Being Part of Your Client's In-Housing Journey

Editor's Notes

• #2: Journey is such a positive word. And as with all journeys (especially with children), if you don’t prepare and plan it can be much more troublesome. The journey for us looking at providing on-site trading desks for brands started with our team looking at the media space with a business process lense. Is this right? And a month after we started researching the art of the possible meeting a global pharmaceutical company who had invested a lot in building and owning their tech stack with a tech provider, and then giving it back to the media agency to run…..
• #3: I truly believe that the new world is a blend, a collaboration. I have been client side and agency side, and there is a grey area between where the sweet spot is. And the shape of that grey area is different for every client, based on their own objectives, sector, internal team structure.
• #4: For the purposes of this 20 minutes. I will use the following terms.
• #5: Where do you sit? Show of hands. First – who has content creation…. Designers, artworkers, copywriters Second - Media
• #6: Why is this a pertinent topic? ANA – Primarily American, but with a large proportion of their advertiser members having global marketing requirements The USA has seen a huge shift to inhouse. The volume of messaging they produce, and the segmentation of their audience by state – its like marketing to Europe – lots of little countries/ states all with differing balances of demographics, climate differences and infrastructures.
• #7: Nearly 80% have an in-house agency – nearly doubled in 10 years. X So many of them require external agency support. This can be for master creative, strategy, scalability etc. And most said they aim to get over 70% of their work done by their inhouse team. The progression is improving digital capabilities. And even 1 in 3 have some sort of programmatic buying capabilities.
• #8: Current problems…… The Problem 5 years ago was - - - Attracting and retaining talent as it wasn’t really an accepted way of working. That hurdle has now been overcome. There are other reasons why advertisers don’t do this. And the lead is headcount….
• #9: Why are people doing it? I also add Measurability, flexibility and results! THE NEXT EVOLUTION IS HERE
• #10: So why this context…. In-housing services are established, the next generation is to create Digital centre’s of excellence that intrinsically link data, media and content creation. And media buying in any form that can involve data. Programmatic, social etc.
• #11: THE JOURNEY!!
• #12: It starts with knowing why you are doing it. Agreeing this with key internal stakeholders and setting the tone for what utopian outcome is going to look like. Set KPI’s Set commercial goals Set timings (realistic)
• #13: Understand who does what in your current scope of work. Map out where work is shared and handed over to incumbent suppliers, and do they communicate with each other. Knowing this in detail is really important. This where you hope to be transparent with your suppliers and hope they are professional in working with you.
• #14: MEDIA ONLY! TECH STACK and Infrastructure Deliver fully transparent tech solutions, designed in the long term to be owned and operated by you Oversee all technology procurement and implementation requirements. GA360, Adobe, Oracle etc Audit and advise you on all aspects of data collection, handling, and storage compliance Define what metrics you are being measured against. Are you currently using attribution modelling for media? If you are on last click, and switch to attribution, you may have an non comparable swing in results.
• #15: PEOPLE: Undertake full skills gap analysis to identify digital training and/or recruitment needs Buyers, planners, strategists, analysts etc Understand what skills and how many people you need to run your in-house trading desk. Establish where this new team sits in your organisation. Physically, but also structurally. What teams do they need to work with to amplify results, not just deliver on objectives. How do you inspire them? How do you motivate and retain them? How do you make sure they are driving your innovation forward – a service you may typically rely on agencies for today. PROCESS: Once you have the people….how do they work? What’s the media strategy? Ideally using human and machine techniques to define the audiences most likely to deliver your campaign outcomes Create activation blueprints for each audience, including maps, media consumption and disruption propensity Produce ads and on-site experiences specific to each audience Activate consistently across Display, Video, Native, Paid Search, Paid Social, Audio and Outdoor Define appropriate campaign measurement criteria, visualisation and sharing based on your requirements Operate with transparency, providing full commercials across media, tech and data
• #16: You have set up your inhouse team. The immediate results are great, and all objectives achieved. Now manage it, measure it, and refresh it. Link MI reports to other service provider results Track commercial benchmarks and ROI
• #17: Then you have a DCOE that can continue to adapt and develop to deliver results. Overall process… Consultation and research Configuration Attribution Delivery Optimisation
• #18: Make sure your business is on board Be prepared to own this. Have contracts with tech providers and not go through middle men, and be accountable for the success Work with your suppliers, be honest on what your vision is – they may even help