As part of his blog post, Stating the obvious, Olivier Blanchard asked quite a few questions that suggest that it is essential that brands, companies, and so forth, not outsource their social media strategy to agencies. One of his most pedantic is this one:
“Can you outsource your presence at Thanksgiving dinner to an agency?”
I think that is complete crap because it is not an either/or game. Outsourcing to an agency is like hiring a wedding planner so that you can actually enjoy your own wedding and guests. The bride and her family choose the planner and the planner works with the family until everything is right, but when it comes to the ceremony and the reception and all the details, a majority of the staffing and operations are taken care of by other people — especially if you’re not an event planner.
This is doubly true if the wedding is going to be huge or formal. Intimate weddings can be self-planned and self-staffed but if you’re going to scale to a Royal Wedding or a Society Wedding, then you’re going to need a lot of help — especially if you want to be freed to have the time to meet all your guests and enjoy the experience yourself.
And all that help, that experience, the logistics, and the staffing and service comes from an agency that is built to offer such services, sort of like my Abraham Harrison. Here’s the comment I posted onto Olivier’s blog:
“Can you outsource your presence at Thanksgiving dinner to an agency?”
No, but you can outsource everything else.
You can outsource all the cooking, you can outsource all the cooks and cleaners. You can have the turkey cooked and all the food prepared. You can outsource the drinks table, if the thanksgiving is a large affair.
When it comes to scaling, can you do a thanksgiving dinner on your own if you plan to serve 100? 1000? If you plan to serve the homeless on Thanksgiving day? These question and answer sets are so pedantic they make me want to cry, Olivier, mate.
When it comes to a simple thanksgiving dinner, you’re correct, but in the real world, do companies do all the work themselves when they host a holiday party? Even for their own employees?
No!
They either go to a restaurant where all of the ancillary services are supported by the staff, cooks, waiters, hosts, etc; or, they hire a party planner and make sure, like a wedding, all of the details are “taken care of.”
Agencies — like mine, anyway — serve as the cast and crew to enable to host — you, the brand — to not have to spend all of his time in the kitchen and filling drinks but, rather, where you should be: at the head table raising glasses in toast or mingling around making sure your guests are having a good time.
What people forget is that we agencies should not replace brands but should facilitate and enable brands. In other words, we’re wedding planners and you’re the bride, groom, and their parents.
The more intimate the wedding, the more the family can pitch in; however, I daresay that the upcoming Royal wedding party will only make the most basic of decisions for the wedding ceremony as there will be hundreds of guests and instead of being sandbagged they wedding party needs to spend some time sharing themselves with the constant stream of guests and well-wishers.
Does that make sense? Now I am going to cross post this to my blog! Love the convo, mate, and we need to meet one of these days, for sure!
Via Marketing Conversation and The BrandBuilder Blog
At #7 on the list, PR Executives even come before the Corporate Executive on the stress test. This doesn’t mean that every Public Relations Executive is going to have an extremely stressful job; it just means the majority of them do. Just the same, the police officer who sits behind a desk for eight hours a day isn’t going to be as stressed out as the one who patrols the streets.