Chris Colbert joins panel at MITX on the future for advertising agencies
February 24, 2010 by Anita Tandon · Comments

- Image of Chris Colbert
Here at Holland-Mark, we’ve been thinking out loud for a while now about how the agency business has changed for good. It’s no longer good enough for marketing to just be interesting – it must be imperative. As CEO of our resurgent business, Chris Colbert has been asked to join industry heavyweights from Mullen, Razorfish, Sapient, and W2 Group to discuss his perspective on the new age of agencies. The event by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) will be held on February 25 from 6-8 p.m.
Keynoted by Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research, the group will discuss how agencies will adapt to new marketing paradigms, the impact of technology, and agency/client relationships in a new era.
“When I restarted Holland-Mark in 2007, I did it because I knew it wouldn’t be business as usual. The economy has allowed us to reinvent how advertising agencies work – and it’s a good thing.”
We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we look forward to being a part of this new conversation. Come by and have a listen.
More details on this MITX event can be found on the event website.
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The Siren Song of Perfection
January 26, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments

- Image via Wikipedia
We’re getting close to the finish line on a handful of client projects right now, and I’ve observed that one of the biggest challenges “real marketers” have in embracing social systems is, for lack of a better term, cultural.
It’s almost a cliche now to say that embracing social media means giving up the sense of control marketing communications types are used to in other media. Like most cliches, there’s a kernel of truth in that observation, but it’s only part of the leap we ask our clients to take.
The less obvious but in some respects equally daunting leap has to do with embracing the ethos of successful software development, which differs quite dramatically from the ethos of successful print and broadcast development.
Marketers are shaped by the awareness that a typo in a print ad is pretty much grounds for termination. A brand manager will spend hundreds of thousands on a TV spot to get it exactly perfect before spending millions to distribute it over the air.
But that’s not the way you build software. It used to be, when software lived on mainframes, or whatever. The “waterfall” methodology was a lot like the ad creation methodology, a system oriented to deep and thorough planning before a launch where perfection was always aspired to, and sometimes required.
The problem with this approach as applied to business software was that it took too damn long, to the point that by the time the system launched, the business issues it was intended to address had evolved. To be more responsive, software development methodology evolved toward the sprint or “scrum” methodology, which is all about iteration, and the perpetual beta was born.
Entrepreneurs and social folk have an almost religious conviction about the design-ship-evolve model of creating software. But it’s an unnatural act for marketing folk, with the effect that building social software in marketing applications puts stress on the relationship between provider and client.
Have you seen this? Do you agree with the diagnosis? And either way… what strategies have worked for you in mitigating it?
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Consumer-opoly: What really motivates consumers?
January 11, 2010 by caroline b. · Comments

- Cover of King Corn (Green Packaging)
Blogging on behalf of an advertising and marketing firm, I realize that I should be prepared to answer that question, rather than simply pose it; however the truth is that the deeper I dig, the more vexing the question becomes. What actually motivates consumers? Moreover, what motivates consumers to make 180 degree changes in their behaviors, not just switch from one brand of paper towels to another? This weekend I watched two documentaries: King Corn, a film about two Boston boys who move to Iowa for a year to grow corn and subsequently follow the path of their corn through the American food system, and Bigger, Stronger, Faster, a documentary about three brothers, two of whom use steroids, leaving the third brother to wonder whether steroids are as bad as we seem to think they are. Both films challenged my established thoughts about their respective subject matter, but more than that, King Corn left me wondering what on earth it’s going to take to motivate American consumers to think—and buy—differently.
As marketers, we believe that we have the power to help companies do this very thing. Give us the time and creative license and we can show consumers the enlightened path. We can turn Coca-Cola loyalists into Pepsi drinkers via a blind taste test. We can convince people across the land that our toilet paper is softer and stronger using two pound weights and a spray bottle. There is a long-held idealism here: show people the “truth” and they will make the right choice.
But then I watch King Corn and I am reminded why Holland-Mark doesn’t put a lot of stock in consumer research. Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me, Food, Inc., King Corn—every one of those movies is telling us the same thing. With infallible proof and research to back their claims, those films tell us to stop eating the way we eat and demand a higher quality product, because the way that we are eating and the choices that we are making aren’t just gnarly, they are killing us. Seriously. (I even took the time to call my stepfather, a rancher, farmer, and crop duster in Texas, to discuss the information I was taking in. His response was almost exactly the same as the farmers in the documentary: “If people wanted quality food, we’d produce quality food. But people want cheap, tasty bullshit. So that’s what we give ‘em.”)
But consumers don’t care. Or perhaps they (we) do care, but not as much as we care about our ratio of cost-and-convenience to consciousness. I want to eat products that aren’t chock-full of corn and bullshit, but I’m also not willing to go out of my way to find them. Oh, and the cost needs to be the same. In other words, while we can convince someone that Pepsi tastes better, you better believe that if the Coca-Cola is on sale, or just in a more visible spot in the store, that Coca-Cola drinker is going to go right back to drinking the red can.
So what—if not impending death and doom—does motivate consumers?
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Domino’s Steps Toward the Truth
January 4, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments
When users are empowered to drown out your marketing messages, the nature of marketing changes. It needs to become “Marketing,” with a capital “M,” and bring more to the table than a tagline. As I said in my last post, where once you could focus on driving the product reality by shaping market perception, now you must also gather market perception to shape the product reality.
As if on cue, I came across a brand embracing this ethos in a very visible way.
If you want to understand why Holland-Mark is so committed to having a real impact on what our clients sell, and not just how they sell it, look no further than the changes underway at Domino’s Pizza…
Good for you, Domino’s.
So have you tried the new ‘za? What’s your take?
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