Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: clients, creativity, development, interactive, interactive agency, strategy
Strong Strategy Planning ? Maybe Outstanding Creativity? Who knows … maybe the Return on Investment is all it matters. How about implementation? But hey … do people actually know what an Interactive Agency is?
A few weeks ago I’ve started a little poll on LinkedIn asking people to tell me what do they think an Interactive Agency should offer. 55 people answered so far.
The options were:
- Strong Strategy Planning
- Outstanding Creativity
- Development Skills
- Return On Investment
- What is An Interactive Agency?
Here are the conclusions:
1. Creativity is King
47 % of people that answered chose “Outstanding Creativity” as what they’re looking for in an Interactive Agency. Next is Return on Investment (20%) and Strong Strategy Planning (18%).
Only 3 percent chose Development Skills and about 10 percent were still to find out what an Interactive Agency is.
2. Decision makers focus on Return on Investment and Strategy
Most of the owners and managers selected Return On Investment and Strong Strategy Planning as their choice. In case you were pitching to the deal maker, try to focus on the strategy and return on investment rather than the creative campaigns you thought of.
This should not mean ideas and great execution are useless but rather that they have a greater chance of success with the big guys when backed by good strategy planning and an idea on return on investment.
3. Men love Creativity
An astonishing 63.6% of men would choose Creativity over other agency assets. The rest chose Strong Strategy Planning. With men is either black or white, right 
?
It seems a lot of women are not familiar with the term “Interactive Agency” as 33 % chose “What is An Interactive Agency” as their answer.
Other interesting things I’ve noticed:
- The older you get the more you care about strategy (planning is not the most popular thing among the young and cool)
- Women care about development skills (at least in this poll)
- Marketing and Product Management care about ROI and IT cares about creativity
- Most small and medium companies chose creativity as the most important asset
Long story short – everybody’s looking for creativity but they’re willing to pay for Strategy Planning and ROI.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, January 30th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: interactive, teaser, trailer
We are getting ready to launch something reallinteresting. Stay tuned and meanwhile – watch the trailer.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Monday, January 5th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: agency, colleagues, future, interactive, new year, offices, team
2009. After an year of hard work I can say I am amazed of what we, at MB Dragan, have accomplished.
We have launched a lot of great projects, effective campaigns, beautiful and usable websites, some mobile applications, we’ve launched a new mobile marketing division and many others.
We have kept our promise to our old clients and gained new ones.
Our team grew 5 times.
We moved in a new, bigger and nicer office.
Our income grew 10 times.
We opened new offices.
We had fun.
We discovered.
We got angry and joyful.
The most important thing, however, is that we’ve met each other. I am glad to have met you guys. I thank you for all your hard work and all the things you have done this year.
Thank you, in no particular order, Razvan, Irina, Alex, Alina, Andrei, Andreea, Victor, Catalin, Spio, Alin, Tudor, Sorin, Daniel, Anca, Adrian, Cristina, Octav, Gabi, Iulian, Irina for your efforts.
Many thanks to our clients who trusted with their brands and businesses.
Last but not least, thanks to all those reading our blog posts, our twitts, reading our press releases, using the sites we’ve launched, playing the games we launch, interacting with our work.
Let 2009 begin
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 ( 3 responses )
Tags: future, interactive, predictions
I remember the story of a roman general that declared war machines can go no further than catapultes. 2000 years later and a few nuclear bombs after, some people might disagree.
As the interactive world keeps changing by the hour here are some of the things that I am sure will make it mainstream, with the help of Internet:
1. Social television
Ever felt like some show is just awesome and you should share it with your buddies? Well, interactive television is only the first step in letting viewers gain ever more control on what they watch, how and when they watch it.
Enter the social television, powered by your friends’ preferences. You will be able to see shows recommended by your friends, watch and comment live TV shows and many others.
2. Mixed-Brand Publications
You like reading the New York Times but you would also read the new Esquire without paying extra? You gonna do it.
By mixing media brands, sites and others you will soon be able to create your very own newspaper, featuring stories in the matter you would read your Feed Reader.
Will this paper be displayed on interactive paper or will it be printed on demand? Will it be based on a subscription or will it be free, advertising based ? Future will tell.
3. Virtual over-the-internet companies
The world is changing and fast. The virtual market is here for the taking. Challenger economies have a lot to offer and developed countries have a lot to gain by tapping in this global pool of talent.
I know companies based in UK, marketed from Germany, researching and doing development in India, having their creative advertising in Tokio, delivering products all over the world.
This is globalization but I am sure something else will emerge. An economy completly free from distinction based on place of birth, color of skin and others.
4. Global access to internet
We will have global broadband access to Internet. Underdeveloped countries will be able to access global informational resources leading a global change on a scale never seen before.
5. Over the internet telepathic communications
Sure, it sounds weird but I am sure at some point we will be able to communicate telepathically and reach new depths in human interaction.
This will break-down cultural and language barriers that kept people appart for so many thousands of years. Imagine an westerner being able to understand the depths of eastern culture, free from misconceptions, misunderstandings and others.
Will it be a chip we’ll use to help us communicate? Will it be a mind scanner we’ll use just as the laptop’s built-in camera ? I don’t know but what I do know is this is something that will lead human kind to new means of interacting and thinking. Which brings us to…
6. Collective thinking
At the moment we are all gathering information in the largest library the Earth had ever had: the Internet. But is that all we can together?
What if we could argue and settle argues between thousands, millions of people in less than a fraction of a second?
What if we could not just work together, live together but also think together?
7. Artificial intellingence
This is something the world has been waiting for such a long time. We want something that would work, think and act for us. Aren’t we lazy?
Google is working on this. Others are too. Will we live to see this happening? I think so.
8. A new ecommerce
A new way of doing commerce will develop. We will have shops that exist both online and offline and you can have the same experience and benefits on each.
You will be able to try on clothes online and save your basket for later purchase offline. You will be able to spend a great afternoon shopping online with your friends and in the same time shop offline with home delivery jumping from one product category to another.
9.The death of the cubicle
People crammed in huge buildings and campuses will become a thing of the past as many jobs are getting less and less location dependent.
New devices as the iPhone or Blackberry are proof that corporate office will shrink ever more untill they will be devices you’ll carry around and use to complete the daily tasks.
10. The death of advertising
Advertising will evolve to Informative Advertising, targeted, permission based, totally interactive and only on demand.
In the end – I don’t know for sure what the future holds but I know that we live interesting times. And some people will take advantage of this.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 ( Start discussion )
Tags: 2009 advertising predictions, interactive, Interactive Advertising, online, outdoor, radio, shift, tv
I am not one of those “Internet is the only way” guys but I do believe accountable results are better than mass market messages. I believe in convergence rather than Internet revolution.
But … something spectacular is building up. I forecast a huge budget movement from TV, radio and outdoor to online. The conventional agencies feel it, the clients know it.
What’s your opinion ?
