Our Monthly Round-up of the key pieces in Marketing for November – we’ve chosen four key articles on growth, a podcast, and a webinar. If you missed any of them – have some time, they are all worth a catchup. http://haiconsulting.com/category/views/

This month we have also included Ten Highlights/Learnings from the Adforum Summit in Amsterdam. If you would like a collaborative discussion around your 2023 objectives, we’re happy to set up a session to take you through the findings.

Our November Highlights:

1. Our Top Pick this month is an outstanding piece on Growth and E-commerce by Mckinsey. A successful transition to the next horizon of digital commerce requires companies to get real about being customer first and making some hard choices. Superbly presented this article highlights six big key forces – key trends that are highlighting the need for companies to evolve their approach to e-commerce.

Here is the link: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/becoming-indispensable-moving-past-e-commerce-to-next-commerce

2. Secondly, we pick a piece that Mark Ritson produced for a ‘Ritson on Recession’ Webinar – in partnership with System One which we attended. Mark presented a guide to how brands can survive – and thrive in tough times. He outlines five takeaways for marketers – and here you can download the summary and recording in full.

Here is the link: https://system1group.com/blog/ritson-on-recession-5-takeaways-for-marketers.

3. Thirdly, when ROI does not equal ROI, we came across this piece via the Financial Times on Marketing’s Most Marmite metric.

Here is the link: https://thetomroach.com/2022/10/12/marketings-most-marmite-metric/

4. Fourthly, we love the Digital Native substack and this piece summarises 10 charts that show how the world is changing.

Here is the link: https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/10-charts-that-capture-how-the-world?

5. Fifthly, we picked a piece by Avi Dan, who for some time attended Adforum summits in New York, his piece appeared in Forbes this month. The great agencies have one thing in common: the person who calls the shot is a rock star, a charismatic leader. It’s an interesting read.

Here is the link:  https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2022/11/02/the-one-thing-that-all-great-agencies-have-in-common

6. Sixthly, we pick a Metaverse piece. An excellent podcast from AdAge which outlines ways for brands to think about Web 3 and the Metaverse. It was sent to us by Isabel Perry at Dept. who has a Trends Event piece coming up in January 2023. And even includes a section from Meta guru Nicola Mendelsohn on building the Metaverse responsibly.

Here is the link:  https://open.spotify.com/show/3KNVlS2GZWkns1wcwOrw08?si=1a5884eb75644cfb

Time for the Work: It was a tough choice this month with breaking Christmas ads for Guinness, McDonald’s, O2, and Aldi all worthy contenders. But it had to be congrats this month to John Lewis, and Adam & Eve London for simply getting it so right.  https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/adam-and-eve-john-lewis-ad-the-beginner-advertising-101122

Media: Amazon and other retail media represent a third wave in digital advertising. We are a fan of Simon Andrews Fix/lite which we share on a Monday morning – this week’s editionhighlighted this Financial Times piece on Retail Media. https://www.ft.com/content/3224a3f6-cf02-4e1f-95f9-9b90da204377

Back to Henley: Our weekly column in the Henley Standard continues where we interview local entrepreneurs it’s called Let’s Get Down to Business. We were delighted this month to interview Ben Fennell, CEO of The Growth House, and former CEO of BBH, some great learnings. https://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/business/176180/let-s-get-down-to-business-ben-fennell-the-growth-house-remenham.html

Book Alert: And we’ve picked Will Greenwood and Ben Fennell’s book ‘World Class’. How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion. We attended a Gardner Leader event at Leander Club early this month in which Will and Ben unearthed some insights from the book on Leadership. Pack your team with talent – it’s an essential read and is available in all forms from Amazon.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Class-Lead-Learn-Champion-ebook/dp/B091Y5MHG2

Ten Highlights/Learnings from the Adforum Summit in Amsterdam:

We bring you the highlights from the recent Amsterdam Adforum Summit – 30 consultants from 9 countries, met with 15 agency and production companies across Europe in 3 days. We saw key trends emerging this year – a wave of newness – agencies working directly at the intersection of: – entrepreneurship, marketing, technology, creativity, and experience.

Agency participating in this year’s Adforum Amsterdam included: Day One: Virtue, Candid, iO, The Family, N=5, Rankin Creative, followed by a Constellation / 72 & Sunny dinner. Day 2: Been There Done That, Die Crew, Gravity Global, Forsman and Bodenfors and DEPT, with a closing dinner at 180 Amsterdam. And finally on the last day sessions with Code d’Azur, Springbok, Deloitte Digital and ACNE London.

65% of all agencies are back in the office full time. Of course there is still some hybrid working, but that tends to be much more on the marketer/client side. Pitching agencies we find are stronger if teams through the process are seated together. Many of the financial institutions continue to be hybrid.  All the offices we visited were lively, active and back to full culture – it was great to see.

Agency Models: We saw emerging agency models particularly within entrepreneurial profiles – growth by acquisition, agencies being privately funded, or becoming highly attractive to private equity investments. We saw seamless agencies – where Independents are working together as true alternatives to holding companies.

CMO Complexity: CMO’s are facing a ‘cacophony of complexity’ – the need to blend client skills and agency teams – and have them work seamlessly together. Brands must no longer self promote, but make consumers their ambassadors, within targeted communities particularly via social media.  It’s no longer good enough to have just great creative advertising – it really is about how a CMO can orchestrate and integrate the whole organisation marketing mix funnel. It always now includes seeking Share of Search, as well as Share of Voice.

Sustainability: It’s a key topic to save the planet, and many agencies are guiding clients to be not only sustainable, but indeed net zero businesses – all the agencies have the objectives to leave the industry better than they found it, often selling ideas that can help change the world forever.

Purpose: We again saw agencies that are focussing on Purpose, they are compassionate, and we are beginning to see a number of new agencies launch into this space.

Power of Creativity: The power of data in creativity was evident and the question these days is how agencies interpret and decipher the data in time to make a difference, particularly with closed loop attribution. Some advertising is in terminal decline, but with testing systems in place some creative advertising is gaining significant traction for brands. Macro-economic issues lie at the heart of the problem, brand advertising is needed particularly when inflationary price increases are necessary.

Decoupling: Agencies are able to ‘slice and dice’ accordingly, we saw examples of agencies recognising their value in wisdom – decoupling strategy from execution – and offering only the former. Agencies are seeking to move upstream into the consultancy space to be closer to innovation and product design.

The Makers: A new breed of agency is emerging that we saw earlier in the year in New York, through RGA, Huge, Proto and DEPT. And in Amsterdam iO and DEPT were the best examples of agencies blending the focus areas – entrepreneurship, marketing, technology, creativity, and experience – and making things happen.

The Conductors: Agencies are beginning to present themselves as platforms, whatever the task – we are beginning to see talents blended to client needs and agency projects run by ‘Conductors’, or as one agency presented – simply as ‘a Nose’ to whatever the clients objectives.

The Big Four: It’s clear that ‘the Big Four’ want to play in the strategy, thinking and communication space. Whilst we have seen Accenture Song making multiple acquisitions – its timely that Deloitte Digital, ACNE has aspirations for big tech thinking and delivery – these companies are built with expertise to deliver massive transformational moments of change.

Being Brave: It’s the time to look across your organisation – nurture youth and opportunity. We saw some fantastic creatives in their twenties, presenting on flagship clients – the world favours the brave – often they understand specific categories better than we do.

Wishing you, and your team a Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year. We’re here to help you evolve your agency resourcing structures, agency reviews, evaluations and benchmarking to improve your marketing performance, so do contact us for anything we can help you with.

Kind regards,

Will