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“Fairley & Associates vision and experience has been key
to the success of this project. It would not have happened without them.”

Julia Henniker-Heaton
Director, International brand and marketing

Challenge

BDO, the fifth largest accountancy network in the world, invited
Fairley & Associates to advise them on the most appropriate brand
and communications strategy to support the next phase in their development.

Solution

Fairley & Associates worked collaboratively with BDO to evolve the brand strategy accompanying the network’s move to a single global trading name.
Building on BDO’s promise of client proximity, the brand is now encapsulated
in the idea ‘what matters to you, matters to us’, in that the network strives
to provide the best possible advice and professional service.

We guided BDO through a competitive pitch process and design development. Greentarget rose to the challenge of evolving the identity to express the brand idea, while retaining existing brand equity. Our associate photographic consultant Claire Arroyo, custom built BDO’s new image bank, sourcing images and handling negotiations with all suppliers.

Together with BDO, Fairley & Associates worked through the complex implications of global implementation. Every step was made simple and each member firm in every country was provided with complete implementation guidance. We developed a phased approach for internal engagement and external communications. To ensure both consistency worldwide and ease of local adaptation, we created complete kits with everything from podcasts to posters and presentations to press releases.

Every country was fully equipped to reposition BDO in its market in just six months, exceeding all expectations of what had been envisaged possible within the timeframe and budget.

Outcome

By January 2010 the network will have adopted a single trading name, BDO, dropping local member firm suffixes in all 110 countries. The refreshed brand complementing this change demonstrates the organisation’s international capabilities and strength as an integrated global accountancy network
delivering informed, consistent and quality advice worldwide.

“Fairley & Associates approach was both strategic and pragmatic. Its collaborative ‘virtual team’ approach worked seamlessly with our in house team and provided us with additional expertise in an effective and integrated manner. This enabled us to refresh our brand from within, rather than have it refreshed for us.”

Jeremy Newman
CEO, International brand and marketing

What we did...

Click here to read case study of Rachel Fairley’s previous BDO work.

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Press Release

Hiring the right strategic and creative agency isn’t easy.
Here is some advice on how businesses can find the
perfect partner.

1. Do your homework

Don’t just consider your usual agencies. Find out which agencies are leading their field and most respected by their peers. Make a longlist in order of preference. Decide how many agencies you want to ask for pitch; but don’t ask any more than five.

Plan the process, which should take about four weeks start to finish:

• You need a week to write the brief and selection criteria and secure internal sign off
• Agree who will be on your pitch panel: make sure you get a variety
  of experience, knowledge, ages and nationalities. If you have any important dissenters, make them part of the process. Secure their time
• Allow a few days to speak to the agencies to secure their commitment to pitch, then get confidentiality agreements signed
• Send them the brief
• Allow a minimum of two weeks for the agency to prepare, with a briefing meeting or call in the first few days
• Let the agency send you a draft proposal to review mid-way through
  the process to ensure they are on the right track
• Get the agency to send you their final proposal a few days before the pitch
  so your team has time to review it
• Don’t have any more than four two hour pitches per day
• Spend two hours after all the pitches are complete discussing and coming
  to a decision as a panel
• Notify the agencies of your decision
• Finalise contacts and terms and conditions.

2. Creative or no creative

The biggest dilemma at this stage is whether to ask for actual strategy or creative in the pitch. My advice is always no.

Part of the joy of working with external experts is to be part of the research, strategy and creative process. Without you, they have no real insider business expert on their team. They will work intensively on producing work, investing emotional energy on something that may or may not meet your stakeholder’s needs. You’ll find it hard not to react subjectively as you’ll have no real strategic criteria to judge their work against and they’ll no longer be fresh when it comes
to starting at the beginning again.

It is also a huge investment for an agency to produce actual work when they have a 20% chance of being selected. If you want strategy or creative work at pitch then pay a contribution towards it. The DBA’s code of conduct expressly forbids its members to pitch creative for free.

Instead, ask them to demonstrate their strategic and creative thinking
by showing examples of relevant work for previous or existing clients.
Hear how they think and what sort of process they have. Be clear that you would like some insights into your challenge and that any sketched ideas, rather than fully designed solutions, are welcome.

In this tough market most agencies will over deliver.

3. Write a really good brief

Be as clear and honest as you can. Use normal language, not pseudo business speak or in house acronyms.

Make sure the brief answers as many questions as you can:

• The business context driving change
• Why you are doing this now
• Who and what you are looking for from an agency
• Your selection criteria
• Pitch timings
• Key project milestones and timings
• Where you will be holding the pitch
• Who the decision makers and influencers are in the process;
  roles and responsibilities
• How you will measure the success of the work
• The budget (see below).

Demand that the pitch team is the actual team with whom you will work. Agencies often field pitch teams consisting of highly polished, well rehearsed performers who are masters in the art of persuasion, but who may not work directly with you once appointed. Only the best agencies field your actual team, trusting that experience will win the day even if they aren’t the best presenters.

It is always simplest to give a ballpark budget, otherwise you may have to ask agencies to re-scope and rewrite their proposals. This is a complete waste of time and will significantly delay your ability to appoint an agency. If you can’t because you need their guidance on what would be reasonable, then make sure you discuss indicative budgets on the briefing call (see below).

Ask for the proposal a few days in advance of the pitch so you have time to read
it and prepare questions to ask at the pitch. Don’t eliminate an agency based
on their proposal unless it is clearly a copy and paste or doesn’t remotely
answer your brief. Remember fees can always be negotiated.

Agencies will want to know who they are pitching against so that they can work hard to differentiate themselves from the competition. I have never heard
a good reason why this a bad idea, so give them the information.

4. Conflict and confidentiality

You are now ready to call (not email) the agency’s managing director
or new business leader and ask them confidentially if they would like
to be considered for pitch.

Find out if they have any conflicts of interests that may eliminate them.
Tread a fine line on what would be considered a real conflict if you want
to work with an agency with relevant industry experience. But do remember
that even with the best intentions, it is really hard to have effective
‘Chinese walls’ within an agency.

If any agencies eliminate themselves because of conflicts then ask the next one
on your longlist. You now have your shortlist.

Email a confidentiality agreement to entitle them to receive the brief.
Remember, the agency community is small and tends to drink in the same pubs as industry journalists so you’ll have to go to great lengths for the trade press not to hear about it. If you want to control this, offer to work with the agencies
on a news release about the appointment once a decision has been made,
even if you have to be vague about the nature of the project.

5. Chemistry meetings

The recent trend to have pre-pitch chemistry meetings is a big mistake because
it places emphasis on vague and subjective criteria. Chemistry is important,
but all too often it is cited as the number one selection criteria. Don’t hire them just because you like them, but because they are the best in their field that you can afford and have shown their ability to deliver success for previous clients.

6. Q&A

Put your time and effort instead into spending an hour with each agency, preferably face to face but otherwise by telephone, so that they can ask questions to make sure they have everything they need to know to shine in their proposal and pitch.

Don’t take a short cut and do it as a group call because the agencies will be afraid to ask any questions which might give others competitive advantage,
becoming a waste of everyone’s time.

To be fair, make sure it is the same person does all the briefings so agencies get roughly the same information.

Use any insights you have gleaned from how they handled the call to shape
your questions in the pitch.

7. Decision making criteria

From your brief, write your selection criteria, so that everyone on your panel
has the opportunity to evaluate as consistently and objectively as possible.
Here are some suggestions:

Credentials:

• Does the agency and specifically the people who will be on your team
  have relevant industry and project experience?
• Is this the pitch team or the actual team? Is it the same team at pitch
  as outlined in the proposal?

Strategic and creative thinking:

• Have they done their homework on you, your market and the challenges
  and opportunities you face?
• Do they have a credible point of view on your challenges?
• Does their creative work (for other clients) express a ‘big idea’?
• Is their strategic and creative thinking original? Probe their case studies.

Implementation:

• What testing do they recommend and how would they go about it?
• What partners would they work with?
• Where does their expertise start and end? Can they take you right
  through implementation?

Project management:

• Do you trust them to deliver?
• Is their proposal bespoke, comprehensive and clear?
• Have they provided a detailed timeline?
• Are they within your budget range?
• Can they offer you a discount for volume, visibility or value?

Chemistry:

• Do you think you can work with them every day to deliver what you need?

8. The pitch

You need a big room with space around the walls for anything the agency
wishes to display, as well as a good screen and projector for them to show
their presentation.

Make sure they have at least 30 minutes set up time on their own and run
the pitches as promptly as possible.

The presentation should last no more than an hour and a half, allowing you thirty minutes to have a conversation and ask each other questions. It does sound like
a long time but agencies put a lot of effort into pitching and it isn’t often you get
to spend time with experts who have an opinion on the market and your business, so make the most of it.

Make sure each panellist captures his or her thoughts on the criteria sheet
so you can have a constructive conversation once you’ve met all the agencies.

9. The decision

Make a choice while the pitches are fresh. Talk through each one in turn to make sure that last is not best just because it is freshest in you mind. Be as objective
as you can.

Once you’ve made your choice call each agency to let them know your decision and give them honest feedback on their pitch. They have made a significant investment pitching and will appreciate understanding how they might improve their approach in the future. Start with the winning agency but don’t put off having to share the bad news with the others. You never know when you might need them.

Download PDF

Fifteen minutes of fame – that’s what Andy promised us.
But he neglected to include a vital warning: when your big moment arrives, you might be the last to hear about it.

One warm evening last July, I was walking past my local newsstand on the way home. I glanced at the main stories – most often, it’s the Evening Standard that
can grab me with some wild headline. This particular time, they outdid themselves. Their headline was about me.

Well, not about me personally, but about a one-minute film clip I’d shot, posted online for a few friends, and then promptly forgotten. “Bin Man ‘Ziggy Dust’”, shouted the newspaper, “Spins and Twirls his Way to Internet Stardom.”

How on earth had my grainy sixty-seconds ended up all over the net,
and the headlines? I stood there in the middle of the pavement, trying to piece together how this could possibly have happened.

It had all started just two weeks earlier, while having tea with my Gen Whatever siblings. We’d noticed a street sweeper – how could we miss him? – turning his humble profession into a full-on Fred Astaire musical. My sibs gathered, smiling,
as I filmed this little miracle, and replayed it on my camera. They insisted I post
it on YouTube right away. Now here I was, glued to the pavement days later,
the last person to learn that my film had become famous. Why hadn’t anyone
told me?!

For one thing, because every time I launch a viral campaign, it’s part of a brand strategy, not by chance. But this time, it was my accidental launch that was taking off like a rocket. If my little film was going to benefit its anonymous star,
I had to move even faster. Executing a spin worthy of Ziggy the street sweeper,
I headed towards my office at a run. From somewhere beyond the grave,
I could hear Andy clicking his stopwatch: “Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

Breathless, I burst in and went directly to the source of all the trouble:
the internet. Sure enough, the Evening Standard’s website led with the Ziggy story, linking directly to my video. What would the dancing street sweeper say about having been filmed – and turned into a star – without his permission?

To find out, I’d need to find him first. As I quickly discovered, that wasn’t going to be easy. Ziggy had no phone listing and, except for a certain sixty seconds of video and a comment in a local community chat room, no obvious presence
on the web.

To catch a pre-digital man, use a pre-digital strategy: I walked his street
cleaning route the next day, asking the local merchants if they could hand
a note to the dancing street sweeper. Everyone knew exactly who I was talking about.

While I waited impatiently for Ziggy to resurface, his YouTube popularity continued to skyrocket. What began with a few of my friends had gone global, with internet, newspaper and television coverage all driving each other.
Online hits leapt from thousands to a quarter million and showed no sign
of peaking.

Now, a year later, I see how important it was that I responded when that wave was still beginning its swell. It was the green grocer who put Ziggy and I in touch, early enough for us to claim the content and develop a strategy for harnessing it. As hits began to approach half a million, we sold the rights to an advertising agency, who wanted the footage to sustain another media brand.

In addition to payment, Ziggy and I added one condition: the ad agency had
to donate £1000 to the charity of our choice. We did this, in part,
because of Ziggy’s experience with both the positive and negative sides of internet stardom. In addition to autograph requests and guest DJ appearances,
he had to contend with vandalism along his cleaning route, and an attack by thugs from the National Front.  So our choice was easy: our fifteen minutes
of fame would also support Amnesty International.

What to do when you’re in the glare of stardom 2.0?

Every case is unique, but as with all brand management, it’s best to prepare
as well as respond. Here are my top five suggestions:

1. Establish your rights

Even though some new media channels claim to exist entirely in the public domain, claim your content. Future dividends depend upon it. I was advised
to use a fake screen name when posting the video on YouTube. My instinct to use my real name instead turned out to be essential later, in claiming and managing rights to the material.

2. Manage long term value

As author William Gibson famously observed, the internet was an accident.
The military think-tank that invented it never dreamed it would become
the open, global network we use today. This law of unintended consequences applies equally to internet content. Manage and index your archived content knowing that its future value may depend on uses you can’t foresee.
The Discovery Channel has only recently discovered how valuable those uses are.

3. Deploy an early warning system

Which portions of today’s content will be tomorrow’s revenue streams?
The first step towards tracking future value is simple and free.
Use Google.com/alerts or one of several other free services to notify you
every time your name, brand, or teatime videos are mentioned on the internet.

4: Sustain momentum

The power of Web 2.0 is that a grainy video could catapult Ziggy Dust from zero to hero in two weeks. The power of branding is that a launch, whether planned
or accidental, can be managed to become more sustainable.

5: Know when to relinquish control

Viruses mutate. So do viral campaigns. As a marketer who prefers to tightly manage brands and budgets, I had to overcome my natural resistance
to hundreds of strangers editing my video, adding music, and reposting
it worldwide. Effective brand management of Web 2.0 means understanding which channels you can control and which are valuable enough to accept
the risks of consumer interaction, excitement and fame.

See original film
You can also Google ‘Billy Clean’ or ‘Ziggy Dust’ to read related articles.

Download PDF

 

In late October 2009 we asked people who work within UK design and digital agencies to anonymously share their views on how it feels to work within their agency right now.

The first Design Industry Voices survey was published in December 2009 by Fairley & Associates, Gabriele Skelton and On Pointe Marketing.

We found that 38% of industry employees who responded are planning to leave their agency when market picks up. They voiced their dissatisfaction in their agency’s performance in the areas that matter most to them. Here are the headlines.

1. Day-to-day client satisfaction at risk

38% of employees responsible for day-to-day client satisfaction are planning their exit when the recession ends, with almost three quarters intending to stay in the industry.

36% of directors, 53% of managers and 47% of coordinators and assistants intend to change employer, compared to only 19% of the executive team. We found that strategists are least likely to change employer (21%) whereas designers (43%), account managers (44%) and those working in other roles in the agency (36%) are most likely to leave.

A substantial change in those responsible for the day-to-day client satisfaction and delivery may have an impact on the agency’s ability to service and farm existing clients. There is also a risk of losing knowledge and experience. Agencies are likely to face the need for financial and time investment in the recruitment and training of new talent, which they can ill afford.

A designer told us “It [the recession] has put people throughout the industry under a greater pressure. Under this added pressure, often people make unusual or inappropriate decisions. I constantly see us spreading ourselves too thinly, achieving nothing, upsetting valuable employees and current clients. People are becoming very disillusioned with working here.”

Stef Brown, Managing Director of On Pointe Marketing, says: “Agencies are all about people. Building relationships and satisfying existing clients is one of the best ways to weather any downturn. If agencies start losing the key staff that deliver the work, they risk damaging those relationships to the point where clients may decide to look elsewhere. They also risk being so stretched that they’re unable to seize new opportunities as the market begins to pick up.”

2. Perceived agency delivery gap is major factor in deciding whether to stay or go

We asked respondents to tell us how important a series of agency attributes were to them personally and how well their agency is currently performing against those attributes.

Across the industry, people agree on what makes a good agency.

We then measured the difference between importance and performance, which we call the delivery gap. We found that employees who intend to change job perceive bigger agency delivery gaps than those who wish to stay. The median gap is just 13% for those intending to stay and 36% for those intending to leave.

The five attributes in which there is the greatest difference of opinion between those intending to leave and those intending to stay are: ‘rewards people for going the extra mile’ (39% difference); ‘has a management team that demonstrates strong leadership skills’ (35% difference); ‘helps employees to manage stress’ (33% difference); ‘supports professional development and growth’ (32% difference); and ‘is quick to change in reaction to new situations’ (29% difference).

A design director summed it up as: “Extra workload. No extra benefits. Little thanks for working hard. Grumpy management. Backstabbing. Anger every day, mixed with anxiety. An exacerbation of the ‘them and us’ culture between account handling and creative.”

Rachel Fairley, Managing Director of Fairley & Associates, says: “Employees agree on what makes a good agency and on how their agencies are letting them down. For two-fifths, enough is enough. It isn’t about money; everyone knows money is tight. It is about respect and appreciation. Agencies must empower their managers to lead, coach and nurture their teams so employees are involved in ensuring their agency’s and their personal success.”

3. Crucial deficits in agency performance in the psychosocial work environment

For those intending to leave, the greatest delivery gaps are in the psychosocial work environment such as job demands, job control and workplace support/training.

The perceived delivery gap for those intending to leave is significant: ‘rewards people for going the extra mile’ (64%); ‘supports professional development and growth’ (60%); ‘provides training’ (55%); ‘helps employees to manage stress’ (55%); ‘appropriate workload for staffing levels’ (53%).

An account manager told us “Clients now expect us to cut our fees and costs by 30% in some cases, but not to cut our hours of working methods to address these cuts – the effect is longer working hours, tighter turnaround times, for less. This is affecting our health, mental as well as physical and design integrity. If we continue to drive our suppliers and employees to meet client/procurement criteria – I fear for the industry – how can we possibly come back from this?”

Jobs with high demands and high control are generally considered the most rewarding whereas jobs with high demands, low control and poor workplace support are worst for mental and physical health. To retain talent agencies need to nurture their employees. This may also improve their perception of the leadership skills of their management team.

Karina Beasley, Managing Director of Gabriele Skelton, says: “As a recruiter, of course we are reliant on people moving from one agency to another. However, we also want our agency clients to thrive, and from the results of our research, many are risking their future success by not paying attention to nurturing, and therefore, retaining their employees. Bearing in mind the level of redundancies in the first half of 2009, many agencies are now down to teams comprised entirely of their key people – the very people they can least afford to lose when the upturn comes. It is vital that they look at how to reward and recognise their people – something which doesn’t have to cost a fortune.”

www.designindustryvoices.com

Read more by downloading the full report.

Download Design Industry Voices 2009 report

For press enquiries please download the press release and contact Stef Brown on +44 (0)7773 886 543 or stef@onpointemarketing.com.

Download Press Release

About us:

Fairley & Associates working in collaboration with Gabriele Skelton and On Pointe Marketing.

Gabriele Skelton is a specialist design and digital recruitment agency. We're matchmakers; we connect the right candidate with the right client to create something new.  We love working with creatives, account handlers, consultants and thinkers, techies and developers. It's about making the right connections to get the right reaction - unusual combinations that make the magic happen - that’s what we mean by chemistry.

www.gabrieleskelton.com

On Pointe Marketing works with agencies to build external and internal reputation to drive the business development pipeline and retain and attract talent. We create business and brand-led marketing plans and ongoing implementation consultancy. In a world where agencies sometimes wear the worst shorn shoes, On Pointe Marketing is the cobbler.

www.onpointemarketing.com