A look into the Brain of Brian Cross – Rocket Scientist at Elasticity

You have undoubtedly read the collection of blog posts and articles about choosing an agency.  For at least two years, posts from We Are Social and Digital Marketer to Unique Frequency and PR101 have outlined suggestions on how to cull the best from the herd.

In his post of the top 15 companies that “focus on social media” Jason Keath writes “Since almost every company would almost be it’s (SIC) own category, I am avoiding the categories for now.”  I don’t blame him.

In a marketing genre where the rules are being written (and broken) on a daily basis, it is no surprise that discerning an agency’s capabilities in the space is tricky.

Nevertheless, Social Media is the Shiny-Shiny.  It’s Hot and sometimes it’s a Hot Mess.  You need it, you know it, and you need help with it.

Don’t let fear or intimidation lead you to the wrong partnership.  There are some qualities to look for in an agency and secrecy and bravado are not among them.

Also, this just in:  Smoke and mirrors are out.

Since I’m really just here to raise the good-look factor and, of course, represent my gender, I posed a few of the questions from SocialTrackr and Marketing Charts to one of Elasticity’s managing partners:

How do you handle specialty work like mobile, social, eCRM, media, viral, digital OOH and other emerging channels?

Brian Cross, Director of Rocket Science: We are a specialty shop, so we fit some of these ‘specialty’ categories (hint: they won’t be specialty in the near future).  But to the core of what they are getting at – I believe that you should do what you do best and let the other experts do the rest.  A “Jack of all trades” doesn’t cut it anymore.  At Omnicom, I built the group by outsourcing the work we didn’t hold to our core.  We grew 10x in 2 years that way.  Look at digital shops that do their own CMS systems.  How do they expect to keep up with the open source community, or companies that specialize in CMS systems for their core?  And then wordpress comes along and wipes them all out.  Without a doubt, best-of-breed partnerships.

but that leads to another question (Author note: Brian is really smart and he likes to talk) which is “how do you handle best-of-breed partnerships?”  multi-agency collaboration and hand offs are difficult.  There is a special skill in that that comes with experience and building teams that know how to work together.  Throwing companies together to have a great partnership logo slide ain’t going to cut it.  Nor does a multi-office approach at the bigger agencies.  Too often, those city-specific PandL’s compete and even flying under the same banner doesn’t mean they can handle your work or that it will go as smoothly as promised at the new biz pitch.

Is there a particular design aesthetic your agency is known for and if not what is your approach to translating brands in the digital space?

Brian: Being a designer at heart, I’d like to say that we stand for a strong aesthetic, but the reality is that we are all about highlighting the personalities of our clients.  So our aesthetic is actually subdued with pops of creative color and personality.  That personality represents our clients.  So how do we translate a brand in the digital space?  Very easy.  We find out what the brand is about, who the people are.  We deconstruct the corporate speak.  The approved messaging that corp comm and the marketing science boys came up with.  We tear it all apart—disassemble the robot.  Then we reconstruct a human.  A personality.  A voice.  The cool thing is that the tools to express that voice are already there.  Digital media in the social sphere is made to amplify your voice.  Our voice just happens to carry further when it is more human.  Can I go back and describe our aesthetic as “human?”

How many of your online promotions have hit the million-person participation mark?

Brian: This is a crazy question.  I see the logic in that they are looking for successes, but shear numbers don’t always equate to success.  This shows a lack of understanding of the space.  Sure, if you want to define “participation” I can make an argument that we’ve done more than I can count on my fingers.  In things ranging from mustaches to TV content, to rental cars, and financial recruitment.  But were they successful in terms of the business goals?  Some were, some weren’t.  I think we’ve had more success reaching 5,000 influencers that participate heavily and recruit thousands more to our cause.  It’s the new math.  You no longer reach out to 1,000,000 in hopes of influencing 500.  You reach 500 and start to build advocates that can touch and reach 1,000,000.

How will you measure ROI? With what tools? What targets will you set and how will we benchmark these targets?

Brian: This is specific to each client.  But you need to define the “R” in ROI.  What are you trying to achieve?  If it’s a reputation management project, we may be monitoring online sentiment.  If it’s a search project, it may be how much 1st SERP real estate we take up.  If it’s an awareness campaign to drive trial of a new product, it’s the product trial numbers.  And so on and so forth.  This could be a blog post in and of itself, as I’ve been asked to calculate ROI several times.  It’s a financial equation that tracks money spent and money made.  It’s a very easy equation.  But what’s the ROI of the telephone?  What’s the ROI of a game of golf?  It’s important to draw digital marketing outcomes to bottom line business goals.  But blindly using ROI as a rallying cry isn’t the best way to judge an agency… (imho)

“H”, indeed, Mr. Cross.

^*Main Entry: ¹elas·tic
Pronunciation: \i-ˈlas-tik\
Function: adjective
a : capable of ready change or easy expansion or contraction : not rigid or constricted <an elastic concept> b : receptive to new ideas : adaptable <an elastic mind>