Market Forces: Increasingly, agencies must be able to hit a smaller bull's-eye

Jim Fitzgerald, director of marketing strategy and new business development at Ishd Advertising in Chicopee, said people in marketing are, by trade, problem solvers.

"We are constantly working toward new ideas, creating messages, and figuring out where to put that message," he said, adding that the process repeats itself over and over, whether the answer to the problem is a coaster on a bar or a banner on the Golden Gate bridge.

His example illustrates the expanding breadth of the marketing industry, as well as its fast-changing nature.

In response to the shifting demands on the marketing sector, imposed by changes in technology, culture shifts among clients, and the needs and wants of those clients, marketing firms everywhere are employing initiatives large and small to help them stay viable in today's marketplace.

That can mean targeted changes to design style, copy writing, or the media used to communicate a message, or more broad changes to the services a given firm can offer.

And as executives with area marketing companies confirm, the ability to adapt to the changes in the industry is necessary not only for success, but for survival.

Bob Demetrius, senior creative director for Ishd, said the current decade has probably seen more changes to the marketing industry than any other time period - certainly during his career in the trade.

"This business has seen a huge culture change in a short period of time," he said. "No one can get away with being less than entirely effective. Companies must first know marketing intuitively, but then be able to learn and adjust to foreign concepts. The folks who understand that are the people who are surviving."

Design on a Dime

More specifically, Demetrius said marketing has become much more idea-based in the past five years, in response to tough economic times and what he calls an increasingly "myopic" public.

"After 9/11, the marketing industry suffered its worst recession since the Great Depression," he said. "The economy tanked, and the money companies were spending on marketing dissipated. Even after the economy began to improve, companies handling their own marketing inhouse had already become much more commonplace, and that fractured a lot of agencies."

Stephen van Schouwen, a partner at van Schouwen Associates in Longmeadow, added that not only did the economic strife brought on by 9/11 create an initial adverse effect on the marketing industry, it also created a new attitude within the business community toward marketing, which has persisted.

"Immediately after 9/11, companies stopped doing everything, not just marketing," he said. "And as they started to move forward, the adverse economic effects came in waves for months. It made people very averse to risk, and companies are still averse to risk. There's not as much bravado out there anymore.

"Marketing budgets are decent, but no one is asking for extravaganzas," he continued. "Overall, marketing efforts are being approached much more carefully, and are much more business oriented."

That's a big change from the '90s, according to Fitzgerald. The marketing firms that have weathered the financial storm created by 9/11, he said, are those that have recognized their client's need to be more conservative, and have become more focused on careful, strategic planning of marketing initiatives and a healthy balance of business savvy and creativity.

"It's much different now than in the '90s, when people needed us," he said. "When the economy took off in the '90s, the industry saw a switch to digital, and that drove people to us. Design at a highlevel was ultra-important; it drove the business."

But the luxury of "design for the sake of design," Fitzgerald explained, disappeared as marketing budgets shrank nationwide.

"Now, we have to have focus. The bull's-eye we need to hit gets smaller and smaller."

But staying on target doesn't mean just streamlining operations and buckling down, said Demetrius. Ingenuity and originality can never be sacrificed, nor can the maintenance of a strong understanding of the public and how they absorb advertising and marketing efforts.

"Consumers shut off much quicker than they did five years ago," he said. "It has never been more important to get the point across in copy clearly, succinctly, and fast."

Nancy Urbschat, owner of TSM Design in Springfield, agreed.

"People don't read a lot and they haven't for a long time," she said. "People are bombarded by information, and the more dynamic a product you put in front of someone, the better.

"Design is always there," she continued. "It all starts with an idea, then we must discern what channel of communication will be most effective."

Maximizing the effectiveness of a well-designed product, Urbschat explained, is contingent upon attention to those lines of communication, and the strategic planning of a campaign that will, in her words, deliver "the biggest bang for a client's buck."

"Cutting through the clutter is what it's all about, whether that means cutting a television or radio spot differently, using different shapes for materials ... we do whatever we can to get the client's message across clearly."

Moreover, effectively translating a client's message becomes an added challenge as marketing firms attempt to reach clients. Often, that means greater attention to changing technology and the use of a wider spectrum of media. And sometimes, the notion of 'translating a message' becomes quite literal.

"More and more, we realize that we are marketing to a global community," said Fitzgerald. "We've done more translation of materials in the last two years than we've ever done."

While Spanish translations dominate the market, Fitzgerald said, marketing agencies are now commonly translating materials in a myriad of languages. He added that translation services and other strategies aimed at targeting various populations are an apt example of just how diverse the business of marketing has become.

"We may translate an ad or a brochure into seven different languages, or I may be an E-mail campaign that is going to several different countries," he said. "We have even used multi-lingual greeters at trade shows, to make sure we are accessible to all types of people. Our job begins to take on a whole new meaning."

Who's Bobby?

Inclusiveness in marketing is key, added Michelle van Schouwen, partner at van Schouwen Associates. "And in recent years, we have been marketing more and more to the people who, in the past, have been overlooked."

Those groups include audiences of various cultures, lifestyles, and backgrounds, as well as those with disabilities, she said.

The firm has recently taken on a project in tandem with the Regional Employment Board (REB), for example, addressing 'Bobby compliance' of the REB's Web site. The term refers to a site's ability to provide access to Web content for differently abled Web users, and uses a set of guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to gauge the level of compliance. Bobby is the name given to the software that diagnoses a site.

Rebecca Leutert, software engineer for van Schouwen, explained that compliance checks and fixes like those underway on the REB site are a growing aspect of the marketing industry, as more clients request online products and services and access to larger audiences.

"If someone can't use a mouse, for example or is blind, most Web sites don't accommodate them very well," said Leutert. "The W3C guidelines direct people on how to make their sites easier to use for everyone; they suggest things like simpler text, or alternative text for links only reached by clicking on photos. When you think about it, it just makes sense to prepare a site to reach a wider audience."

The compliance project, van Shouwen added, is proof of the increased attention being paid by marketers to diversity, but also to technology, as agencies, not unlike offices around the globe in every industry, scramble to stay on top of the rapidlychanging digital age.

In fact, of all the changes she has seen in the marketing industry over the past five years, van Schouwen said technology has been one of the most prevalent hurdles her firm has had to clear.

"We are truly still at the very beginning of a digital revolution," she said. "And the increasing need to be tech-savvy requires changes in staff, changes in focus, and a greater need to stay abreast of changes that are happening very quickly."

van Schouwen said the firm's first Web site project for a client was in 1994, and the project was relatively basic, especially compared to today's standards.

"When you look back and see what was considered groundbreaking then, it's amazing," she said. "A Web site like the one we were so proud of in 1994 wouldn't even be considered acceptable now."

The increasing importance of technology to marketing has also changed how firms measure their success, said Fitzgerald.

"In this business, marketing firms must get results or else," he said. "But those results always used to be sales. Now, there is so much information available, sometimes the result is not sales. It could be the number of hits on a Web site, or how much traffic that site is seeing. We have a whole new challenge in learning how to measure things, and more importantly, what to measure."

The New Market

Despite the whirlwind of change marketers find themselves within, however, those who spoke with BusinessWest said the industry is competitive, but overall, business is good.

"Largely, the changes have been positive," van Schouwen said. "Competition is ferocious, and the economy makes it hard. But what that teaches us is that people in our line of work need versatility over all else. For some, that need is too great, and it drives them out of business. For others, it can be quite energizing.

"More than ever," she continued, "this is becoming a business for people who think fast and work hard."