We’re often asked by interview candidates what an “average” day is like in the STEAK offices. Amongst the regular posts we make about digital industry topics, we’re posting a series of “day in the life” pieces to give candidates a flavour of what it’s like to work at STEAK, under the title “STEAK Digital Days”.

Here’s the latest by STEAK Co-Founder and COO, Duncan Parry.

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By Duncan Parry

 Building an agency from scratch means reviewing piles of CVs and spending a lot of hours interviewing – especially in an industry where competition for staff is fierce at all levels. I’ve been in a few really good interviews where I’ve wanted to hire the person there and then, many mediocre ones – and a few so terrible I’d rather forget. Here are my tips (and some of my frustrations laid bare).

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 By Kate Bath

I will freely admit that being part of the display team at an agency is no easy feat. First and foremost is the client, which is a given, and generally speaking we are kept pretty busy driving their digital business forward. So unfortunately one of the last things in our day (not always the case but often is) are media owners; and especially unknown media owners.

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Yesterday, I presented at a Video Plus event organised and hosted by the IAB Video Council, who were kind enough to ask me to talk about how we’ve used online video to benefit our clients. I spoke about the success we’ve had with swiftcover.com, a little bit about our strategy and we’re building on what we’ve done so far to grow our online video activity in the future.

There were also great contributions from other speakers from a good cross section of the industry, and the turnout was fantastic, so thanks go out to everyone involved.

You can download a copy of the new IAB Video Handbook, which contains a case study from us, here. And if you want any information about our experience of online video, do get in touch.

We are delighted to have been appointed by online print business MOO.COM to handle its international digital marketing activity.  The account, which was won in a three-way agency pitch, will focus on paid search and digital display advertising, and we will be responsible for driving sales and acquiring new customers across UK, USA, Australia and other English speaking territories.  We will utilise teams in our London, New York and Melbourne offices to manage the MOO account.

Our task is to help raise awareness of the MOO brand and its range of innovative personalised print products and accessories through targeted display campaigns and to drive a high volume of quality traffic to MOO through paid search.

Paul Lewis, Head of Marketing at MOO comments, “We’re excited to be working with Steak; we feel that their energy and passion, as well as their understanding of driving efficient results, is a great fit with MOO as we look to accelerate global growth”.

Phil Burgess, Client Service Director at Steak adds, “MOO is one of those brands that you can’t help falling in love with a little bit, because it mixes traditional skills such as print and makes it personal and accessible to everyone via the web. We’re looking forward to working with them across multiple territories and utilising the Steak network to deliver sales”.

MOO, founded in 2004, combines the values of professional design with the accessibility and reach of the Internet.  With the patent-pending ‘Printfinity’ technology, MOO helps its customers to showcase their business or brand, their products or personality, by printing a different image on every card in a pack.  MOO has raised over US $5M in venture capital from the Accelerator Group, Index Ventures and Atlas Venture – the investors behind Skype, Betfair, Lovefilm, Last.fm and MySQL.  MOO’s customer base extends to 180 countries, and has a 75% NetPromoter rating.

Press Coverage:

Campaign

Brand Republic

Media Week

Marketing Magazine

Swiftcover.com, the pioneer in online insurance, launches a fun campaign to celebrate the end of the summer.  Using social media and supporting display campaign, swiftcover.com calls on users to upload their favourite photos to its Facebook app from 27 September-10 October.  The photos aren’t the usual shots of people partying: the call is for the saddest faces to “mourn the passing of the British summer”.  Users will also be able to download a playlist of the best of the summer festival music.

The gallery of sad faces will feature on the swiftcover.com Facebook page, updated in real-time, and can be linked to users’ own Facebook pages.  The winner of the best “mourning” face will be announced w/c 11 October, judged by swiftcover.com and will win a Red Letter DayTM experience day voucher worth £300; further prizes include 20 Spotify premium accounts worth £2,400.

The interactive campaign including display advertising, social media activity and advertising in casual games; was devised and conceived by swiftcover.com’s digital agency Steak.  Steak also designed and developed the “Summer Mourning” Facebook application. 

Visitors to the swiftcover.com Facebook page can download a best of the summer festivals top 25 tracks, voted by music fans, from a playlist devised by swiftcover.com, Absolute Radio and Steak.  The list is available for free download via Spotify from 27th September.

Tina Shortle, Marketing Director of Swiftcover says, “We’re excited that social media remains at the heart of this campaign. Last spring, our ‘favourite tracks of the summer’ playlist successfully encouraged sharing between Facebook users, and with the success of this year’s summer festivals; the Summer Mourning campaign and its best of festivals playlist is a fun way of engaging with our audience around the popular subject of the end of the British summer through posting up sad faces. We’ve been delighted to partner with Absolute Radio and Spotify to create Britain’s favourite festival music playlist and it’s been great to see Facebook users take part to vote for their favourite tracks.”
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John Barton, Head of Planning and Social Media at Steak says ” Music and summer festivals are effective passion points for the swiftcover.com demographic and form the basis of our content strategy and Spotify playlist voting campaign. Swiftcover.com is utilising social channels to interact with their audience in an accessible way. People love to share their photographs and then ‘upload a photo to enter’ format is effective for community building. However this format is nothing new. We wanted to close the summer strategy in a different, fun and memorable way by poking fun at the winter blues after an amazing summer of music festivals with swiftcover.com and Absolute radio.”

Kate Hussey, Head of Display at Steak says “We are once again excited about extending the field of our current social activity to further develop a relationship between consumer and client. We believe that integration between all digital and other advertising channels is crucial to gain stand out, but essentially, it’s finding a connection with your consumers that will gain, the all important, traction. We are delighted to partner with a client who is constantly pushing the boundaries of building consumer relationships through digital”.

UK web campaign in partnership with Steak highlights 10-minute boarding experience with NetJets Europe

June 18, London, UK – Europe’s leading business aviation company, NetJets Europe, today launches a new digital marketing campaign in partnership with Steak. The campaign, ‘The 10-minute Take-off’ highlights the hassle-free nature of flying with NetJets Europe, getting time-poor businesspeople from their car into the air within 10 minutes of arriving at an airport.

The campaign will see a series of display advertisements drive visitors to a dedicated microsite, including site ‘take-overs’ with the FT.com and the Wall Street Journal.

Following a year of travel disruption and commercial airline woes, NetJets Europe has enjoyed increasing interest in its services from first and business class fliers looking to maximize their productivity and escape travel headaches.

“Our research has found that our clients and prospects want nothing more than an easy and completely hassle-free experience of aviation, something that only NetJets has the scale to deliver consistently,” comments Claire Cronin, Director of Marketing at NetJets Europe. “Although we’re the world leader in private aviation, we’re still something of a ‘well-kept secret,’ and with this campaign we’re hoping to educate a wider audience about the benefits of using NetJets.”

When users click on a display ad, they will be taken to a search-optimized microsite at http://www.netjetsuk.com. The centrepiece of the site is the “10-minute take-off” – a dramatisation of the easy, hassle-free boarding experience that passengers will enjoy with NetJets. This message is contrasted with the experience of flying commercially: transfers, hassles, queues, crowds and delays.

Steak was appointed following a competitive pitch to design and produce the micro-site and online advertising assets, support the media planning and buying strategy, and handle search engine optimisation for this latest campaign.

Oliver Bishop, CEO of Steak, says, “NetJets Europe is an exciting brand, with a well defined, demanding target audience. The ‘10-minute’ campaign seeks to reach this audience in an innovative and relevant way, and deliver compelling messages about why both individuals and corporations should consider NetJets.”

This campaign was created for the UK market as a pilot. If successful, NetJets Europe will look to develop new campaigns and online materials in its other target territories in Q3 and Q4.

List voted by music lovers through social media app

The campaign from swiftcover.com, the pioneer in online insurance, offered music lovers the chance to create this “Summer’s Hottest Playlist” in collaboration with Absolute Radio.  Building on their ‘Get a Life’ campaign, swiftcover.com extended the campaign theme to encourage users to ‘get a life’ this summer by voting for the summer’s hottest tracks. The campaign devised by Steak, used Facebook as the main hub, hosting an easy-to-use voting application.

A master playlist of 75 tracks was selected by popular Absolute Radio DJs: Christian O’Connell, Geoff Lloyd and Ben Jones.  Spotify and Absolute Radio listeners were prompted by the DJs to visit the Swiftcover Facebook page and voted daily for two weeks via the “sucks” or “rocks” buttons beside the track. This saw the music tracks physically rising and falling, depending on popularity, on the Facebook “chart”.

The final playlist hosted is hosted by Spotify on 22 June through the summer; with Facebook fans, Absolute Radio and Spotify listeners being notified that the winning list can be downloaded and played all summer long.

The idea was conceived by Steak, who is handling the social media and online display campaign.  Audio and display ads including billboards and takeover pages, will appear on Spotify, Absolute Radio and Facebook linking through to swiftcover.com’s Facebook page.  The Facebook app songs then link back to Spotify, which enables visitors to the site to listen to the tracks they’re voting for; and there is an opportunity to win a Spotify premium account for a year.
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Tina Shortle, Marketing Director says, “This is a perfect campaign for the summer – sitting in the park in the sunshine listening to music that you’ve voted for – it epitomises our ‘Get a Life’ campaign.  We’re excited that social media was at the heart of this campaign. Absolute Radio, Facebook and Spotify are the perfect partners for music lovers to create this ‘Summer’s Hottest Playlist’”.

John Barton, Head of Planning and Social Media at Steak says “We wanted to demonstrate how we can effectively integrate social media into our existing through the line digital strategy. This campaign is ultimately about building and fostering relationships between swiftcover.com and their audience in social channels that they’re comfortable with by adding value rather than selling. Music and summer festivals are effective passion point or the swiftcover.com
demographic and form the basis of our content strategy. We are excited and fortunate to work with brands like swiftcover.com who continue to lead the way in digital marketing within the insurance vertical sector”.

Kate Hussey, Head of Display at Steak says “We are excited about enhancing the current Absolute Radio partnership for swiftcover.com along with introducing another key strategic partner, Spotify, as a main driver of our audience. We believe that this campaign has the ability to kick off a summer full of ‘Getting a Life’”.

From Gareth Owen, Head of SEO…

“Calls to action in TV ads will be hugely important for SEO – the iPad will be sat on someone’s lap while they watch TV and it will be SO easy to get them to do a search for ‘LCD TVs’ and click on the Dixons result. Even if it is in P5 you can still ask people to do it – the clickthroughs from that alone are a massive ranking factor.

Beyond SEO, I think this does cement a whole new way of advertising to people on TV – ‘Download our app now’, ‘play our quiz game now for 10% off’. 

What the iPad really introduces, more than anything else is the world of micropayments. If someone asks me to put in my card details to pay 60p so I can view some content I won’t bother. If it asks me to do it through my iTunes via a one-click ordering system, I might. The success of this can be demonstrated by Amazon, with an enormous conversion rate and sales via the mobile version of their site that would put anyone to shame.”

From Betina Bell, Account Manager…

“As its mobile predecessor experienced, the announcement of the iPad has come under intense scrutiny for all its perceived failings as a kind of computer, kind of mobile. However, what these non-believers fail to comprehend is that it isn’t masquerading at all. In fact, it is plugging a gap and fulfilling a demand where there previously was none – an achievement in itself. Providing wider accessibility with its simple aesthetic and promising covetability from those around you, including, albeit through gritted teeth, those disapproving non-believers.

For Display, it remains to be seen whether it will enjoy the same success and cult status as its smaller kin. We’ll be eager to segment and target to understand the demographic of its users and keen to see how advertisers react to its lack of Flash support. Our challenge as marketers is how to engage users, if this is to be a coffee table product. Given that the first model doesn’t allow a machine to machine connection, the iPad is very much challenged by the all-consuming TV.”

Back in August last year, Rupert Murdoch announced that he would begin looking to roll out changes that would see users having to pay to read content on News International websites. Well, the time has come when this becomes a reality, with Times Online becoming subscription only from June, following a month of free access to the new site starting early May. Promising a redesigned and far improved site, the new focus for The Times is to build a closer relationship with its most dedicated and loyal readers, which it hopes to do via Q&A sessions with its journalists and editors, and a bunch of new interactive and visual features. The cost for this? £2 a week (or free for current paper subscribers).

It goes without saying that this is a paradigm shift in the way publishers approach monetising their content. The internet was built, and exists on, the ad-funded model meaning The Times are flying in the face of 17 years of convention.

Therefore, this begs the obvious question, will it work?

The Times are certainly not the first newspaper to introduce a paid subscription model. The Wall Street Journal’s online edition has, for two years now, required a subscription for reading a large amount of the content on the site. The FT.com has also successfully operated a scheme where a monthly fee is required in order to view more than 10 articles a month for some time. A key point here though is the differentiation of the publishers. Both the FT and WSJ offer specialised content, are extremely renowned for their quality and offer information that other publications do not (specifically market data in these cases). However, most would probably agree that content on Times Online is much more generic, with a wider public appeal. It is this which makes the move such a debateable one; will people be willing to pay when they can get similar news content from a free competitor site (such as the Telegraph) and how loyal are consumers to these brands?

Aside from this though, there is the question of how this will affect advertisers.

 Advertising will still make up a vast portion of the revenue of the site, and it is the closer connections with its readers that The Times is hoping to leverage in the future. Users of the site will obviously drop dramatically when the paywall is increased (although figures have not been released, the prediction is anything above 50%) so there will be a significant hike in rates. News International argue that more engaged users on the site, along with fewer advertisers, fewer ad formats and more targeting based on subscription data will mean better value overall. But does it? And is it a good road to go down?

This is obviously a very bold play from the Times, being first mover in their area by a long way. My thoughts are that this is a good thing, mostly because I just want to see if the model works! In terms of value though, I think absolutely it increases. Better content, more engagement and a greater understanding of a smaller audience is never a bad thing, and there is value in this. However, there is a serious problem here; this is applying what are traditionally offline, specifically print, branding theories to online, and I worry that many online clients are not ready or experienced with this. In my opinion, the “trackability” of online is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. There is so much of a focus on the quantitative information that qualitative factors often get pushed to the sideline, and when inflated CPMs exist on a plan there will surely be scepticism. It’s especially interesting for many digitally focused agencies and advertisers who may not have a great deal of experience and expertise with things like intangible value and brand association, just CTRs and eCPMs.

However successful Times Online’s new approach is will surely dictate how quickly other newspapers follow, and I purposefully don’t say “if” because I can only see it being a matter of time before more news sites adopt a similar model. Quality content understandably costs money, and publishers have struggled to monetise content for years. However, it could be that we don’t see these changes until a standardised micro-payment system is introduced to the web (whether that be via your mobile phone bill, or a common login like Facebook Connect).

In the meantime, The Times will be under heavy scrutiny and only time will tell whether advertisers shun or embrace this new approach. There is one key thing to remember here though: we are marketers first, digital marketers second, and good opportunities should not be dismissed because of lack of familiarity.

Jonathan Harris, Account Manager