Is your ad agency agile?

Marketing officers and communication agencies are trying to find the winning formula in the conversation era. How to keep up with the speed and volume needed to be "always on" with communication that can actually build the brand rather than blur its main focus? I think a major part of the problems we face today could be solved by learning from an approach most startups use, agile development.

For those who are not into the tech world, agile development means that the project goes forward in quick "sprints" rather than a linear process. You don't need to know exactly where you will end up to get started. In every sprint, the product is put on the market and a real feedback is given by the end users. After analyzing the feedback, changes can be applied in the next sprint. This way, your product performance can be monitored as you go, and even the whole idea can be dropped before spending too much, making it a less risky venture to come up with something new.

In the good old days, one tv ad lasted for a year. Nowadays one video will not keep your target group engaged for even a month. Brands must be active 24/7, and a boring picture or a half-funny line on social media won't help. There are two ways of handling the problem: you either spend an incredible amount of money and use exactly the same process for every piece of communication every day that you did a few years ago for that certain tv spot. The other way is agile development. 

Imagine a campaign that starts with a Minimum Viable Product, let's say a social post with a still image and a short line. You can see people's reaction to your basic message, and also try several versions at the same time like A/B testing. Then you pick the message that produced the best results and shoot a small video based on the brief, post two versions of the film, and see the results. Based on the reactions, you go on and develop an application, a print ad, a search campaign, then shoot a super-expensive film with a wealth of knowledge collected from real people in real media consumption situations rather than a focus group sitting around a table trying to sound smart.

Of course I am oversimplifying the process to keep this short. But I am convinced the agile approach is worth a try: it would not only make clients more comfortable, but may also enable agencies to experiment with more creative ideas, and finally, if feedback is good enough, you can go for a campaign that traditional research techniques may have killed in a second.