A year in the life of Advance

Here’s CEO Jens Krog with a quick review of the year just gone.

2011 was a tough year for the economy and a tougher one for the industry but I’m proud to say that we’ve come out the other side a wiser and even a bigger agency. As I write, most forecasts indicate another challenging year ahead and we’re focused on making sure we continue to evolve our offering.

Clients need agency partners to work faster, smarter and cheaper. These pressures are not new but have been accelerating in recent years to the point that the industry is barely recognisable from just ten years ago.

The digital transformation is the most obvious change but while we’re retooling to ensure we up our online skills, we’re just as interested in the way the contract between advertisers and consumers is being transformed. We’ve always said the best communication is a great product or service and this simple saying is truer today than it’s ever been.

We’re intrigued to see how the relationship between brands and people continues to evolve in the months and years ahead. We hope and believe the transparency of the Internet will continue to push companies towards more responsible practices and we think more of our time will be spent helping clients stay on top of societal changes, as well as those affecting the way brands communicate.

Anyway, here’s a quick look back at some of our 2011 highlights as an agency, and here’s to a great 2012.

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Our LEGO team had another busy year with the launch of LEGO Friends on December 26 the culmination of several years of intense work. We’re proud of our contribution to what was one of the company’s most important launches for some years.

The LEGO Universe experience was bittersweet. We invested a great deal of energy in this project and we can be proud of what we achieved. We were deeply saddened when LEGO decided to close the game but our time on the project made us smarter and strengthened our gaming credentials.

One of our most high-profile projects was our Caroline Wozniacki campaign for COMPEED. The partnership has helped the brand re-establish its athletic heritage and given it an injection of star quality.

Our campaign for Øresundsbroen was hugely effective with over 35,000 motorists signing up for the half-price bridge pass in the first few weeks alone.

Elsewhere, we’re continuing to do interesting work with Coloplast. The company is on a mission to be more customer-focused in its communication and this has led to some powerfully compelling work with the voice of the user increasingly central.

Customer insights are also at the core of our thinking behind the creation of the Bloom retail brand for Widex. This was an extremely challenging project that involved the creation of a brand for over 500 retail shops around the world in a very tight timescale. Hearing loss is daunting and complicated – our goal was to create a brand that made it seem less so. We’re still on the journey but we can be proud of what we’ve achieved so far.

I was also proud of the work we did in helping P2 communicate its switch to digital. We made a great little short film with a limited budget and in rapid time.

We also had a solid year in terms of new-biz, being awarded the business for two global product launches from Nycomed (now a Takeda company) and winning CoRo Foods in a pitch. Perhaps more significantly we didn’t lose any business, a plus in a year when many agencies lost clients or closed altogether.

On a personal note, my highlight of the year was our agency masterclass at Hyper Island. The three days we spent there gave us a massive energy boost and brought us closer together. We came back full of hope for the future and full of ideas about how to work smarter and more creatively. It was a great way to end the year.

2011 by our CEO

I’ve asked a bunch of people around the agency to let me know their thoughts about the year we’ve just entered. The first to get back to me was our CEO, Jens Krog.

While betting big on mobile, Jens says it’s the trend towards authenticity that will come to define the year:

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2011 will be the year where we will see mobile marketing gain an increased share of the marketing budget. Recovering from the financial crisis, marketers are again looking for new solutions, as opposed to just well-proven ones. The Ikea example below from last year is a good example of how mobile can be usd to create useful, engaging customer experiences that drive sales and increase brand loyalty.

Brands and their agencies will have to take an increasingly editorial perspective when it comes to communication that really connects with consumers. This has big implications for resources as brands begin to commit to a two-way relationship with their customers. The mix of journalism and dialogue marketing will be valuable competences in 2011.

At Advance, we believe strongly in connecting the (marketing) promise to the market with what the brand and organization is really delivering to the market. In 2011 there will be even more focus on authenticity as social media continues to make almost everything more transparent. Brands shouldn’t shy away from this because at the end of the day authenticity produces real ROI, and not just a high score in terms of ad liking.

As always, there’s one truth that marketers need to remember, whatever the year:

You don’t build a strong brand with what you say, but with what you do.