I’ve been participating at the Counselor’s Academy Conference these last few days. A hundred or so small, medium and large PR agency CEOs come here to listen, learn, debate and network about the latest/greatest happenings within our industry.
One session that I sat in on was of particular interest. The main focus was on specialization. More specifically, a number of very smart large agency leaders led a panel discussion on the virtues of creating new , supplemental marketing capabilities or industry practice areas. The thought here is that by adding deeper capabilities in a new or timely specialty (like digital, environmental or public affairs capabilities), agencies will be that much stronger in competing for business and providing clients much more focused strategy and service around a particular need in these challenging times.
There’s nothing new about the specialization trend. It just makes more sense than ever now because of the increasingly complex and confusing means by which customers, employees, prospects, shareholders and other constituents receive information and news that shape their opinions and decisions. For example, a group or division of specialists who truly understand how to influence a particular segment or audience (like mothers) through social media, would be of huge value to a particular company (like those who create baby products) trying to find the right way to reach that audience successfully.
We discussed how specialization can work well in agencies, what can’t happen or failure will be the result and what specialty areas are most important to clients these days. The conversation was great until it veered off into what I call “agencies only looking inward.” And, that tends to happen a lot.
Someone raised the question of how agencies should present and promote these specialty services/capabilities to clients knowing that the client or prospect is really only familiar with the agency’s core name or brand. Since many agencies are creating sub brands to describe their digital, green, employee communications or other services/practices, this could get mighty confusing when parties from each are presenting capabilities to prospects/clients. For example, how should the digital group’s sub brand (and the people within) of the agency be positioned among the current healthcare division of Agency X, which has the long standing client relation. Not a bad question… but we spent entirely too long (a good 20 minutes) debating possible solutions. And, there’s where the problem lies.
Because the answer is: The client doesn’t really give a damn. Yes, that is true. Most clients only get lost when agencies start offering up too much information on them. And, it goes downhill real quickly when multiple brands are introduced as a way of showing how diverse, experienced and smart an agency is. You see, clients have real problems. And, these days, most just care about how any particular agency is going to eliminate those pain points.
In the midst of the conversation, I finally raised my hand and pretty much said just that. I also offered that it’s more about just showing the clients how deep your expertise, knowledge and results (for other clients) are in that particular specialty, not how you wrap the new service brand into a nice pretty package. I went as far as to say that those agencies that excel at showing the three variables highlighted above, but have yet to figure out branding around their offering, will still fare better than their competitors who do.
In the end, it has to be all about the client anyways. All of our talk on how we sub brand and make our specialty areas real is all inward thinking. It isn’t always easy, but when clients see that all the resources, skill sets and expertise are aimed at solely figuring out communications solutions to their challenges, you’ll have a happy client.
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