You only have to flick through the pages of Media Week every week to notice how fast-paced and ever-changing the digital agency world is. The "ink" has hardly had a chance to dry before we hear via the online news wires that so and so has just left X to head up a new division of Y, or agency A has been snapped up by even bigger agency B for zillions of $$$ in order to plug a gap in their portfolio of service offerings.
Much more rarely though, you read about a couple of brave fellows who have led creditable and exemplary careers in digital so far, but are hankering to go it alone and break ranks with their current employers to set up on their own.
It just so happens I met two such gentlemen the other day. I was introduced to Martin Kelly and Andy Cocker in a pub in Victoria by a friend. They had just left their respective agencies (Martin's wife being 9 months pregnant!) in order to start Infectious Digital – catchy name huh?!
Listening to their passion, conviction and ideas for doing things a little differently, I thought it an idea to start a "blogumentary" about their journey – so over the coming months we're going to track their progress, successes, trials and tribulations on the DigiTales Blog. I'll kick things off interview style but we'd love comments and questions from the community as we go on, so do get stuck in!
Q – Andy & Martin – Give us a little background on your careers to date...
We both started life at Zenith media, I was in press and Andy in TV. When Zenith Interactive Solutions started up in 1999 we both moved over to be a part of the new team. Noone really knew what we were doing and we got emails for months afterwards asking us to come and fix the printers from our old colleagues, people thought we were mad to move over to digital!
From there I went over to Tribal DDB and latterly Agency Republic, I’ve always enjoyed working in a full service environment, in digital there’s so much more possible when creative and media are working together.
We both also have had some time out travelling in South America and hooked up in Argentina and Rio for Carnival which was great fun, in fact we both came back with wives! Since the days at Zenith, Andy moved over to Diffiniti where he headed up trading and up until we started Infectious he was doing this role at group level in Isobar.
Q – What is it about the here and now that gave you the idea to go solo? Is it more about your own personal circumstances or is there factors in this changing market that have prompted some new thinking?
Technology is changing everything about digital media planning and buying, the pace of change is actually getting quicker, not slowing down. We see an opportunity to do something different and build an agency from scratch with no legacy structures and problems. We just do digital, we’re built for digital and we’ve got technology running through everything we do, be that planning, buying or reporting.
Q – How agile do agencies need to be in the digital versus traditional channels? Sketch us a picture of agency-land in the UK right now.
Agencies fulfil such a different role in digital compared to other media, it’s frightening. Most media are traded like a commodity, formats are standardised and planning is about selecting the right schedule and creativity from a media perspective is limited.
Within digital it’s not just about selecting the right media owners to work with, what do you do with them? The choices are endless, display, widgets, building profiles, seeding content, syndicating content, building something completely new. And then off the back of this planner/buyers are expected to have deep data analysis skills to look at response data.
Q – What areas are you going to focus on? Search, Display, BT, Social media? How will your approach differ from what you've been used to?
I don’t think our product offering is that different from a lot of agencies in that we will be covering the whole digital media mix, search, display, affiliates and social media. What is different is our structure and approach, with Infectious, technology runs through our planning and buying. We don’t see buying media as the only answer to a problem, within digital and social media environments especially the answer is about how you integrate your brand with these properties, not how cheaply you can buy banners on them.
Q – Let's talk practicalities here! You have laptops & mobiles I take it? What about offices, staff, where on earth do you start with the tax man and companies house?
We’ve got offices in Waterloo which is great, you can see the view from our window on our site (www.infectiousdigital.com), we’ll also be staffing up this year and hopefully will be able to announce a few client wins in the coming months.
In terms of company set up, I think the most difficult thing to work out was our name, you’d be amazed at how many URL’s we’ve registered that will never see the light of day! My advice to anyone would be to get yourself some good financial advice before you do anything as setting up a company needs to be done right from the start.
To be continued...
