AdForum.com recently interviewed Andy Semons, Founding and Strategic Planning Partner at IPNY, a brand-led digital and direct advertising agency

“Understanding what people truly think and feel, how they express themselves and how they make choices, is a joyful thing for me.”

Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do?

Hmmm…. Where to begin? I guess the first thing you should know about me is that I’m the third generation in my family to be in the advertising business. My grandmother was a copywriter at a time that very few women worked, let alone worked in this business. My dad was a media guy and from my earliest years told nothing but agency stories. I was hooked and wanted to be part of the advertising world from a very young age.

On a daily basis my role morphs from being a psychologist, to architect to data geek to management consultant. My psychology background helps in finding meaningful consumer insights that allow us to understand our audiences both rationally and emotionally. I turn those insights into strong creative blueprints and help the creative teams nurture their ideas. And most importantly I design research tracking and optimization programs that make sure our work is doing what it’s intended to do.

That’s what’s expected of a planner. But I also take it a step further and help our clients with real business planning. Anything from marketing plans, staffing plans, procedural governance – whatever they need assistance with.

That’s the day job. By night, I’m a partner and part-owner of IPNY. And like all of my partners, I wear a management hat too. I help define our vision and growth goals, develop new business and sweat the details of ownership right alongside everyone else.

What did you do before your current role and what led you to where you are now?

My background as a strategist is eclectic, to say the least. I’ve been at big brand agencies, digital agencies, direct agencies, PR firms, political think tanks and research firms. Before starting IPNY I was actually working as a management consultant, helping Fortune 500 companies restructure their in-house marketing services department.

Each new job brought its own challenges. Seniority at a big agency meant that I had to manage big departments and a lot of people, leaving little opportunity to do the fun work that made me happy. Starting an agency from scratch gave me the opportunity to get my hands dirty again. All of the partners at IPNY work in a very hands-on way. And we love it.

How would you define the role of a strategist?

A strategist’s job is to provide the team with everything they need to get to great work, plain and simple. Understanding of the marketplace. The competitive framework. The behaviors, thoughts and feelings of the consumer. The roadmap which will lead to brilliant creative and hopefully change the face of the category. And the constant marketplace feedback needed to optimize, measure and plan for the future once a campaign is up and running. Beyond that, a strategist is instrumental in selling both the agency POV and creative work to clients. Good strategists partner well with their creative teams, become a sounding board for the development of creative ideas and help build lasting relationships that can impact client business.

If you had to pick one thing, what would you say you enjoy most about strategy?

Without a doubt, the “aha” moment is when you uncover the big idea that will drive consumer behavior and build a client’s business – this gives me the greatest adrenaline rush. Understanding what people truly think and feel, how they express themselves and how they make choices, is a joyful thing for me. Over the course of my career I’ve uncovered interesting insights that guide human behavior in categories as complex as banking or mundane as packaged goods, but I’ve also gained tremendous understanding of beliefs and behaviors in sensitive areas related to health such as illness, caregiving, and aging, along with why people donate to charities and political campaigns. I’m always amazed by how much there is to still learn in my profession.

What’s the most challenging aspect of the job?

For me it is and has always been time. Strategists kick-start the whole creative process. That means we need to engage first – before anyone else. And given the ever–accelerating pace of client deadlines we have little time to waste. Our insight gathering, observations, primary and secondary research and most importantly our analysis all needs to be done quickly so the creative team can get to work developing their ideas. So, the challenge is to be as inspirational as possible and as do it as quickly as possible.

Has the role of a strategist been evolving within the industry?

Yes it has. Brand agencies always held strategists accountable for big consumer ideas that fueled campaigns and were rooted in consumer beliefs. Strategists were responsible for briefs, insights and research – that was pretty much it.

But over the years as digital and direct planning has come to the forefront, strategists have become responsible for far more than brand ideas.

Customer journeys, which now have become the responsibility of strategists, inform a lot of the process, giving the opportunity to mine insights for more “direct” initiatives such as CRM planning. Planners define personas for digital planning and have taken over the role of channel planning, which can help media departments deliver on the “right target, right message, right channel, right moment” imperative. It’s a much bigger field now than it was when I first started out.

For someone entering the industry that wants to move into the strategy/planning space, what steps should they take?

While there are many aspects of planning or strategy one can be involved in, it all comes down to having a fundamental interest in human behavior. If you’re not interested in how people think, what they say and what they do, then strategy or planning may not be right for you. Also, I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping up with popular culture. And that includes the desire to experience cultures other than your own. One of my favorite questions to ask a job candidate (of any age) is “if you didn’t need to have a job right now and could do anything you want, how would you spend your time?” I look for answers that express interest in travel, exploring foreign culture, art, music or some other kind of scholarly pursuit. My experience tells me that people with broad interests are more likely to be successful planners – it gives them a well of insight and understanding that others don’t have. And that’s what leads to making great work. Beyond that, be persistent. Show your passion, have a point of view and be a good listener.

Do you have a dream account or brand you’d like to work on? Which and Why?

Lately I’ve been thinking it would be fun to work on advocacy issues. Things that affect public welfare like education, health, the environment or even something like gun control. It would be wonderful to have the opportunity to use my marketing skills and expertise to change how people think on grass roots issues. Yeah, I‘d like that a lot…

We are honored that Andy Semons, Strategic Planning Partner at IPNY, was chosen as a judge for the 2018 Jay Chiat Awards, sponsored by the 4A’s. He was selected as a judge for the Global Strategy jury, which judges marketing efforts that saw influence across multiple continents.

The prestigious award show is in its twenty-second year and recognizes the best strategic thinking in marketing, media and advertising around the world. Winners will be announced on Tuesday October 9, 2018 in NY at the 4A’s conference.

As published in PM360

This article was co authored with Jennifer Matthews, president and managing partner at the bloc.

In response to a marketing environment that has become increasingly competitive, healthcare and pharma companies are changing the way they do business, particularly with their communications agencies. We see a number of trends that are impacting the client/agency relationship.

1. Consolidation: Clients are continuing to consolidate their list of preferred agencies or networks to drive efficiencies. In pharma, AOR responsibilities are often combined with digital or medical communications and promotions resulting in fewer “moving parts” and suppliers. The expectation is that the client will benefit from increased strategic and executional efficiencies and reduced costs.

2. Desire for Innovation with Decreased Tolerance for Risk: It is now more important than ever to demonstrate a brand’s value through differentiators and encourage customer loyalty. With the median tenure for a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) hovering around 30 months, there is a decreased tolerance to create risky marketing and advertising campaigns. Due to the CMO’s shortened longevity, building a brand has gotten harder. As a result, CMOs are relying more heavily on data to make more marketing decisions.

3. Get it Right the First Time: With flat or decreased client marketing budgets and strict medical, legal, and regulatory review processes that extend the approval timeline to as much as 12 to 15 months, creative development faces additional pressure. Mistakes or revisions can further delay an already long process, so there’s an increased need to “get it done right” the first time.

4. Building Cohesive Experiences: In our fragmented world, marketers and their agencies are searching for new ways to build integrated experiences across all consumer touchpoints. With the explosion of channels and multitude of formats more people are involved in the process of developing and executing creative work. It is important to prevent dilution of the brand and its messaging by being diligent about building a cohesive story and narrative over time.

So how, given these new realities, can clients build relationships that facilitate original creative thinking? We believe there are real opportunities if both operational changes and revisions to the creative process are made, as shown below.

1. Operational Changes

Agency consolidations have yielded numerous benefits. Since AOR agencies focus on owning the brand and related tactics, such as core concept development, messaging, and channel specific communications to HCPs and consumers, they are now able to coordinate work from executional agencies through one central point of contact. This process reduces costs due to the AOR exerting tighter control over partners who create the derivative work, thereby streamlining financial reconciliation with these agencies.

2. Staffing

Insourcing is another way to curtail costs. Building offices in less expensive locations (other cities or countries) can provide access to a broader talent pool with specialized skills while decreasing overhead and operational costs. Time shifting allows for greater continuity (employees use shared tools and processes) and delivery against a “faster” imperative, where work flows across time zones, resulting in quicker completion. This is especially effective with tight deadlines.

Flexible staffing models allow for greater efficiency. Individuals with specific expertise can be hired on a project basis rather than retained for the entire engagement. Similarly, partnerships or collaborative ventures can bring much needed skill sets to augment an agency’s core competencies. This ensures that the “right level of talent” is utilized, leading to better quality deliverables.

3. Pricing

Agencies are also experimenting with different pricing models. Traditionally many agencies have charged an hourly rate, while others have moved to flat or fixed rates and some progressed to value-based models, or “outcome-based pricing.” This latter method is the most progressive because it tracks performance based on what is valuable to the client, such as leads, conversations, etc.

4. Creative Considerations

Increasingly clients are asking for creative business solutions, such as new business models or strategic solutions that go well beyond creative ideas. They want differentiators. And almost paradoxically, they want to stand out without taking risks.

5. Thinking Differently

For agencies this means treating every client encounter as a pitch opportunity and bringing challenger thinking and approaches into every meeting. This could entail bringing an outside perspective to business-as-usual meetings. Agencies may tap creative talent beyond the pharma or healthcare world to get a fresh perspective. Some will conduct proprietary research to discover new insights that provide different strategic, creative, or channel planning approaches.

Regardless, it is important that the creative process remain agile and flexible. With a condensed timeline and shortened briefing process, better, more comprehensive briefs are needed based on real insights and research. Planners need to deliver valuable insights more quickly, often looking to technology to speed the process (e.g., online panels or video chats). Additionally, some response-oriented digital work, such as CRM and hypertargeting can be optimized over time to create a living laboratory for better creative. For example, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s “Cancer Ends With Me” CRM program was designed to optimize the communication that best drove donations.

6. Content

With the increased number of consumer touchpoints driving a desire for more content, there is a greater need to produce adaptive creative that is effective across channels. One way to create multipurpose media is to use motion, either video or animation, rather than longer format text-based content. To be effective, agencies should rethink the use of video production (social channels, in-office video doctors, patient orientation material, etc.) by adapting a channel agnostic approach and capturing all the content upfront, leaving less chance for budget overruns due to reshoots and a greater likelihood of creating cohesive experiences.

As social channels proliferate and cost pressures continue to escalate, these new distribution points are increasingly being supported with unbranded patient content that explain disease states and contain diagnosis descriptions, encouraging patients to take action either in the form of talking to their doctor or clicking online for more information. For instance, Novartis used unbranded content to discuss health and diseases rather than promoting specific pharma products. Healthcare CRM programs are a good way to use customized online targeting to encourage compliance and persistency, especially to support proper patient use.

In conclusion, more nimble, agile client/agency relationships that make the most of precious time and nurture creativity will yield the most successful results. And agencies need to know how to work faster and better within these guidelines, being open to new ways of doing things. These ideas can bring clients and agencies closer to overcoming the operational and creative challenges and help insure longer, lasting relationships.

Interplanetary has a number of nonprofit clients on our roster. And every year we run a program to help organizations get ready to maximize the prime, end-of-year giving season (October/November). The 4th Quarterizer gets you organized, streamlines the process with internal groups, creates more emotionally compelling communications that drive better results, ensures consistent branding, and better equips your supporters to advocate for you. A turnkey program with discounted/package rates, The 4th Quarterizer is modular and customizable to your company’s specifications. Read more about it here.

If you’d like to maximize the opportunity your organization faces in the last two to three months of the year (including Giving Tuesday), contact Tom Steadman, Managing Director, at tom@IPNY.com

As published in philanthropynewsdigest.org

Most nonprofit executives will acknowledge that the funding landscape has never been as competitive as it is today. Donors have an overwhelming variety of causes to choose from, an abundance of guidance and advice to listen to, and not nearly enough time to sort it all out and make an informed decision. The question for nonprofits is: What can we do to break through the noise and build lasting and meaningful relationships with donors?

Having worked with nonprofit marketing teams and executives for more than twenty years, I’m well acquainted with the lack of planning that pervades the sector. Nonprofits tend to jump right into the program execution phase without asking the most basic marketing and branding questions. And this lack of upfront planning often results in more than confusion; it can cost a nonprofit money.

With nonprofit marketers about to dig in for the all-important final quarter of the calendar year, here’s a handful of questions they should be thinking about:

What’s the opportunity cost of our organization not having a strong brand?

A strong brand is more than just a logo, color palette, or mnemonic device. Your brand should create an emotional connection in the hearts and minds of donors that grows stronger over time. Once donors understand the fundamentals of your organization’s work and how it differs from other groups doing similar work, the investment in creating that connection will pay off in a variety of ways. Because of that connection, donors are more likely to support your organization by doing more than just giving money. They’ll attend events and volunteer. And, more importantly, they are more likely to actively promote your organization’s work and recruit other supporters to its cause.

Ask yourself the following questions:
• Is our organization well known in our segment?
• Do donors understand our mission and the work we do?
• Are donors easily able to explain our mission to others?
• Are donors willing to promote our organization to others?

If the answer to any of these questions is anything other than “yes,” you need to understand that there may be real financial consequences for your organization if it holds tight to the status quo. Before things reach that pass, suggest to your colleagues that it’s time to revisit your messaging strategy and think about how your brand is connecting—or isn’t—with supporters and potential supporters.

What’s preventing our organization from building a stronger brand?

Marketing initiatives aren’t always easily communicated within organizations. Often, there’s confusion between the role of the marketing team and the role of the development team. And in cases where a marketing initiative needs to span chapters or affiliates, securing organization-wide buy-in can be next to impossible.

That’s why it is important for marketing executives to understand that they have internal as well as external audiences. And that means an organization’s own employees need to be cultivated as “brand ambassadors” and made to feel that they have a voice and stake in campaign planning and development.

For example, prior to rolling out its “Someday Is Today” campaign, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society held meetings with its board of directors and all sixty local chapter executive directors with the goal of obtaining buy-in. Research findings and advertising strategies were shared and style guides were developed to facilitate local deployment and modification (on an as-need basis) of the campaign. A testament to the success of the approach is the fact that the campaign is still up and running nearly four years later.

Do we have a well-defined fundraising strategy?

Nonprofits often set financial goals without much planning or rigor. As often as not, they’ll simply look at the total amount of donations received, set new benchmarks for the coming year or campaign, and resort to the same outreach activities as they’ve used in the past. In contrast, a well-planned fundraising strategy involves some forethought.

Think about how your organization is planning to reach its financial goals. Are you targeting new donors? A broader slice of the general public? If you’re planning to court new donors, you’ll need to profile these groups (demographically, behaviorally, and psychographically) and assign a financial value to each one. Once you’ve done that, you can prioritize how you’re going to spend your fundraising dollars, mapping out a messaging and media strategy that takes into account the motivations and behaviors of your top-tier prospects.

When doing this, it’s important to remember that each donor group has a unique profile and that members of one group are unlikely to think or act like the members of a different group. Some people give because the act of giving makes them feel good; others are research-oriented and want to see impact. Some are looking for an emotional connection to a cause or issue, while others just want to make the world a better place. Some will engage digitally, while others will insist on communicating only through analog channels. Combining the right messaging with smart targeting is the first step to successful donor engagement and a more effective use of your organization’s resources than the old spray-and-pray approach.

Are we doing our best to drive growth?

Growing your donor base is not just about attracting new donors to your cause or issue; it’s also about getting existing donors more deeply involved in your cause. Think about what you are currently doing to cultivate relationships with your existing donors. Are you being transparent with them? Do they know what your organization is doing with their money? Have you shared with them examples of the impact their support is creating?

Do not underestimate the importance of sharing information with your donors and encouraging them to share that information with others. One way to do that is through a well-thought-out Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program

At Interplanetary, our experience has shown that charities that actively practice CRM and engage their supporters in an ongoing dialogue benefit from a deeper level of engagement, leading to both more frequent donations and a greater willingness on the part of donors to promote the organization to others. Recently, we developed a CRM program for a nonprofit client that delivered custom-tailored information to donors based on their profiles and interests and were gratified when the program not only generated new names for the organization’s database but significantly increased the average donation amount and boosted the organization’s overall campaign revenue.

The benefits of infusing your marketing and fundraising efforts with rigor cannot be overstated. Our experience with our nonprofit clients has shown that when a brand’s targeting and messaging strategies are clearly defined and aligned, when colleagues are on board with the plan, and when a good CRM program is put in place, donation revenue can increase by as much as 50 percent in a year. And that’s nothing to sneeze at.

As published in fastcompany.com written by David Zax

It was when Bruce Lee was working on the bent-penis project that he started to wonder about the direction of his career. It was 2011. Lee, an adman who happens to share a Kung Fu master’s name, had opted to go freelance in recent years, which had proven lucrative enough. But the projects were frustrating.

He was rounding 60 and had already had a big career. His fondest memories were perhaps of his time at Scali, McCabe, Sloves, where he’d spent three years in the ’80s as creative director; it was the place where he recalled being consistently rewarded based on craftsmanship and the quality of the work. He went on to a series of other executive creative director gigs at major agencies like Wunderman and OgilvyOne.

In the late 2000s, Lee decided to try his hand at freelancing. He’d always envied the high-priced freelancers he’d used to hire himself. He teamed up with an old colleague named Jill McClabb. But by the time they got the bent-penis assignment, the bloom was off the rose.

It wasn’t that the subject matter failed to interest. Quite the opposite: Lee had become quite invested in the project, which raised awareness around Peyronie’s disease (and “it’s not funny–it’s terrible,” says Lee). Rather, it was that as a freelancer for hire, he didn’t have any power. He didn’t have control. He did good, creative work, and the people who hired him picked it to death; the work never even ran.

“They’d pick at little things in the creative, and pretty soon there’s no more creative left,” recalls Lee.

After a particularly frustrating meeting, he walked back to the narrow room reserved for freelancers. (In earlier phases of his career, he’d had big, grand offices. Now he shared cramped quarters with McClabb and three other freelance teams.) That was when it hit him.

He looked at McClabb and said, “How would you feel if we started our own agency, and didn’t have to deal with this bullshit anymore?”

Soon enough, they started thinking about other people to call. They thought about Andy Semons.

By 2011, Semons was in his early 50s, and also at a frustrating moment in a long ad career.

Semons is a “third-generation ad brat,” he says (his father and grandmother were both in the business), “born to be in the business.” He started his career at agencies like Grey and McCann, then spent long stretches of time at DDB and Ogilvy (where he met Lee).

Those first years were great fun, but after that, he had a disappointing series of experiences. “Everywhere I went from Ogilvy on,” he recalls, “it was always one year after a major acquisition by a holding company.” The environments were stifling. He spent the late 2000s bouncing around a few different agencies, landing at G2. Then, in April 2011, G2 let him go.

So Semons went to see an advertising recruiter, well known in the business–“she’s kind of like a Mama Rose type from Gypsy,” he says. But as the meeting wore on, Mama Rose said something frustrating.

“‘This is the way it’ll go,’” he recalls her saying. “‘I’ll find you a $300,000-$350,000 a year job, but you’ll be in a meeting and you’ll say something someone doesn’t like. And they’ll be looking to cut costs later, someone will remember what you said, and you’re gonna be calling me again.’”

“I was pissed off,” Semons recalls of the meeting. “I was like, ‘Are you telling me, at this point in my career, when I’ve done some of the greatest work, and my skills are so good…that I’m kind of washed up?’” He fumed as he walked away from the meeting. Is she telling me old people have no place in this business? He thought. I just don’t believe that!

Meanwhile, recalls Lee, he kept hearing the same thing again at again at agencies. “You’re not a digital native,” people told him.

Semons chimes in: “That was secret code for saying, ‘You’re old.’” Both felt a new techno-rhetoric had come to serve as a fig leaf for ageism.

It took another year or so for the idea of forming their own shop to fully coalesce.

Semons, Lee, McClabb, and a fourth adman named Joe Dessi would regularly go out to eat at an Italian restaurant in the Flatiron called SD26. The gang reached out to former contacts, and soon they had a lead: One former client had become the senior marketing director at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The woman had been tasked with sourcing a “brand film,” a seemingly small job.

Semons went in to speak with the marketing director about this brand film. Well, asked Semons, what does your brand stand for? The marketing director couldn’t answer succinctly. Soon, she gave Semons and the others access to the entire C-suite of the organization, where they conducted in-depth interviews and learned precisely what the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society did.

“Before you knew it, we had put together a really solid pitch, with a creative manifesto and everything else,” recalls Semons. “This ‘give us a brand film’ assignment became an agency-of-record assignment.” They wound up redesigning the website, making print, TV, and radio campaigns. And without middle management picking apart their ideas, they worked fast, too.

“The work swept through the entire company,” says Lee. “Donations went up by 50%,” says Semons.

Their new agency had to have a name. They called it Interplanetary.

Interplanetary has grown over its four years of existence (a fifth partner, Chris Parker, works remotely from Idaho), but remains a small agency. It has had just six clients to date, and currently only four active ones. Lee and Semons say that after years at big agencies hunting big game, they prefer working with modestly sized clients. “When you work with clients” of a smaller size, says Semons, “you work with them as if you’re on their staff. You have access to the whole C-suite. It becomes a richer, more integrated experience.”

Interplanetary did “around $5 million” in revenue last year, says Semons. “None of us are making the big, huge salaries we were making at the big shops, but we’re keeping the lights on quite nicely,” he says. (They have around 25 people in their employ, mostly consultants on contract.) They aim to double in size, “but none of us ever want to get so big that we can’t be as involved in doing the work as we actually are. What we love to do is make ads. We love the business of advertising. I don’t think any of us want to get so big that we can’t do that anymore.”

The partners have at last put together a new phase to their career where they’re rewarded again for the quality of their work. And they don’t have to constantly be looking over their shoulders. Lee says in his executive creative director jobs from his past, he got so used to thinking, “Where’s the knife gonna come from today?” that he didn’t even notice that it was the first thought that filled his mind when he woke up.

Now that he’s a partner in his own shop, that worry has gone away. “I do not think about it anymore,” he says peacefully. “I think about work, or I think about what I think about.”