Everyone knows that the agency landscape is changing. Every conference I go to these days talks about the latest digital initiative and how that is going to be changing the agency landscape fundamentally. The truth is, the ‘agency landscape’ has been changing since the first newspaper ad agency nearly 200 years ago. Nothing remains constant. If your agency is slow to adapt, you will soon find that you’re missing important opportunities and sales.

The recent Twitter snafu with Chrysler and their social media agency New Media Strategies highlights something that has been growing more and more relevant in this day of instant feedback, social sharing, and hyper-channel brand messaging. Agencies need to behave more like a partner with their clients.

At the recent OMMA Global conference in San Francisco I had breakfast one morning with Tim Kilroy (www.timkilroy.com) of pmdigital (www.pmdigital.com). He talked about how partnering with your clients is something that we on the agency side have to do in order to take responsibility for our work and get emotionally involved in the process. I think that too often we get in the mindset that our clients’ business is their business and our business is totally different. Well, I hate to break it to anyone, but if your clients’ business isn’t doing well, yours won’t be doing well either. It is much easier to keep a client than to find new clients. I want to be there with my clients, working through the harder times and hopefully enjoying the better times alongside them. We should be totally immersed in our client’s business and help them along the way with advice and observations. We should be concerned about the whole picture, not just each campaign that we run for them.

Star Moose is currently in a period of growth. We have been hiring new staff, taking on new clients and enjoying the challenges that growth creates. It takes a lot of our time and energy to get to know each of our new clients and immerse ourselves in their business. Recently I have had to read-up on my printer installation protocols, snowboarding lingo, and college technology terms in order to be right there with my clients. This means that my staff and I have to be chameleons and change ourselves with each new client, but it also means that we can provide superior service and marketing support for them.

To summarize on the Chrysler/Twitter issue, do I think that the incident is unfortunate? Yes. Do I think that NMS was right to fire that employee? Yes. Do I think that New Media Strategies’ contract should have been terminated? No. Working with your agency through bad times is just as important as the good times. New Media Strategies now knows things about Chrysler’s fans and Twitter base that my company or any company will have to learn on their own. And if NMS’s staff had been in full partnership-mode with Chrysler, then that employee would not have tweeted something that undermined that brand-message, even on their personal account, because they would value the emotional attachment to that client.

This post originally appeared on the Star Moose Blog.

Mmm... Breakfast makes me hungry for adventure.

Most marketers have at least some smaller clients that don’t have a multi-million dollar budget to blow on stuff their agency ‘thinks’ will work. Even my large clients don’t want to waste money. They need results, and they can’t afford to throw their money away. So, anything out of the ordinary media mix is discounted as ‘new media’ and thrown away. Leave the innovating to the big boys. That kind of thinking is total, ‘Grade-A’ crap.

If anything, smaller companies have more reason to use involvement marketing, digital media and other new ideas because it turns every customer in to your own private pitch man. Think of a campaign for say, a small restaurant chain.

First, you use some traditional media to advertise an event, a web promotion, and the great food this place has given the local area for the past 20 years. This local advertising is backed up by a website for the restaurant that includes a menu, and the ability to comment on each thing on the menu like a blog posting. You encourage people to review everything on the menu and let others know what is good about it. You promote it to everyone that comes in the restaurant and even make a mobile version so people can review stuff on their smart phones while they eat.

Next, we get people excited about the event coming up by announcing that it’s a cook off. You can enter for free and bring something that you think should be added to the menu. There will be local celebrities as judges, along with the restaurant owner and the winning dish will be added to the menu. You promote this event with folksy flyer’s around the area the restaurant is in, as well as at other local businesses, Facebook users in the area and Youtube videos. Make a big day of it, hold it in the parking lot (during a warmer month than February I hope) and you will end up getting local media coverage, a ton of free publicity, a now stable web presence, and a devoted following for something that has connected on a local level. This could even be a big national chain, but taking an approach that individualizes a market and involves individuals in a discussion makes sense. Everyone that participated in the event will tell their friends, and hundreds or even thousands could show up for a cook-off.

This is not traditional advertising. Sure, it included some traditional media, because let’s face it, there is a long history of that kind of media working. This is not the only way to use different kinds of marketing, but this is one example of how even a small business can benefit by looking to get people involved with their brand and participate in the process in multiple ways.

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog FryThoseEggs.com. It can also be found on the Star Moose Blog.