Video - Robert Craven - Stuck in the Middle

VIDEO: 9:07

In this video Robert Craven talks about being Digital Agencies being 'stuck in the middle' and what you can do to break through the barrier to reach the next level.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:09

I'd like to share with you the idea of stuck in the middle stuck in the middle with you, I think it's a really important concept for independent agencies to get because because it enables you to see why you're, you can't be one thing or the other, it also kind of guides you as to what you need to do in order to escape this stuck in the middle piece. So without further ado, let me just share the screen with you.

Robert Craven  00:34

So you can see what I'm talking about three very simple concept that the concept just gets you really understanding the consequences of where you are. So at its simplest, there is the, what I call the the top tier, the top tier of the big agencies to big invested, they've got normally got investment from Dentsu or a censure or one of the big players. And they are able to compete essentially on on who they are and their knowledge, no, You never get sacked for buying IBM as a kind of thought bubble. And so what they do is they just go into pitches, they're also able to spend, you know, 4060 80,000 pounds on a pitch if they want to, or they're even able to offer PPC management or SEO for free, as part of a bigger bundle. 

Robert Craven  01:27

So that top tier you simply can't compete with because they're competing on knowledge, and they're competing on experience. And if you don't go to the bottom of the triangle, you've got the bottom to the what should we call them the almost like the pond life, you know who they are, they are working from attics are charging five $10 an hour. And their mantra is we do it, we do it fast, we do it cheap, we'll do anything you want. And they're not great, and they're not reliable. And you don't know if they'll do the work. And sometimes they do. And sometimes they don't. But they compete almost exclusively on price being so incredibly cheap that it's really difficult for you to be able to compete with them. And then there's EU, which is what I would just got described as stuck in the middle, you're in the squeeze zone, you are too big to be small. Yeah, you you've got overhead, you've got offices, you've got staff, you've got project managers, and you're too small to be big, you're not in 17 countries, you don't have deep pockets, you don't have a big legal department. And when you're stuck in the middle. The tendency is to compete on price because you just feel that you're being nibbled away out from underneath by the by the bottom tier. And there's no way that you can compete with the top tier because they just swing along and they take all the big business because their experience and so on and so forth. Now my point is this, you absolutely should not compete on price do not compete on price, unless you absolutely have to, and you need to come and talk to me about why you should. And the reason you should not compete on price is if you compete exclusively on price, it's a game to the bottom, it's a race to the bottom and you will never win it the person will win that race will either be the person with the deepest pockets, or the person in this case who has zero overheads and is more than happy to be charging five or $10 an hour. 

Robert Craven  03:30

So if you don't compete with the bottom tier, don't lower yourself to compete to be competing on price and you need somehow to be competing with a top tier. Well. How can you compete with the top tier? I hear you asking? How can you compete with a top tier when they've got offices in London, New York and Milan when they've got so many departments, they got so much experience. I've got so many case studies. I've got so many track records. Well, I think you can by using your story. I think your story is probably the only thing you can use, you know to actually go back to we are small we are nimble. The reason we started doing this is because we're reason we're doing it now is because this is a sort of work we do. These are the sorts of results we get. You're not paying for huge overhead, you're not paying for Mercedes cars, you're not paying for other offices, you're not paying to the shareholders. All the money comes to us but the story is about our obsessive belief enthusiasm about this particular knowledge piece. And because we're smaller and nimbler and brighter and faster and closer, we can deliver awesome value for money. You need to compete on that story. Now that story doesn't win every time because because of that, that there's a reason why people always say no one got sacked for buying IBM. People will there will always be people who will always go for the safe bet. But when you're stuck in the middle, you cannot compete on price. You can't compete with a pawn life and scum underneath you you need to go up in up the food chain. 

Robert Craven  05:03

Other thing I just like to mention is, you know, do you really want to compete with the top tier, there's always this belief that we want to be in bigger and better places. But I'm not convinced that, that that is the place that you can really be. So as an example, it's relatively easy, relatively easy to compete with your peers. If you're competing. If you're a 25 person agency, and you're competing with other 25 person agency, for the sort of work that 25 person agencies do, it's relatively easy to compete, it's relatively easy to know what your point of differences, it's relatively easy to know what it is that the client is really after. And you can probably put together a pretty compelling package to explain why they should buy from you and you can do the odds, or you can look back at the history and see how often you win. However, competing with the big boys competing with the big sharks is a very, very different game. And although I would argue you can compete almost by going under the under the radar and competing with them, I'd argue that's a pretty good way of going about it. The rules of the game are different, it is a long game, there are sweeteners often involved, I don't mean illegal sweeteners, I just mean the fact that you a larger agency will invite people to, to, to lunches, and I'll invite them to be participants in surveys, and they may video them and they may have more intelligence elsewhere. So there's your you're not competing on an even playing field. And more importantly, those bigger pitches are, are, in every sense bigger and longer. And almost certainly involve the purchasing officer almost certainly involved VFD. 

Robert Craven  06:52

And the game is very, very different. You know. So if I look back at some of the larger clients that I've won, they were two or three years in the making, to literally two or three years in the making, if you're willing to play that game and recognise the risk reward is that you get to the end of it and the work may still go to someone else. That's fine if you recognise that that's okay. But there's another piece to the larger players with the larger players are represented disproportionate piece of your business. There's a tendency for them to say jump in, you're going to say how high and so everything starts, everything starts changing a bit when you start going in. And maybe that wasn't why you went into business in the first place. Anyhow, we're becoming pretty philosophical about whether you should be going for big clients or not. Or I'm saying I just like to put the little question mark in your mind is that, although the big clients are sexy, they may not be as sexy, when you actually pull them in. Often, it's a bit like fishing and you pull a big fish onto the deck of the boat. And when it actually starts flapping around, it's not as much fun to work with, as you saw. So let me just go back to basics. You know, at its simplest, there are three levels that you can be working with when you're working with a client. Rather, one that you're positioning yourself as the bottom tier, cheap, cheerful, do anything as fast or quick as you want. There's top tier which is competing, essentially on knowledge experience. Never no one ever got sacked for buying from IBM. And then there's this mid tier where you are where you do loads of stuff. And if you're not careful, you end up competing on price.

Robert Craven  08:38

My advice is you do not compete on pricing with giant range, do not compete on price and with graduates as squeezed though, the one thing you must not do is compete on price. So you must compete on the story on the value add, compete on how you do differently compete on things that really matter to the client, but not on price. Thanks very much.