Use It or Lose It!

It's that time of year - where that is a variable for things like: "holiday", "peace", "joy", "depression", etc. For agency and client staff, it's Use-It-or-Lose-It (UIoLI) time. By UIoLI I'm referring both to:

• clients' end-of-the year rush to spend their budgets in order to squeeze out a last bit of performance or to justify next year's budget.
• vacation days & corporate policies for roll-over (or not as the case may be).

 These two UIoLI events come to a nasty head at the end of year. To a lesser extent, summer time with its holidays and summer Fridays, also has similar issues.
How can a dedicated agency person, leave her client, or for that matter, her team in the lurch during these critical times of year? This conundrum becomes even more complex because people both have long-standing plans, or faced with UIoLI, slap together last-minute trips. To turn up the temperature a few more degrees, on the client-side the same thing is happening, making the end of the year pretty much the sloppiest, most pressured, time of the year.

It only took me a few cycles of being one of the few saps (dedicated employees?) still in the office at 11pm on 12/23 and 7/3 to begin managing my and my team's vacation schedules. One approach I've taken rounding the Q3 corner, when my team wasn't burning their vacation days fast enough was to implement Winter Fridays, where they could at least enjoy some additional 3-day weekends. If someone has two weeks of unused vacation coming onto the 4th quarter, they can pretty much work it out so that they can have 4-day weeks for the rest of the year. Another approach was to encourage them to come in late or leave early. Of course, the "good" ones (you guys know who you are) would still manage to put in over 50+ hours, even in those shortened weeks. At least they got some down-time that they otherwise would not have had.

Their are many benefits to encouraging (or as some of the business literature suggests, "forcing") your team to take time off, including: higher retention rates and increased morale to learning time-management skills and driving productivity. The Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Business Week and many others have written extensively about these issues.

So, if you're not fortunate enough to live in a state like California, where vacation days are considered earned wages that roll-over from year to year, take the time you deserve. Trust me, you and everyone around you will be better off than if you give them back to the man.

Project Management and Conflict

One of Project Managers' most important roles is to drive continual improvement. In a multi-agenda, multi-stakeholder environment this pretty much means that conflict is inevitable. We're all familiar with the full range of conflict from the healthy kind, which results in the aforementioned improvement to the kind that comes from butting heads with those whose personal agenda and greater good aren't fully balanced.

A key to success for a PM in an agency environment is getting good at working through conflicts in a way that elevates the ecosystem. It's a refined skill, which on the weak side results in you caving on something that needs to be driven and on the other side has too strident an approach, which generates disproportionate resistance. In addition, to a lack of progress, too much of either approach will leave you ping-ponging between them and getting nowhere while building a reputation that you'll have to shake.

I followed an interesting string on the topics of conflict and leadership, which led from:

• Jessica Stillman's Entry-Level Rebel blog post: Tim Ferris: Don't Be Afraid to Piss People Off on BNET - Jessica is a great amplifier of sage advice from blogs, books and presentations.
  
  to
  
  
• Tim's Ferris's blog post: The Benefits of Pissing People Off, in which he advises that, "Doing anything remotely interesting will bring criticism. Attempting to do anything large-scale and interesting will bring armies of detractors and saboteurs. This is fine – if you are willing to take the heat."
  
  and finally to
  
  
• Colin Powell's Leadership Primer on Slidshare, in which, among other things, he advises that, "Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad . . . you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization"
  
  

Achieving Balance - Rigor and Flexibility

If nothing else, being a PM in an agency environment is about achieving balance. I'm just going to skim the surface of this topic in this posting. There are a myriad of competing forces to reconcile along the development continuum in order to find the win/win including:

Reliability & Innovation
Options & Recommendations
Breadth & Depth
Effectiveness & Efficiency
Client Goals & Agency Goals
Collaboration & Autonomy
IM & Email (or picking up the damn phone!)
Revenue & Profit
Branding & Response
Engagement & Accessibility
And the PM classic: Quality, Speed & Price

On the PM side, whether we're talking about employing a service delivery process, using tools & templates or just how one manages communication and relationships, it often comes down to balancing rigor and flexibility.

PM is a robust and mature disciple with a successful history in a number of complex industries. However, an agency environment, is not a construction site, a military base nor a software engineering firm. Many of the PM tactics, tools and tenets that drive success in those environments will choke the life out of an agency. Applied with the right sensibility and professional judgment the methodologies promoted by PMI, Prince2 and the like can absolutely enhance PM and overall agency performance. However, without the appropriate judgment to achieve balance between the rigor supplied by those approaches and the flexibility that must exist in an agency, a clash or a lose/lose is inevitable. Similarly the lack of predictability that comes along with iterative approaches, like Agile is sometimes too nerve-racking for clients or agency stakeholders to bear.

A PM who can effectively depart from a plan to the mutual satisfaction of all is far more valuable than one who can create a 700-line project plan and hold a team hostage with it.

Bend so you don't break.
Bend but don't bend over.

Pricing Wars - Agency/Client Dialog

This one, "The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations", has been making the rounds. I've already heard from several colleagues that they've seen it and have even used it as part of internal, agency meetings. If you haven't viewed this, it will make you laugh and cry.



For any clients reading this: Please keep in mind that on the agency-side, we realize these are caricatures. And further, a spoof that could be produced on the many agency-side foibles related to pricing would similarly generate laughter and tears - (e.g. 2 weeks to generate a $10,000 high-level estimate).

However, determining pricing and managing expectations and scope as it relates to pricing are some of the most charged areas of agency/client relationships.

Like so much else in a partnership, clear communication up front and some organizational empathy can help avoid scenes like the ones depicted in this clip. Often issues surrounding pricing have more to do with poor communication and expectation-management than one party trying to pull something over on or unduly squeeze another - although there's certainly a bit of that floating around, especially in this pressured, economic environment.

A few things for all to keep in mind surrounding pricing include:

• It is impossible to tell how much time and money it will take to develop even a modestly complex project prior to receiving a proper brief. For a long range/complex project, even once the brief has been given and a broad solution determined, time & money can't necessarily be accurately predicted - and yes coming up with a viable, broad solution also takes time and money.
  
  
• The most accurate way to price a project is through sequential estimates that gain fidelity as insight is uncovered and actual phases of development approach. (See my posting: Letter of Agreement (LOA) - Getting paid from the beginning for more on this topic.)
  
  
• All parties need to understand that there are both activities and deliverable that need to be funded and that sometimes seemingly simple features and functions are very interconnected to other issues and take a lot of thought to execute effectively and efficiently - Right, like one of those Tiger Woods ads: 75% Preparation / 25% Execution.
  
  
• There is a wide range of variables that affect pricing of a seemingly simple scope of work, including: quality of briefing, state of assets, state of brand/style guidelines, condition of technical environment, timing pressure, client's internal structure/relationships and 3rd party involvement.
  
  
• Any agency worth its salt should be able to clearly articulate what is known and what is not known and the basis for their pricing.
  
  
• When bids come in with gaping discrepancies, more often than not, there are not shared assumptions about the scope of the project.
  

So, here's to hoping that collectively agencies and clients can bring "getting what you pay for" and "paying for what you get" a bit closer.

Project Management Recognition - Getting the Love (and more) that PM's Deserve

For the purposes of this post, let's consider Project Manager and Producer roles the same thing. There is certainly no clear distinction in our industry - more on this in a future post.

Trolling around the Droga5 website, in the "Stuff" section. I found, "I Want to Marry a Producer" by Ted Royer, Droga5's Executive Creative Director. It's one of the funniest, most endearing (and somewhat creepy) things I've read recently. He discusses various intra-agency marital options: account person, client, even another creative but dismisses them all for a producer. I don't know Ted personally (not entirely sure I'd like to - I certainly wouldn't want to get too close) but he has a body of work that puts him in high-regard in the industry and, in my book, his romantic side adds to his rep.

I always appreciate it when PM's and Producers are recognized for the important roles they play. Unfortunately, recognition of PM contributions isn't the norm. If you haven't read my post Project Management Success - Where's the Evidence?!, which features a clip of Dustin Hoffman, playing Stanley Motts, the self-absorbed producer in Wag the Dog, give it a try. Hoffman delivers a hilarious set of tirades about producers and recognition.

An Agency's Ability to Deliver - People Are Talking

Industry talk is tantalizing. Externally, aided in great part by the plethora of awards, trade pubs and blogs, buzz tends to center around account-wins, creativity, and to a lesser extent, results. Published industry evaluation reports (e.g. AdWeek's Digital Agency Report Card, Forrester's Wave Studies) evaluate similar things, but an agency's ability to execute efficiently is not considered. However, within the industry, peer-to-peer at the bar (like when one PM asks another about a shop she used to work at), an agency's working environment, and its ability to deliver, are main topics.

I've had the opportunity to get out and about to various industry events and conferences recently. Good form prevents me from listing details of what I've overheard. I will say that I was amazed at the consistency of buzz about certain agencies from one event to another and how well it aligned with the trash-talk I've heard inside of various agencies. The lack of understanding by some non-creative agency parties about the challenges of managing clients and creative/tech deliverables was striking as well.

An agency's reputation is important to maintain. Here are just a few areas where buzz comes into play.

• Hiring - In the current economic environment, agencies that are hiring have the upper hand. However, the best talent out there, especially those that have a stable gig, will still be applying even more scrutiny when considering whether or not to join a new shop.
  
  
• Business Referrals - Media companies often influence clients' choices of what creative agencies to work with or, believe me, to stop working with.
  
  
• Headhunters & Agency Recruiting Personnel- These guys hear it all. They get a regular insider's tour of agencies from the slew of talent they interact with. I've begged one of my long-term headhunter friends to write a book, I, and I'm sure others, would love to read it.
  
  
• Third-Party & Publisher Preference - Guess which agencies 3rd party vendors like PointRoll, EyeBlaster and EyeWonder are going to partner with and feature in their case studies for their newest, high-functioning units? Publishers are well aware of which agencies deliver on time, and which deliver heartache.
  
  
• Who's Got Your Back? - When the trash talk about your agency starts flying (usually behind your back), you want/need someone who knows your agency's and your work to chime in and support you.
  

I don't need to tell you that clients care very much about an agency's ability to deliver. Any agency evaluation report card, or feedback given by a client (especially those leading up to or following an account being put into review) consider agency efficiency and reliability very heavily.

PM's main mission is to ensure high-quality output that is delivered on-time, on-budget and on-spec. It's incumbent on you to not only execute on this and to form positive relationships with those who share the ecosystem with you. Obviously, this will help improve your ability to deliver together, but it will also improve your company's and your own reputation and your ability to thrive. I assure you, you will need it someday. As the Oracle of Omaha suggests:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”

- Warren Buffet

Ad Operations - Our Industry's Connective Tissue

Last week I attended the Leadership Forum run by AdMonsters, the association dedicated to online advertising operations and technology. As is AdMonsters MO for these kinds of things, the Forum was attended by a pretty small and senior group. There was good representation from around the ecosystem, including publishers (e.g CNN, NY & Washington Times, MTV, Gawker, YouTube, Time, Inc.) top tier agencies (e.g. MediaVest, Razorfish, Universal McCann), Networks (e.g. Platform-A, Undertone Networks) as well as some of the usual, appreciated suspects in the 3rd party/sponsor set (e.g. Google/DoubleClick, BurstMedia).

I'm no stranger to the operations world and I was blown away by this Forum.

The deep dive I took re-impressed upon me the importance of operations work - here's the key: These people exist across the entire online marketing and advertising ecosystem (publishers, agencies, networks, 3rd parties). Throughout the day, I kept wishing that C-level executives on all sides could listen to the dialog. Understanding and improving the connective tissue of operations is critical to elevating our entire industry - and key to diminishing the pain in all of our professional lives.

I tuned in and chimed in most when talk turned to process - and there was a lot of it. Themes common to the plight of PM's emerged: need for better communication, collaboration, documentation and tools. The most important area for improvement I heard about was to get the ops folks upstream (themes near and dear to my heart see previous posts: The Best Predictor of Project Outcome - Project Initiation & Project Management Success - Where's the Evidence?!

I know it's scary to peer under the hood and see some of the dirty machinery, but it's a necessity. Support of operations staff by bringing them into the conversation early, so they can participate in defining execution and innovation strategies, rather than being relegated to playing defense, will yield benefits for all.

Do yourself and your teams a favor. Connect with the people in your organizations responsible for operations and learn about and support groups like AdMonsters. In addition to the Leadership Forums, AdMonsters runs conferences for junior team members that are invaluable. The next one in the US, Ad Ops 360°, will be held in New York in May. I hope that AdMonsters gets around to an executive conference or forum soon.

Letter of Agreement (LOA) - Getting paid from the beginning

"Is there a signed Scope of Work (SOW)?" is one of the most frequently asked and important questions that comes up in an agency.

The competing needs listed below are among the most vexing, catch-22 components of a project's initiation phase:

• agencies need to have a signed SOW before starting work and committing resources
• the substantial amount of work and information required to develop a proper SOW
• clients need to know what they are buying before they sign off
  
• projects need to start quickly lest they go away or will not be finished on time
• client-side vetting and delays in getting a full-blown SOW approved

Enter the Letter of Agreement (LOA). This short document can be enough to satisfy both agency execs and clients alike that there is value on its way. The goal of the LOA is to quickly and painlessly establish that the agency, under the direction of the client, will carry out a preliminary set of activities and deliverables and will be compensated for all substantiated fees and costs incurred.

Additional parameters such as upper fee limits, general timing and deliverables can also be included if necessary. However, it's preferable to avoid these details or you will find yourself on the road to developing a bad SOW. Once you get sucked into this, it is easy to slip into project kick-off with no agreement signed.

To help move LOA approval along, it's worth pointing out to the client and that the agreement protects them with phrases like, "directed by the client" and "substantiated fees and costs". Including a statement in the LOA that a subsequent agreement, such as an SOW, will govern the final compensation terms, activities and deliverables, also helps mollify clients and agency execs.

I've been advised that these letters really don't have much legal bite, but that's not the point. The LOA is simply a tool to break through the typical project initiation impasse and prevent projects from starting with nothing in writing and ending without the agency being paid for all their efforts.

Issuing an LOA is the lesser of many evils. However, standing firm by not allowing a project to begin unless there is a signed SOW, when there is a hard deadline that can't move, isn't so great either. Just make sure you get around to issuing a proper SOW.

Penny-Wise & Pound-Foolish - Asset / Art Management

A discussion in the Advertising Professional group on LinkedIn, posted by Charisse Louis of Charene Graphic Design, stirred up some unpleasant memories. She asked, "Is it OK to use clip art?" Clearly a seasoned professional, Charisse provides her learned opinion on her blog.

My answer to the question is, of course, a multi-part: "It depends."

QUALITY
It's certainly preferable to have a design using clip art that is well-executed and on-strategy over a design that is poorly executed, over-done. To me, it's also preferable to use clip art over a design that is well-done but is off-strategy.

COST
Beware of spending dozens of unplanned hours looking endlessly for a great "free" or cheap image because client is budget-strapped and hasn't been managed. Of course, in the process the agency has spent $x,000 of their time looking for this "free" image.

COST & INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS/MANAGEMENT
This scenario's my favorite:

1. Art Director uses non-original art or photo or content.

2. In the rush to complete, AM/PM, unaware, presents it to budget-strapped client.

3. Client loves it. And double whammy: client's boss, who never reviews work at the same time, happens to see this preso and loves it too.

4. Agency, which hasn't covered this situation in it's SOW, eats the cost - This is even more exciting (triple whammy?) if the image goes live and then you learn that a licensing fee is owed, a competitor has used the same image or some other rights nightmare emerges.
   

Process, patience and communication. Process, patience and communication.

Media and Creative: Live together or die together.

Stakes are higher now than ever for success - actually, high stakes for our survival are more like it. The level of dysfunction between agencies (and the various parties within), clients and publishers continues to elevate as campaigns gain complexity and economic pressure increases. To focus a bit: collaboration between media and creative teams, whether from the same or different agencies, has got to improve.

Gunther Sonnerfeld, in his March 13, iMedia Connection piece, Why Media and Creative Need to Cross the Aisle, addresses the topic to a degree, but veers into the high-ground of " . . . when innovation is the key to success." As PM's we are painfully aware: great thinking isn't worth the PPT it's printed on if you can't execute.

It never ceases to amaze me how seasoned, high-performing industry veterans, who know, work with and respect each other, will claim that the other's agency/team is nightmare to partner with. All day, everyday very smart people across the industry, including very senior talent, are mired in the collateral damage of poor partnerships.

Along the campaign development continuum, from Initiation to Deployment & Diagnosis, there are key activities and deliverables that require media/creative alignment in order to get projects out on-time, on-budget, on-spec - let alone reaching Sonnerfeld's ideal of innovation or, even high-quality. Below are some key milestones, grouped by project phase. Let's play a little game: See how many you recognize as dys-integration pain-points from your past experience (and likely, your future ones):

INITIATION PHASE

• Client Request:
  Always hear about this in time?
  
  
• Brief (Media, Creative, Project ):
  Integrated?
  

DEFINITION PHASE

• Strategic Recommendation:
  Always considers both medium and message?
  
  
• User Experience or Design & Channel Roles:
  Full customer journey considered?
  
  
• Measures of Success:
  Ever see CTR driving a branding campaign or humor/animation that impedes reaching desired response objectives?
  

DESIGN PHASE

• Media Consideration Set:
  Creative folks have an opinion on where/when ads should run?
  
  
• Conceptual Designs & Prototypes:
  Media folks have any thoughts on whether units will work or what the competition has already done?
  

DEVELOPMENT PHASE

• Specifications:
  Red Meat! Don't even know where to begin on this one!
  
  
• Main Ad Units:
  Wish you'd seen/shown to your partners before client buried you?
  
  
• Unique Units, Odd Sizes & Resizes:
  Too many / too few? LCD issues? Show client all units or assume because client approved the main ones, the others are approved?

DEPLOYMENT PHASE

• Traffic:
  Ever resent a site,media or creative partner for caving and saying they can turn around in 1 day?
  
  
• QA:
  Listed after Traffic intentionally. Ever wish you checked yourself, before trafficking?

DIAGNOSIS PHASE

• See comments re: Measures of Success in Definition Phase section above:
  How good are you at arguing both pro and con DL study results? Have enough time / budget / data to optimize creative?

There are a myriad of best-practices to be applied to address issues across this broad a spectrum. They all include better, more timely communication between media and creative teams / agencies. As far as serving the client, we only succeed together. In terms of CYA, if your partner blows up, the shrapnel could be headed your way.

Kill the Post-Mortem

It's a commonly held best-practice to perform a Post-Mortem session following a project - especially one that doesn't go very well. I strongly support this practice and, along with teams I've worked with, have benefited considerably from them over the years.

One common risk with these, shall we say, charged events is that they become finger-pointing exercises (or chair-throwing if things really get out of hand). The typical objective is to generate actionable insights that improve the chance of success going forward. Obviously a certain amount of look-back is critical to the process but this should be done with an eye towards the future. To those ends, I've found the following to be helpful:

PRE-SESSION

• Do some info gathering w/a broad range of stakeholders.
  
• Identify areas to Sustain and areas to Improve. Including items to sustain helps keep a positive focus and is, of course, instructive.
  
• Capture the initial observations on a grid (see sample below) that lists project phases down the left and disciplines involved across the top (note the presence of the client) - you can even divide each cell into Sustain / Improve subcells.
  
• Use this info to help formulate your sense of what really happened and where you'd like to take the meeting.
  
• Don't shy away from your instincts and ideas about what happened and definitely have a strong notion of what positive outcomes will be for the meeting.
  
• Preview the grid and your ideas with a small number of key stakeholders and enlist their support around driving towards (not precisely at) your vision of positive outcomes.
  

SESSION

• Choose a person to facilitate the session. Common sense is your guide here: ideally someone who can work dispassionately and has the strength and intelligence to deal with, shall we say, "passion".
  
• Be clear about session objectives, desired outcomes, ground rules and keep a parking lot for issues that are not directly relevant or too deep for the scope of the meeting - you are not going to solve deeply rooted agency issues in this meeting.
  
• Distribute the grid and share your thoughts on its value and how you want it used (fill it in further, just a guide, etc).
  
• Allow for some venting, but keep the session moving.
  
• Many process or change management initiatives jump too quickly to detailed solutions - a shared vision of the way things should be is a prerequisite for changing the way things are.
  
• Recap findings and next steps.
  

POST SESSION

• Share outcomes w/broader team
  
• Publicly call out strong contributors
  
• Implement and educate about any changes to the organizations processes, tools and documentation (or FINALLY commit to creating them)
  
• Refer to the session as related issues (or the same damn ones) come up on other projects
  

KILL THE POST-MORTEM

Improvement is cyclical and iterative. The best way to avoid the tragedies that drive the need to conduct painful post-mortems, is to start out correctly in the first place (see: post on Project Initiation). Good Pre-Natal activities and health are the best way to avoid the slaughter that necessitates the Post-Mortem.

The Best Predictor of Project Outcome - Project Initiation

I have developed and deployed numerous tools, techniques and templates that assist in completing high-quality projects on-time, on-budget and on-spec. However, the best aides in the world are of little use, without a framework or a way of thinking that guides their use.

The central idea of the framework that I advocate is that up-stream investments pay down-stream dividends. If you don't start right, it's difficult to finish that way. Simple idea, yes, but in the common rush to complete and succeed in an agency, groups of highly intelligent professionals (i.e. the team) frequently devolve into a 3-ring circus. "Ready, Fire, Aim" is a prevalent and unfortunate reality of day-to-day agency life.
Up-stream activities, such as information gathering, synthesis and dissemination are the preventive medicine that keeps agencies healthy.

COURSE-SETTING to avoid COURSE-CORRECTING!

Now, one doesn't want to get carried away. This orientation should not be misconstrued as a recommendation that the end-state should, or even can be, known at the outset of a complex engagement. In fact, the very value that project managers bring to the table - thoughtfulness about process, planning and up-stream focus, can choke the life out of the place if applied rigidly. There is value to be lifted and applied from both waterfall (stringent) and agile (flexible) methodologies.

Perhaps a bit overstated in terms of the uselessness placed on plans, this quote frames the issue well:

In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ike realized that the very act of planning and the frame of mind that it creates, lays the groundwork for intelligently dealing with challenges.

Do yourself and your teams a favor and apply effort up front. The finest minds in an agency are a valuable resource to be used wisely. Time spent in the early phases of a project is a far more effective than time spent scrambling to find and apply resources hours before a deadline.

Document Management - Where is the latest version of xyz?

Not being able to find the soft copy (the latest version!) of a printed document is pretty high on the list of things at an agency that drive me nuts.

INSERT FILENAME & PATH!

To combat the effects of short, mid and long-term memory loss - effectively saving myself from myself, I have become reliant on inserting a field that dynamically generates the filename and path in the footer of all of my Microsoft Office documents. Combined with a proper file-naming convention, a "bread-crumb" path to the exact server or local hard-drive location of a document printed on the bottom of your document is invaluable. As far as I know, this doesn't work in PowerPoint, but as a bonus, it works like a charm in Microsoft Project.

I'm not going to go into detail on how to do this. It's easy enough to find out on the Microsoft site. As an example, you can find the instructions for Microsoft Word, in the Quick Reference Card on the Microsoft site.

If you've ever had the joy of updating a document from an older version, while a deadline or your boss is looming, you will agree that taking the time to include this in your and your team's SOP is worth the effort. The job you save may be your own.

Client Management - The answer is, "maybe"

Successfully managing client relationships, especially in these pressured times, takes the combined efforts of skilled interactive agency professionals. More PM's have lost more hair (or at least their coloring to gray) hearing phrases like, "XYZ Account person told the client that, we could do "it" and still meet the schedule. S/He made no mention of a potential fee increases."

I have toiled, presented, implored, cajoled, collaborated and otherwise tried to influence agency Account people not to play the game of, "Client says, 'jump', we say, 'how high'?" or to look at the advice/insult another way, to stop being "yes-(wo)men" (I can assure any offended Account people that this is a mild characterization compared to those bandied about an agency - especially in the wee hours of the morning.) Among the many benefits of removing the instant, "yes" are that it would take some pressure off of the PM's, who invariable are vilified when they assess the situation and have to say, "no".

The aim is to migrate towards more of aconsultative answer of, "maybe". Ideally, towards an Account Management-response along the lines of, "Client, I understand the request, let me talk to superwoman-PM back at the office, see how we can address this. I will get back to you ASAP with a recommendation and let you know if there are any impacts to the project's scope, timing or pricing." This is not a bait and switch. It actually gives the agency some time to thoughtfully address the request and be fairly compensated if there is a legitimate change in scope.

When discussing this issue with a wise agency president, he suggested that one way to facilitate the migration of yes-(wo)men on the Account team to the maybe column was to also move the PM's to the maybe column. He posited that one reason PM's are often met with resistance or, worse avoidance, is that in their zeal to defend, PM's can become very problem-oriented vs being solution-oriented - effectively turning themselves into "no-(wo)men". If PM's reflexive response was also, "maybe, let's see what we can come up with", the partnership would benefit, friction diminished, and the ecosystem would be better aligned for success.

Entry-Level Project Managers - Pound for Pound, the Best PM's in the Biz

This is a send up to entry-level Project Managers. At 0 - 1 year of experience, vetted for the core PM skills: intelligence, work ethic and common sense, Associate/Assistant Project Managers are an invaluable part of any PM team.

There are more moving pieces, parts, assets, paperwork and points of contact to be managed than ever before in building Web sites or developing online advertising campaigns today.

An APM can elevate the performance of an entire PM team. Beyond the direct benefits of the myriad of listing, vetting, and distributing of tasks that APM's take on, they enable other members of the PM team to focus on higher-level activities and deliverables. Further, their presence gives more senior members of the team an opportunity to mentor and manage to the benefit of all.

I love having these smart, motivated, young guns around. Their on-boarding helps validate the efficacy of tools and methodologies, and contributes to process and tool evolution. These new-entrants also bring a native's view of new technologies and trends and inject much-needed energy into the "old school" of some agencies. Mike Carlton, of Carlton Associates Inc, is particularly compelling on this topic and related ones in his piece, Who's Going to Do the Work?

The best APM's invariably gain mastery of the support skills in a few months (right, if they can't then their probably not cut out for PM'ing?) and begin taking on higher-level tasks themselves. This doesn't hurt the agency bottom line and definitely raises the bar for everyone. Further, there's nothing like someone w/half the experience and salary, nipping at heels to keep a team on their toes - especially those prone to sluggishness (you know who I'm talking about, right?).

From an overall agency perspective, a junior PM role, with exposure to so many aspects of an advertising agency, is the perfect farm league for feeding all the disciplines in an agency. One could go so far as to say that all entry-level employees would do well with a rotation in PM.

If you've got 'em make the most of it. If not, you would do well to add an entry level PM if you are able. The job/agency you save, could be your own!

Advertising Agency Compensation - Exploring Alternatives

The premise here is simple: aligning agencies and clients around results, rather than squabbling about costs and time, which further drives the commoditization of agency services, is a win/win situation. Ad agencies are in a fight for survival. The opportunity for the brave and innovative to flourish has never been greater than right now. For those who don't/can't start thinking differently, look out for the tar pits.

This post takes up on some of themes introduced in the December 5th post, Achieving Balance in an Agency, where the value of certain agency activities and deliverables (e.g. a breakthrough idea) was examined.

Value-based pricing is not a new idea, but it's a good one that has been in place for a long time in the consulting and pharmaceutical manufacturing arenas among others. Many agencies and clients are stuck in the familiar worlds of commission-based or hours/labor-based compensation. At their worst, these approaches encourage reach-oriented (i.e. tonnage) marketing programs, support running up the clock to justify billable hours and perhaps worst, crush innovation and performance.

The barriers and risks to adopting this approach are not insignificant and include:

• Agency and client comfort/momentum in doing things the way they've always been done.
• Having enough influence on an overall program so that the value you envision and agree upon with a client can actually be created.
• Clearly defining success and therefore value (raise your hand if you've been part of a view-through debate)
• Determining pricing so that nobody loses their shirt and the agency doesn't miss out on the upside.
  

There are various individuals and groups that are promoting this approach. Ignition Consulting Group and The Verasage Institue spring to the top of searches on the topic. Ignition even has a presentation on the topic posted on slideshare.net that is quite informative: Burying the Billable Hour.

So, what does this have to do with Project Management? In a study that Ignition and VeraSage conducted on behalf of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and the Association of National Advertiser's (ANA), the 2, top-rated agency value-drivers according to marketers were:

1. Working in a collaborative way with the client by creating an environment of mutual respect.
2. Ensuring that agency functions are integrated and agency divisions collaborate on behalf of the client

Along with the fact that Project Managers are often at the heart of conversations around pricing, these two tidbits should help give you voice on important discussions about evolving your agency's relationship with its clients. On the business development front, RFP's almost always allow responses for alternative means of compensation beyond the cost+ calculations they require. Putting a value-based option in front of a prospect isn't likely to get taken up at the outset, but at least it will show that your agency has some life.

Speak up. Watch out for the tar pits!