Ardmore recently attended a CIM Ireland Collaborative Communication 2017 event.
As you can guess it was heavy on the idea of collaboration and its benefits. How we as marketers could deliver better results for our campaigns and ultimately the bottom line of our businesses by being more open to collaboratively working. Whether that be internally, across departments or with suppliers, agencies and our partners.
During the session the speakers outlined some success stories and how they felt collaboration had been at the core of that. From driving the campaign to become more scalable through to adding value at evaluation stage.
Following the workshop back at Ardmore HQ, we chatted through some of the key points that made us sit up and take notice. Thoughts that we felt could be implementable for both ourselves as an agency and our clients to drive positive business results.
- Annual planning is imperative in the modern marketing landscape
Seems like a no brainer to most of us, in reality though our everyday often gets in the way of this. Meetings, emails and deadlines can often make us look at events with a short-term view.
Review your own organisation and question whether every stakeholder and partner that you work with has a clear guiding light of what your organisation stands for, what it is trying to achieve and what it’s key metrics are. If they don’t you aren’t going to achieve or exceed your goals. Not in the long term anyway.
Annual planning isn’t a perfect science although it gives all stakeholders some guide to what is coming further along the road and where they can proactively make a difference.
- Don’t be afraid to switch things up
Leonardo Da Vinci once extolled the virtues of action above inaction and we’ve always thought that he was onto something.
The modern day collaborative marketer needs to look at what is working and also (possibly more importantly) what isn’t and tweak, whether that’s mid campaign or just in time for the next one. Digital media and its fluidity is a great example of this although we should also consider challenging the tried and tested.
Post campaign use applicable learnings and insight not only from your latest campaign but every campaign to make sure that your next campaign is better than the last.
- Work with your partners
This is particularly pertinent based on the point above.
Use the data at your fingertips but also the information that your partners have access to when informing your decision making.
If you share information with all stakeholders they are more likely to do the same, creating a valuable circle of collaboration. Creating this culture of collaboration will lead to greater insights, greater knowledge and a greater understanding of your consumer which transfers into a more effective campaign.
Tapping into this knowledge also helps with less to-ing and fro-ing throughout the campaign. If everyone is aligned and the correct KPI’s and strategy have been set at the start of the campaign there should be less wasted time, energy and ultimately budget.
- The most successful campaigns can come from the smallest idea
Smart ideas can come from anywhere but having guiding principles is the key to achieving them. Think of any successful advertising campaign over the past 20 years, and it’s highly likely that each idea will be tied closely to a brand truth. When this truth and direction are known to everyone it makes it easier for clever ideas to flourish.
The Blood donor service and their missing type campaign is testament to this.
Simple idea, spectacular result.
Based on our experience collaboration and the spread of ideas can make a huge difference. They can make campaigns, smarter, more efficient and also more effective. Something which we’re all striving for day to day.
