdPeople develops global and regional campaigns for our clients as a full service agency. We also work with agencies seeking efficient and cost-effective capability to implement regional and global campaigns for their own clients. Either way, our creative department ensures that concept and quality is consistent through all channels and elements.

Challenge traditional thinking

Our multinational team gives us diversified insight and behavioural input for national, regional or international implementation. This genuinely multinational environment encourages open minds - and AdPeople thrives on cultural diversity. Open minds are more receptive to new ideas – and cross-cultural alchemy leads to radically different approaches that challenge traditional ways of thinking.

With 25 nationalities represented at AdPeople, you could imagine a Tower of Babel situation, where cultures, languages and beliefs collide in chaos. In fact, the opposite has proved to be true. A mutual sense of diversity unites us – enabling new people to integrate and contribute more quickly. Intriguing educational backgrounds and wildly varied lifeexperiences all add to the mix.

No defaults

It’s precisely because we have so many cultures under one roof that we don’t have a default setting to fall back on. We create it afresh each day as we work across groups and meet new people.

Every time we ask each other if there’s a better way of doing something we challenge our creativity. And when we know the goal, we get there by moving past the old rules and creating new ones. This probably explains our unusually ego-free environment, where ideas are solicited, accepted and encouraged from every direction – from art directors to account people, the same focused ‘go-get-it’ principle applies.

Brand Governance

Posted on: May 5th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Better brand control across markets

A major task of any marketing organisation is to manage the consistency of the brand experience by creating an efficient infrastructure, both internally and externally. The challenge is to maximise impact and minimise spend.

AdPeople delivers both the mindset and the process tools to solve this challenge by creating a special infrastructure for global or regionally centralised marcom organisations.

We help align marcom activities externally, while integrating and optimising different marcom efforts within the organisation. This creates better resource allocation and improved efficiency, both in terms of cost reduction and higher consistent quality throughout all marcom efforts.

A centralised setup is needed

To achieve these goals, the organisation requires a centralised setup built around a workflow process involving both human resources and supporting technology.

It is important that this setup takes into consideration work done with other external agencies at the various procedural stages from idea creation to the activation and delivery of marcom activities.

But one size doesn’t fit all, and a thorough understanding of organisation-specific needs and structures is required to create the most efficient infrastructure.

Efficient brand governance

An AdPeople solution includes all the elements of efficient brand governance, backboned by BrandShare™, our Marketing Operation Management System. BrandShare™ provides:

  • A centralised model/process
  • Workflow transparency for monitoring and auditing
  • Development of international creativity
  • Localisation for all markets
  • Standardisation and automation of redundant processes and elements
  • Documentation and performance measurement of all activities

All in all, a comprehensive setup for true brand governance.

Lean agency setup

Working with AdPeople means working with central hubs, with all resources in-house - not an expensive, complex network of regional or local offices around the world. AdPeople makes sure your marcom works in all your markets with one single point of contact.

This effective setup and infrastructure shortens the chain of command. This is a powerful management tool in today’s dynamic business environment. Management becomes less complex with improved control and overview, while confidence and simplicity in decision making is improved.

Our tested and proven process gives the following benefits:

  • Consistency in brand messaging across markets
  • Improved quality in all creative executions
  • Reduced time-to-market
  • Reduced costs via efficiency

AdPeople’s mindset is unique in that our model is custom-built to drive efficiency. It is not simply a new interface bolted to an existing network structure.

To get the full advantage of the AdPeople model, you need to be willing to change old habits and encourage a centralised mindset throughout the organisation.

Efficiency wanted

Posted on: May 4th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

AdPeople - Efficiency wanted through the line

AdPeople is an agency with a unique approach. We activate and deliver great ideas to all types of markets; from local, regional and global mass markets. We’re able to do this rapidly, consistently and cost-effectively, because we have a systematic and process-driven approach.

The challenge - efficient roll out of international campaigns

Many regional and global brand managers ask themselves this fundamental question:
“How do I roll out efficient international marcom campaigns without compromising creative concepts, local relevance and costs?”

The solution - people, process and progress

By acknowledging the complex relationship between creativity and efficiency, AdPeople has specialized in meeting the requirements of modern businesses where creativity is key but cost and time-to-market are equally important factors.

By utilizing the right combination of people, processes and supporting technology we have, together with our clients, achieved fantastic results by delivering:

  • Best of breed creative campaigns for our international client portfolio
  • Higher quality of work and less errors
  • Greater efficiency - 50% reduction in external agency spend experienced
  • Shorter production cycles, and faster time-to-market - 60% reduction in production cycle experienced
  • 24/7/365 service
  • Full media

The Delivery - facts

Our services range from specific local country activities to global campaigns in which we handle the 5 major global regions and deliver work for 90 countries with 94 different language versions.

  • 228,000+ unique pages globally in 2010
  • 57,000+ marcom activities produced in 2010
  • 39,000+ digital marcom activities produced in 2010
  • Split online/offline 70/30%

 

Global Production Delivery

Posted on: April 29th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

The Art of Off-shoring

Posted on: April 29th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Multi-dimensional Scaling

Posted on: April 29th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Lean Six Sigma at AdPeople

Posted on: April 28th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Does your agency need to wear a belt?

Lean Six Sigma has been the leading methodology for business process optimisation among Fortune 500 companies for the last twenty-five years.

These efficiency requirements have now reached the marketing industry and clients are increasingly pressuring their agencies to implement leaner approaches.

Creativity and efficiency

At AdPeople we have acknowledged the complex relationship between creativity and efficiency since our formation in 1999. We have specialised in meeting the requirements of modern business where creativity is key but cost and time-to-market are equally important factors.

We now have many years experience of working with clients with high efficiency demands and this lean approach is applied to all our departments and locations.

A lean agency? Almost a contradiction!

Not for us, because we believe in meeting the exact needs of our clients. For local and global clients we understand the requirement to provide an organizational structure that matches the precise needs - no more, and no less.

No lean agency is credible without a lean production engine. We have a state-of-the-art full service hub in Copenhagen and a production hub in Dhaka where we provide 24/7 service.

Enhanced by technology

To support and enhance the agency offering we utilize every possible aspect of supporting technology including our own software agency, SoftwarePeople, where we develop web marketing platforms that enable us and our clients to work in the most optimal way.

Every process in the agency is supported by cutting edge technology. By utilizing the right combination of people, processes and supporting technology we have, together with our clients, achieved fantastic results - delivering best-of-breed creative campaigns while optimising production lead times by more than 60%.

To further strengthen and improve our unique lean position in the market, all our employees are Lean Six Sigma certified.

Lean Six Sigma is a marriage of two otherwise distinct business management strategies, lean manufacturing and Motorola’s Six Sigma system.

Eliminate errors and improve quality

Lean manufacturing methodology concentrates on creating more value from less work, while the Six Sigma system strives to identify and eliminate errors in the development process.

Lean Six Sigma seeks to improve output quality by identifying and removing the causes of errors and minimizing variation in manufacturing and business processes.

It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organisation, namely the “Black Belts” and the “Green Belts” who are experts in these methods.

So yes - we will be proud to wear belts in the future in order to deliver the most efficient agency services in the industry.

The online reality

Posted on: April 28th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

A world without geography

One of the temptations of online communication is to exploit low-volume distribution costs and saturate the market with high-volume messages.

This hit and miss approach usually fails. The focus should not be on volume, but rather on producing contextually relevant elements which influence business and consumer decision processes.

It’s also about understanding the nuances of a global market as, with online strategies less ruled by geography, budgets can be planned globally or regionally and handled by a centralised team. The team monitors which audiences have the best level of engagement per communication spend and where the best efficiency and ROI is being achieved.

Implement rapid changes

A centrally-managed solution with a digital workflow process and asset management system allows communication to move faster. The team can quickly adapt to changes in content and implement rapid changes to formats and media channels. The challenge is to keep ahead of the target group at a price the brand can support.

With these tools, a centrally-controlled process can adapt more effectively to deliver relevant communications to an audience than local agencies, where multiple, repetitive manual processes are too slow and too expensive.

Execution, evaluation and interaction

For many years, AdPeople has provided a proven and sophisticated centralised offline setup for production, activation and delivery. This has been the keystone for the development of our effective online approach, giving us a unique ability to produce globally relevant online elements - and to be effective in scaling and localisation.

Our biggest advantages are our pragmatic approach and proven track record. Anyone can talk about big ideas, but our trusted model is about execution, evaluation and interaction.

Global RGB standards

Posted on: April 28th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

United colours

Our expertise in global production standards lets us work more effectively in handling documents, files and images. If a global standard doesn’t exist in a company, we’ll create one.

Our unique RGB process was the result of a client’s need for a global image-bank. The requirement was for a system to deal with all the different colour standards for images used around the world in a more efficient way. As with many global companies, the existing image-bank consisted of masses of region-specific images. As locally-generated images optimized to specific needs, they needed to be converted or retouched for use in other regions. The process was costly and time consuming.

The solution was to identify and specify a new cost/time-efficient image management system. The RGB standard was chosen, as RGB is the only global standard that can be simply converted to all local standards for all media formats.

A common alignment to RGB standards within BrandShare™ - our Marketing Operation Management System, saves considerable time and cost in both localization and retouching processes.

The pragmatic approach

AdPeople is the first agency to use RGB standards to share images globally. It’s not rocket-science, just an example of how we approach every job in a pragmatic and holistic way – and a big endeavour which none of our competitors can match.

The RGB workflow offers:

  • Better image quality
  • One image for multiple usage globally
  • Cost and time efficiency

And, more specifically:

  • Low cost retouching for all production requirements
  • Smaller image libraries and lower demands on server space
  • Optimized synch time and time-to-market
  • Truly global production support and image alignment with quality enrichment

In BrandShare™ a synchronisation mechanism makes it possible for all parties to access images and interact dynamically. All synchronisation is done overnight, taking advantage of different time zones.

24 hour studio facilities

Posted on: April 28th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

We’re always open for quality business

AdPeople has a state-of-the art production studio in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The studio uses an automated workflow infrastructure to service international clients requiring complex, high-volume output of online and offline materials in multi-lingual versions.

With the studio we can empower agencies and brands planning to globalise or regionalise their marcom activities. AdPeople can play a vital role in the success of multinational companies by being a cost-efficient production hub, delivering significant cost reductions to clients without compromising on quality.

Our production hub is staffed by over 150 experienced design professionals trained as desktop publishers and web developers.

The studio mirrors our office design in Copenhagen with modern, comfortable facilities. It’s equipped with video and teleconferencing facilities, is fully air-conditioned and has 24/7 full-power backup. The IT infrastructure is based on state-of-the-art equipment with built-in expansion potential.

True 24 hour service

As a unique offering in the market, the studio is a true 24/7/365 production hub. Which means it’s always in time synch with any client, in any location.

At Dhaka, AdPeople has the scale, the infrastructure and a dedicated team approach that delivers highly efficient production services, guaranteeing ON TIME delivery within tight timelines. AdPeople has a proven track record in:

  • Print/digital studio services of international standard at a fraction of the normal cost
  • Excellent quality guaranteed by our world-class capabilities
  • Shorter time-to-market and reduced lead-time

What we do

Posted on: April 24th, 2011 by admin No Comments

 

Optimizing for the globalized world

To cope with and take advantage of the globalized world, you have to adapt. Not only by adjusting your marketing communication, but also by optimizing your marketing setup. You will have to develop global creativity with local relevance based on universal insights. Strengthen Brand Governance by centralizing your marketing operations. Deploy connection planning to reach target groups via their preferred channels. Enhance your competitiveness by improving efficiency, time to market and cost reductions

We help our clients to be optimized for the globalized world.

Our lean global agency offering and services include:

  • Market and industry analysis
  • Brand and communication strategy
  • Creative development of regional or global ideas
  • Activation and localization of creative ideas
  • Delivery of marketing elements to market-specific conditions
  • Change management process for centralization of marketing organizations
  • Development of efficient marketing infrastructures and workflow processes
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