Interesting Times by David Parrish
We are certainly living in interesting times. For digital and creative services businesses in the Northwest it’s a time of turbulence involving both danger and opportunity. Depending on how each firm reacts, some will thrive – others will fail to survive.
The financial crisis, rapid technological change, investment opportunities (or the lack of them) and the growing power of customers are all factors which individually can be regarded as threats or opportunities. In combination they form an even more potent mix.
Customers have never been so powerful, and this power has changed the nature of marketing in all businesses, creative or otherwise. Nowadays, word of mouth marketing between customers is electronic, global and instant. Buzz marketing and viral marketing are driven by the energy of customers and can build the reputation of a business in a more effective way than a conventional advertising plan. At the same time, one bloke with a blog can bulldoze a brand. The point is that marketers are no longer in charge of marketing – customers are. Consumers and clients won’t accept being the passive recipients of marketing messages, instead choosing themselves how to promote products or savage services. Nowadays, the most effective marketing professionals are those who work with this momentum and feed the informal channels of communication.
So why are so many creative enterprises so bad at marketing? (Including those working in advertising and PR!) I’m thinking especially of those that aren’t willing to open their doors to new customers but peek at callers through spy-holes. This, in effect, is what many websites do. They don’t tell you about the people in there but expect customers to put their enquiry and personal details through the email letterbox addressed to an anonymous “Info@”. This isn’t a great start in building a rapport with customers who want to know the personality of the business and its people, not just its competencies and projects.
As for the financial downturn, creative entrepreneurs I’ve talked with recently tend to either (a) complain about business being difficult, or (b) say that times have never been so good.
“I really enjoyed the recession,” Adrian Lomas, MD of Blueleaf told me recently. He and others commented that the recession had cleared the way for agencies to get work from companies “further up the feeding chain” by cutting out the intermediaries – the larger agencies who traditionally have handled the client then subcontracted downwards. When budgets are squeezed, big clients tend to look around more and find that smaller agencies with lower overheads can give just as good a service but at a lower cost. This phenomenon is driven by a combination of tightening budgets and an online marketplace that is more transparent than ever.
Finding investors to help grow a creative business is always a challenge and particularly so in the current financial climate. The Fast Company programme, sponsored by Vision+Media, helped creative enterprises become more ‘investment ready’ and culminated in a ‘Dragons Den’ style pitch. At the same time, there are new investment opportunities emerging which use a ‘crowd-financing’ approach to raising finance, in other words a large number of people each investing relatively small amounts. Examples of this type of investment working in film, music and other industries are discussed on the Creative Enterprise Network.
At this time of turmoil and change there are exciting opportunities for creative and digital enterprise in the Northwest to improve marketing, manoeuvre successfully in a changed marketplace and find investment from new sources.
‘May you live in interesting times’ is said to be an ancient Chinese curse. It could equally be used as a modern blessing.
Copyright © David Parrish. 2010.
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