The success of an advertising campaign depends on a healthy relationship with clients and audience, says Chris Bianco, Managing Director, JP Advertising.
How has marketing changed since JP Advertising started operating?
Marketing is certainly different to what it used to be. In the past you communicated with large audiences just through traditional advertising. Those days are long gone and today marketing offers varied solutions carried across different vehicles which are constantly changing.
Change in such a dynamic field is inevitable. One important change is the very close connection between technology and marketing. Technology is today an integral part of our daily tasks. It has helped us become more knowledgeable about the market and made us less dependent on location and time. It has also opened doors to new business and helped us diversify. Most importantly, in a world where clients are becoming more demanding, it has helped us to improve customer relationships.
Our way of thinking has had to change to embrace social media and its use. This has created a scenario where communication is more flexible, open and immediate. We have witnessed a shift in the marketing euros spent. Some of the campaign budget that was once spent on traditional media has moved to digital media. Today it is no longer just about purchasing time or space on media owned by external parties, as companies today have their own vehicles for communication, from websites and Facebook business pages to Twitter or LinkedIn profiles. Moreover, the tools just keep increase and growing.
It is not just the basic rules and processes that have changed. People too have changed. Today customers do not perceive themselves as being passive – rather, they realise that they have options and want to play an active role. Attention spans are shorter with the result that messages addressed to the audience we are communicating with have to have more meaning.
In all this one thing has not changed – the importance of being meaningful in one’s communication and creating a better experience.
Despite the changes, the key three marketing ingredients are still ideas, visuals and words – yet how does the recipe change for different media such as print and digital?
Ideas, visuals and words prevail in print as well as online, yet social media is real time and 24/7. Unlike print, where messages are static, social media and digital communication use ever-changing platforms and hence messages have to have embedded in them an element of flexibility in order to succeed.
We seek to communicate clearly and openly
Marketing ingredients such as ideas, visuals and words executed online do not operate as a one-way street but rather utilise two-way communication where people want to have answers and can have their say. No matter the medium, these ingredients remain crucial. However, interaction, engagement and user experience are now often added to the mix regardless of the media type, as the approach is drifting towards a fuller, more cross-media approach.
While digital and social media grant access to a larger audience, the challenge is to maintain meaningful conversations with everyone – what is the role of a marketing agency within this context?
The expanding reach of digital and social media makes them very attractive indeed. As a marketing communications company we can assist clients to look beyond just digital and social media and help them find ways to add social components to their other marketing vehicles be they print, broadcast, outdoor, public relations or an event.
No matter the size of the client’s marketing team, an external eye is always required. This independent viewpoint is aided by the fact that a marketing communications company such as JPA works with many brands, from fast-moving consumer goods, banks and services to real estate, automotive and luxury brands. This brings to the table a holistic perspective based on customer behaviour, likes and dislikes, enabling the client to communicate with the right person, at the right time and in the right frame of mind.
We also believe that integral to digital and social media success is content creation. In this respect our role is that of helping clients take the message directly to the customer, and influence the purchase intent by ensuring that helpful information is provided at the appropriate time in the purchase cycle.
Content creation is essential to digital and social media success.Content has to be converted into leads, and leads into sales. What does a successful conversion rate depend upon?
Having executed our ideas using different vehicles based on the target audience – be they traditional, digital or social media vehicles – our attention turns to measuring the result level of the campaign’s communication. The awareness and buzz created by the campaign, the number of posts published online including likes, sharing, the engagement comments, and positive feedback about the content are critical to the success of a campaign. Ultimately the more conversations about the brand and the greater the positivity of the messages generated, the higher that the success of the campaign is ranked.
Can you market anything online?
Although a particular service such as online gaming is better suited for online, there are many products and services where online and offline experiences work perfectly together and feed off one another. Communicating with clients through social media is a great engagement tool, as is the opportunity to interact with a client through a marketing exercise where the customer can touch or sample a product, hence enhancing a real life experience.
Moreover, in opting to market a brand utilising solely online, a strategy of diversity has to be adopted where the focus is not just on one vehicle but rather on a basket of tools including SEO, blogs and social media.
How important is trust between an agency and a client?
We operate by the credo that the basis for a long-term relationship with a client is trust. In building such a relationship, from the onset we seek to communicate clearly and openly.
We adopt an approach where we openly share with a client project tasks and milestones through our project management system, called teamwork, as we believe that detailed communication and transparency are key to building a relationship based on trust. Adherence to the components of service quality including quick responsiveness, reliability in the service offered, a true understanding of the client’s needs as well as belief in the knowledge held by the personnel executing campaigns go a long way in consolidating this trust.
Our relationship with a client is a partnership, where the more we understand their business, the higher the success of a campaign is likely to be.
As an agency, you have recently refreshed your brand visual identity – what values does this refreshed identity reflect?
We place a lot of importance on the visual identity of the JPA brand. It is one of the vehicles through which our brand communicates, a visual reflection of what we believe in and more importantly, who we are. Although consistent projection of the brand values is very important, a brand has to evolve and stay fresh. The visual identity of the JPA brand was reviewed with this in mind. Throughout, the values of flexibility, open-mindedness, boldness, innovation and dynamism have been embraced. The identity is also driven by our belief in teamwork where the strengths and diversity of the different people within the company are brought together to achieve results for our clients.