Ed's Letter - May08

Unlocking the value in your creative business

You often hear the word ‘diversification' used in business or management speak but not as often in a creative business environment where, ironically, creative professionals are expected to be able to come up with creative solutions for anything.

Granted, whether or not those solutions actually work are another thing.

Creative businesses today are, no doubt, increasingly moving to change the way they operate and transit from the traditional ‘baton-passing' era where a brief makes its way from client to account manager to strategy planner to creative person and back down the chain, to a collaborative cross-faculty way of generating a holistic plan to tackle a brief - or simply come up with a big idea.

And this change can come in many forms, from MindShare's recent global announcement that it is integrating almost a dozen separate agency units and disciplines into four new groups that will span all its services, to Bates and 141 Worldwide merging operations to give clients more unified solutions to TNBT joining The Law Firm nodal network and sharing creative ideas across the world.

But the crux of the matter is, no matter how you restructure the way you work internally and externally with other parties, creative businesses are still just selling their 24-hours a day and if you're a suit working on say three client briefs in a day, your productivity is limited to the number of working hours available (or awake and lucid hours for that matter). And you will only get paid for the amount of hours you put in.

Creative professionals such as the Saatchi brothers have found a way to, instead of selling time, expand or diversify what a creative business can offer and make the work that's put in turn around and generate its own revenue in a sustainable way.

Since 2002, Lord Maurice Saatchi and his brother Charles Saatchi started a new venture to develop brands which are unwanted and which have passed their heyday, and after repositioning, redesigning and re-marketing them, allow them to in turn make money for the company.

BBH in 2006 launched a global initiative called Zag which aimed to create and develop new brands and license or sell them to third parties in return for a share of ongoing
sales revenues.

Earlier the same year, Saatchi & Saatchi also created a global content division Gum @ Saatchi which put together a four girl pop group which companies can buy and promote their brands.

Design Bridge, a UK-based brand consultancy, instead of taking on work from a fledging Indonesian snack food brand for a smaller than usual fee, decided to ask for a stake in the company and a seat on the board, and full control over the brand design of the product. Talk about performance-based remuneration! The ultimate motivation it is, I believe.

Thing about these initiatives is a search on Google threw up no results on how successful they have been, but what is clear is in order to stay competitive, the familiar phrase of thinking outside the box will stay current for a long time to come.

With this I'd like to bid a sincere farewell to you the loyal readers of Marketing magazine Singapore. It's been a fast and furious but thoroughly rewarding and fulfilling four years since I joined the magazine and together we have seen it through a major print redesign, the launch and redesign of marketing-interactive.com, the launch of four e-newsletters and more. It's been heartening to hear from many of you first hand the magazine's growth and coverage has helped keep your fingers on the pulse of the industry, given how quickly technology is enabling change around us.

I will be seeking new adventures and challenges but I will always look upon my time at Marketing with fond memories. Thank you for making it all worthwhile and goodbye, for now.

Debbie Cai