local media insider

Advice on the agency business from an agency

30 year agency veteran Nanci Williams of Orloff Williams weighs in on how to start an inhouse digital ad agency

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This week we posted a report, "Ten steps to starting an inhouse ad agency."  We asked Nanci Williams, partner in Orloff-Williams, a local ad agency in San Jose, California who has spent thirty years in the agency business to weigh in. Here's her take how agencies have changed and advice for local media thinking about starting an in-house agency.

From an agency perspective, what are the biggest changes that you see agencies going through right now?
Williams: Clients are more confused than ever. Traditional media is going away and online media is changing every day. Agencies have had to become more like consultants than just service providers. They are providing strategies rather than media buying, putting online and traditional media together and showing clients how to measure it. There is more creative and more high-level thinking and less executing.

Have you seen  fall-out for agencies who didn't change fast enough?
Williams: Yes. The traditional agency and heavy media-buying agencies are gone or sized-down considerably. Social media agencies and digital agencies have sprouted up and are larger than the traditional agencies now. Let's put it this way. We were losing business to agencies I'd never heard of, that were formed that year.

What new positions did you find you needed to add?

Williams: Absolutely social media expertise. People with extensive knowledge of the social networks, and successes they can point to and say, for example, "I did this Facebook campaign and it went viral." Most of the people who have hung shingles as social media experts are very young, early adaptors who figured it out long before Madison Avenue did. Right now at Orloff-Williams we have three interns that do nothing but social media, posting things. They are all high school interns, not even college interns.

What else are your clients asking for?
Williams: They want mini-website for particular promotions.

How do you do  you build sites without a programmer on staff?

Williams:  We have a several freelancers  who can do it. The last two campaigns that we worked on, the client had a web master on staff, so we provided the strategy and they built it. We never been able to support a full time programmer.

How do you find good web developers?
Williams: They come to us. If we have a need, we already have a stable of freelancers. You know who is good. There is a lot of trial and error involved. You learn over time what the strengths and weaknesses of specific contractors. Most of the good ones want to freelance. .

Have you seen changes in the types of accounts using the agency?
Williams: Last year it was a lot of non-profits. They were the last ones to jump on the social media bandwagon.

What are some important considerations media should think about when starting an agency?

Williams: Will your sales staff accept the idea, because they have to work together. You have to think in terms selling a high-level strategy, rather than selling a media product. The agency really does have to have a separate name and identity so clients get the idea that they are having outside people look at their brand - not the same old sales people. That's the mistake newspapers have made in the past. 

What other new positions would you hire?
Williams: Probably the most important hire is a creative director who knows how to direct and manage people in the creative services field; who thinks a little bigger and more strategically than a graphic designer. 

Nanci Williams is a co-owner of Orloff-Williams, but has stepped down as managing partner to pursue consulting for local media companies. She can be reached at nwilliams@orloffwilliams.com or 408.836.1796.