Mark Higginson

Manifesto
How attention flows on the web

05 February 2013

Over the last year or so, we’ve been very aggressively, proactively cutting down on agency retainers not only because we have the cost pressures everybody does, but also why should we be paying agencies for them to take that knowledge? There’s no real long-term value for Nokia. The right investment is for us to have the right people internally.

How to build a social brand: The Nokia case study

The above is a quote from Tejal Patel of Nokia. She is spot on. If you are committing effort to your presence on the web and people’s perception of you as shaped by that presence then in my opinion you need a team with an implicit sense of:

• The narrative sense the business generates through its activities
• The historicity of the business
• The place of the business within the wider industry
• The place of the business within the wider culture
• How each incremental piece of work fits into the above

This web presence can and should be the canonical source of everything about the business, encompassing the points I allude to above.

This is a very different proposition to the typical agency campaign-driven model of working. In fact, such a team can improve campaign-based work because of their long-term focus and understanding. As such I see these efficient, internal teams becoming the people who lead agency activity on the occasion that such work is required.

Businesses do not need ‘marketing managers’ whose responsibility is juggling the overlaps between multiple agencies; they need doers whose growing abilities and expertise are kept in-house, who pass on this knowledge and make it the fabric of the business.

Note: I should point out that the article I quote from refers to Nokia as a ‘social brand’ which I disagree with. Tejal Patel also refers to Nokia as a ‘challenger brand’ which I also disagree with. If you want to read a very long analysis of Nokia’s woes then try this.

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