This article talks about the future of the agency. I’m not to keen of making any predictions, with or without any crystal ball. But sometimes these articles make you reflect over your situation. Though, I believe that this issue is becoming quite concrete for any of us. I.e. what will your business be in five years time as we’re facing the big R?

The author speaks about a dramatic shift, where the full-service agency’s days are counted and work being more diverted. The 5.0(?!) agency’s role is either going to be about creation or production. The creators are the strategists that solves the complex solutions for branding, where as the producers executes the ideas. I’m not too sure about this dividing. Sure you, as an agency, might need to speak clearly about what you do as the conditions on the market gets more demanding.

So yes, in some ways I believe the general full-service agency that do a bit of everything needs to evaluate their business and differentiate themselves. And when talking about the “general agency”, I’m more thinking of the local SME business rather than global networks.

When it comes to the local smaller agencies who today may work more as traditional advertising agency, with not much focus on digital, this time is a rather excellent time to get market shares. There’s going to be loads of new techniques available which are going to facilitate creation and publication of digital content.  So for the local agencies it’s going to be about jumping on the digital train, otherwise you’ll be left behind. So when marketing budgets are being cut, there’s obviously going to be less work for advertisers. But as the budgets are shifting towards digital, that’s where you need to be. Basically they can keep doing what they do best, slightly adjust their business as the tools for digital execution is going to be there.  

So there’s still going to be opportunities for the smart generalists.  

Tags: recession, marketing, digital marketing, yooba, budget, strategy, creativity

This is one aspect we’ve had around Yooba Studio:” Why not use the technology to give more?” New technology will give you new fantastic capabilities to streamline your work.                                 

But as Mr. Godin points out – should you use new tools to do less?

No, now is the time to do more. Saving time and money gives you new conditions to do more. More frequently, or/and in further channels. Increase your communications.  

Tags: yooba, marketing, advertising, yooba studio, seth godin, communication

Just a minor breakdown, as we’re heading towards, or getting closer, to something of a milestone for us here at Yooba. It’s really inspirational, and the excitement is tangible over here.

Soon, we’re going to see some content created, and published from Yooba.com. So far, a bit “behind the scenes”, it’s been a bit winding road. Not in a messy way – we’ve thankfully “always” had a clear internal vision of who we are, and why we’re doing this. But it’s really interesting how the process of positioning your business, forming your identity, entering the market, has been formed. You can very much affect the process, and sometimes things go out of your control. But it’s definitely a very good, and almost necessary, learning process.

I’m still very general, but some of you might recognise the process of entering the market with a new service or product. Are you going to try to create WOM through the blogosphere? What PR are you going to aim for? How are you going to communicate the business values to different segments?  Marketing strategies!?

There are so many challenges! And I can’t see there are any rights or wrongs. Even with some experience we’re acting in a changeable world, where you constantly need to be (pro-)active, keen, reflective and critical.

But still it’s very inspirational.

With a bit of “retrospective”.  

On the other hand this is just the beginning, and you’re soon able to witness it yourself.

Tags: yooba.com, marketing, strategy,

Speaking of economic downturn (as in previous post), I read a very inspirational article (in Swedish) and we had a chat about it here at the office as well. Well, not really a chat, my manager just briefly mentioned that in a recession you’ve got the best possibilities to grab market shares. It sounds very much like a comment from a “visionaire extraordinaire”; as in “that’s easier said than done”. But hey, he’s done it. So I’ve got no reasons to doubt. Yooba was established during the “worst” era in early 2000. So we’ve learned all the way (the hard way); from how the consumers/end users behave, to how you need to act in your business strategies. Obviously there’s no standard manual on how to act during a recession. Partly from our experiences, and referring to the article previously mentioned it’s in some aspects a psychological phenomenon.

Either you get frightened and passive, or active and specialized. The first is about letting the circumstances affect you, and the other is about adjusting yourself to the situation, looking at every possible option to do new business. This is the time (during a recession) when you can get new market shares at a lower price, but you probably won’t get the profit until the economic upswing comes.

Passivity is very uncreative.

You need to be offensive when everyone else gets defensive.

The risks might get bigger in a recession, but you take the biggest if you get passive.

Tags: creativity, recession, yooba, marketing, strategy

Another report on the effects on marketing due to the (forthcoming) economic situation. Moray MacLennan, IPA President, Chairman Europe M&C Saatchi: “The report certainly reflects the increasing gloom of the past few weeks. There is a clear implication that the economy will slow further. Agencies cannot affect the short term economic outlook, but they can do at least two things; firstly, focus even more closely on cost control and secondly, strive for even more original and innovative solutions so they can buck the trend."

Tags: internet marketing, economic downturn, marketing agencies,

I read an interesting article over here, about (future) successful communications. It’s about the company’s role within various (social) contexts. What we see today is the growing social media usage, which companies needs to adjust to. To be successful you, in most cases, need to take part of the conversation on the various arenas, you need to be more open in your communications etc. But what we fundamentally need to think is about, the company being more social. As a social subject you still adjust yourself to the context. As it is today, I think that it’s still about – we can say this, in this channel or context.

On the other hand, maybe there isn’t any short cuts, and the process has just started, with the rapid growth of social media usage where companies slowly are (needs to) getting more social.  

Tags: transparency, social media, branding, market communications, yooba

• Average time spent online is up 4% compared to a year ago.
• Biggest increase in social networks and blogging sites.  

                                                                                                                                                          source: nielsen-online

        Now it’s just for you to mix the best ones to your marketing strategies.

Tags: marketing, yooba, internet spending, uk, communication, entertainment, consumer generated media

Even though we try as hard as we can to enable you access to our service, things are slowing down here at Yooba HQ. Present staff is working as hard as ever, but gradually parts of our developing team and other staff involved, are going for a bit well deserved holiday.

So, where are we right now? The hygiene factors are getting under control; we’ve been able to implement some basic functions that weren’t initially prioritised, but that appeared to be necessary to have added from the start. Bugs are being fixed, tutorials are being written; slowly but surely we’re getting closer to a milestone which is to see content being created in Yooba Studio.

When our service is going public, it also means that we can get into communicating, blogging about the service it self. So far we’ve been touching various surrounding contexts where Yooba will fit, but still we haven’t’ been able to give any concrete proposals that would make our communications (read this blog) really unique. At the end of the day it’s through our service we’re setting our identity, everything we communicate is going to be filtered through Yooba.com – The Service.

We’re very much looking forward to that, this blog amongst others is going to get new perspectives, and I’m positive that we’re going to enable a dialogue which this is very much about.

Tags: yooba studio, social media, yooba.com, dialogue

One good thing about our platform is that it’s constantly amendable. As a web based service it’s always evolving; the latest upgrades, functions etc. are always included. That gives us very flexible conditions to actually adjust our work to what you might want us to do for you, and that’s the way we like to work.

Right now we’re working on implementing functions that we feel needs to be available until we’re going to be publicly available. Those feelings are very much based on feedback and requests from potential users. It’s not always we can do what someone wants, but listening to your customers is getting more essential as It can give you great data for decision-making.

Two things then; dialogue with your customers should be encouraged – whether you’re Apple or a start up, it’s becoming more and more necessary. And, that’s what we’ve done. Basically we’re going to start focusing on a few cases, working very closely on those and then increasingly starting to open up for more users.

Tags: yooba, innovation, digital, customer feedback, software as a service

Lately we’ve been having some thoughts and discussions on how to reach out to other businesses that primary isn’t involved in content production. By now, you’re probably aware of Yooba’s main capabilities – smart and effective creation of Flash content. We’ve obviously got our target groups in those who practically are involved, and soon can be involved, in content creation.

Curious as we are though, and always looking for new (business) opportunities we’ve been led into different paths. In this particular case the media agencies and the reason for that is partly due to reports about the forthcoming recession and how agencies (and anyone else for that matter) need to adjust, find new business models, to the forthcoming circumstances.

Even though, we’ve had just very brief encounters to a few media agencies, I find it hard to see that the majority of them are going to reach out for new opportunities. Economy is still going well and they’re busy doing what they mainly are there for; buying media space and consulting. So, right now there might not be many reasons to look at new tasks or have a slightest glance “outside the box”. But I sincerely hope that we’ve still got to meet the right consultant who’s actually looking for new business opportunities to meet a possible not-so-straightforward future of a deformed media landscape.  

Tags: yooba, media agencies, business model, consultancy, flash content,