I feel that there is a great scope of improvement to be made in the advertising, media industry in China.
Advertising, including 4A’s has an intrinsic weakness. This lies in the separation between the accounts people and the creative people each with their division heads. No matter what kind of company, whether media, advertising, direct marketing, CRM, the accounts people are usually sales/BD (especially in China). Having been in the marketing function for quite a while in Shanghai not one AE/AD/BD has provided me with the kind of solution that can truly solve my problems. This is due, and not limited to three reasons:
1. These sales people have no or little client side experience in managing marketing departments in terms of branding, 4p’s etc.
2. They do not understand how their own represented media, channel can integrate with other channels, media to create synergy.
3. They all lack in creativity and can only advice what other clients have done in the past.
While I was doing my MBA placement and dissertation in London at an integrated marketing communications agency www.exposure.net I realized the value of integrated communications. I have seen some startups in Shanghai founded by foreigners who are on the same track but I feel most of them are struggling. This is again, due but not limited to two reasons:
1. An agency needs clients. And these foreign start-ups do not have the same capacity to develop their business as well as their Chinese counterparts.
2. Though they are very creative, they lack the media resources and experience to truly integrate other channels and services.
I am sure most of the marketers out there will agree with me.
We encounter lots of interesting media, channels now and again but most of the time these sales people are only concerned with pushing their own product and services (they are right in doing so). We are then left with the challenge of how to integrate that into our overall marketing plan. We ourselves, by default can only think of a particular type of integration that is suitable to our own products and services. However, if there were an integrated agency, then they would be able to offer other integrated examples which we can use as reference or assign that agency to handle the work.
So where is the opportunity?
An integrated marketing agency with the right kind of AE/AD with tons of client side experience, having the knowledge of different types of channels and media as well as their uniqueness. When these people go out, they will be more convincing when the pitch their proposal and talk about bottom line impact. Because they would have all been at one point or another, responsible for profit and loss, ROI.
Why is it an opportunity?
So far, I have not received any integrated proposals from anyone in my professional career (though I always pushed my vendors for it cuz it makes my job easier). In the past 2 months I have come to know an entertainment marketing firm, a paper towel distribution service (at grade A office building canteens), there are lots of search engine optimization, management agencies, and there are very few social media agencies but NONE have been able to chain them together for maximum impact. CRM consultancies can seldom offer insight into traditional media, social media. Traditional media are not able to offer integrated solutions sometime with their own digital media services let alone that of others.