Digital is becoming a critical aspect of the marketing mix and brand building, Dayo Adefila, COO, HotSauce in this interview highlights what makes a viable digital agency and the parameters to determine suitability to handle your briefs. Excerpts.
What does it mean to be a real digital agency?
That’s quite a critical question Lekan and it will highlight a poorly appreciated task marketing clients need to carry out before seeking and selecting a digital agency.
I agree with the guys at Forrester www.blog.forrester.com who recommend starting the digital agency selection process with one simple step – identifying the services you need to outsource and build your criteria from there. Then go out and determine which agencies/firms fit the bill best rather than the other way around. This may be a simple step, but it’s a crucial one that is too often overlooked.
What Types of digital agencies are out there?
Excellent question. From what I can tell, there are four different types of shops referring to themselves as digital agencies. It can often be difficult to distinguish between the four types at first glance, and, while none of them are inherently superior or inferior to the other, each offer a very different service to their clients. Broadly speaking, they are as follows:
• Digital Production Houses – These shops focus on producing top notch creative work from client or agency briefs. They use their web savvy capability to execute and often improve upon the ideas and briefs they are provided with. They are responsible for infusing technical, digital and creative expertise into everything they touch.
• Digital Think Tanks – These shops don’t actually produce anything. Their role is to help clients strategically navigate the digital ecosystem and create smart briefs to task digital production houses with.
• Full Service Digital Agencies – These firms offer services across the full spectrum of consumer strategy, digital creative production and digital media. Many of these shops began as digital production houses or Digital Think Tanks but have evolved their strategic and media buying/deployment capabilities. They are increasingly being asked to take leadership roles on brands and bring their creativity and strategic prowess to bear on the overall brand development process with consumer experience at the heart of it. HotSauce falls into this category offering our clients a one stop shop solution.
• Digital Media Agencies – These typically deliver media buying services across web and mobile platforms as well as Digital OOH
This subject is crucial to brand building especially in this age and time but why the slow growth in Nigeria?
Slow growth? Actually we are witnessing very rapid growth which actually needs to be documented. The point however is that the digital industry is simultaneously growing and evolving at the same time so Clients and digital agencies are discovering that learning is a continuous thing. Both in terms of what they need for their businesses and what the evolution in the consumer space indicates. For instances there are companies that started life as SEO outfits and life was very good and specific. Search is not going to lose relevance but now consumer experience via engagement is heavily on the minds of many brands. So some SEO only companies have evolved to offer such services. This has an effect on what and who the brands can go to for digital services and even what the brands think they need. It will get better because the impact of digital, if the parameters are clear, is quite visible.
Do you see a different growth pattern in the in-coming year(s)?
I think we will still have specialist digital agencies as well as full service digital companies but more of digital production because being a full service digital company does take broad vision and lots of resources.
It is possible to drive growth through digital/social media alone that is without using the traditional media?
Yes and no. Depends on the kind of brand. Is it a brand I only consume virtually like an online blog…then yes. If not, you need the complimentary effect of so-called traditional media. From experience however, even online only products still benefit better when they reach out to the consumers using non-digital platforms. This is because for brand building to be successful, it must exist in the world of the consumer. Interaction should take place in the world of the consumer too. For instance, picture the growth and affinity potential if Linda Ikeji, popular and brilliant African blogger, organizes a Walk for Entrepreneurs? Rallying her followers through her blog and social media and inviting sponsors to contribute refreshments, and get hundreds of youths to walk with her, t-shirts with bold labels and culminate this activity with internships for select followers at participating sponsor businesses. That is online to offline integration. Will her brand get even bigger than what it is now? Certainly. She will connect at an even deeper level with existing followers and garner new ones too. So my school of thought is practice integration. It is called Marketing Mix. Use it smartly.
Are there recognitions for some of these landmark/pioneering roles?
Yes we are thrilled and humbled to have been able to win Digital Agency of the year, back to back actually, in 2012 and 2013 at the Marketing World Awards after rigorous peer based selection process. We look forward to doing triple what we have done to do successful work with businesses and help them win Nigerian and international awards too!
Where do we go from here?
HotSauce will continue to strive to achieve service excellence, business model innovation and a desire to be one of the most admired technology marketing businesses in Africa. We will drive our business with this in mind and look for brands that have big dreams too! Innovation is important to us and 2014 will be a landmark year in our evolution to serve businesses better using technology in ways that are most unexpected from a full service digital firm like us. Watch out for such developments.
Let me add that social commerce and increasing consumer engagement to achieve clear objectives will be two of the main drivers for smart businesses in 2014 and HotSauce is well positioned to help businesses explore and achieve results in both aspects. {fcomment}
