Where there's mystery there's margin: Specialisation

Recently the News departed from its usual plethora of massacres and mass redundancies to report a feel-good story featuring Altitude, an Air NZ aircraft interiors business that had just secured a multimillion-dollar deal designing customised furniture for new Boeing 747-8 aircraft.

It is a great example of where Air New Zealand has flown above its core offer – putting bums on seats – to create a profitable specialist service, designing the seats that bums are sitting on.

They are not alone. In 2009, many businesses have been forced to think in innovative ways in order to keep their doors open. Gone are the days when taking a formulaic approach, using the traditional marketing mix to push product, necessarily delivers a respectable ROI.

Similarly, the recession is making communication companies re-evaluate their processes, resources and offer.Whereas once they might have overlooked opportunities, as marketing budgets rapidly shrink, they are now looking to retain clients, and increase loyalty, by widening their service offering.

So if marketers and agencies are in thesame proverbial boat, albeit with different oars, how can they learn to ‘row’ the boat together to reach the same destination: making a profit? Working more collaboratively would be an obvious start.

In fact, some agencies have already rolled out the ‘think tanks’ and planned strategic away-days with their clients to address such blue-sky questions as ‘How can we work more innovatively?’, ‘How can we sell as many products and services as last year, if not more, with a reduced budget?’ ‘What pioneering methods can we instil to retain market share and capture top-of-mind-awareness in this aggressive marketplace?’

As a consequence, there has been a rather interesting side product of this thinking; the growth in demand for creatives with specialist skills.

The reason for this is quite simple; just as television and print revenue is dropping, so too are jobs for hard-core brand creatives; conversely the rise in innovative media has led to a scramble for creatives with specialist skills.

Three main specialist categories

Niche specialists: These are new and emerging niche skills such as a search engine optimisation writer, guerilla marketer, retail graphics in-store designer. Using these specialists is a must for those unique projects that require a certain zealous panache.

General specialists: This is a discipline specialist – a top dog within a certain medium, such as a top brand identity designer. The rise in this area is due to two reasons. First, as agencies, PR, digital and design cross over, they are seeking specialists in areas other than their core strength to open up more revenue opportunities. Second, as marketers seek to innovate, they look beyond young talent to experienced ‘seen it all’ creatives who live and breathe their discipline. Often it’s this twist that can really crack that tough brief or add value in a brainstorm session.

Industry specialists: These are creatives with 10-plus years specific expertise in a certain sector, such as pharmaceutical or automotive. Their proficiency means they grasp briefs quickly, translate them into workable concepts easily, and add professional value along the way. It’s a case of ‘in/out and job done’ – ultimately saving money without compromising quality. As marketers enter new growth categories, for example FMCG entering nutraceutical, marketers are looking to their partners to assist them with greater, in-depth, strategic and creative knowledge.

In fact, based on feedback from theindustry, we predict the growth in niche specialist services will be a keytrend in 2009.

But it’s more pervasive than this. There isan increasing demand for specialist services such as: “A retail designer whocan do 3D in store window” and “A TVC copywriter who can do a 10-minute comedypiece for digital”. This is just the beginning. Specialist designers withknowledge of the fashion industry, internal communications creatives, the listgoes on.

Some examples of specialist roles on the rise include:

Retail in-store graphic specialists 

As more and more retailers acceptthat there is a place for retail store ambience, the first trend, for retailenvironmental designers, has already evolved into another demand – requests formore creative in-store window graphics and full store fit-outs. We’re nottalking posters here but high-impact, stylish 3D displays designed specificallyfor windows that can roll-out nationwide.

Digital strategists 

Though many communications companies are gearing up with digital CDs and producers, there are a few areas that continue to slip through the cracks. The first is digital strategists. Because digital has grown organically, there’s a distinct difference between the offer from standalone web companies, agency digital departments and designers doing digital. The opportunity to differentiate lies in digital strategy. This means using heavyweight creative CD types who can look at the whole digital landscape and develop a big picture strategy giving integration and purpose.

Digital/SEO writers 

In the early years of web copywriting, journalists took on these roles. But as clients seek to permeate consumers by talking in their language…they need writers who can subtly sell with search engine optimisation skills: make copy seem effortless while fitting four key words into the first sentence. Moreover, we are seeing a need for coordinated teams of four to five writers on large-scale projects such as tackling whole websites.

Economical ways of creating online content is also still a biggie. Forget about big TVC budgets; what’s in demand are online creative teams who can create 10 minute scripts, then produce them.

Social networkers 

While the early adopters here are mostly products aimed at youth markets – alcohol, telcos etc – this is a well-established area overseas and a recent visit to the States showed that press was dying as fast as Twitter was booming. Interestingly, we are seeing more crossover from PR companies and adagencies in this area, with both looking to find new and innovative ways to create deeper customer engagement.

International specialists 

As the dollar drops, the rise in demand for creatives with international experience by marketers and their suppliers is rising. (For example marketers cracking the US market, where mass media just isn’t an option and the distribution channels are complicated to say the least.) By continuing to work with their local agencies and specialist, marketers avoid the highcosts of using overseas agencies and yet still achieve their targets. So creatives with international experience and local knowledge in the European and US markets, as well as Dubai – or more latterly Abu Dhabi and the Saudis – is on the up and up.

Industry specialists 

Jack of all trades – master of none. This is certainly a reality formost communication companies in NZ because of the size of the market. However, tapping into contract industry experts can save money and add more value to the overall brief. For instance, many of the good fashion specialists sit closer to the street, working on fashion labels, record labels and fashion magazines.They live in the fashion world and happen to make money in advertising, rather than the reverse.

Interestingly, there seems to be a resurgence in the need for healthcare writers and art directors – maybe it’s part of the whole 'baby-boomers becoming bedridden baldies with big bucks'trend. And despite the car crisis, briefs are still out for good automotive and finance specialists as well.

Specialist writers 

The rise in demand for content, in more targeted communications, has meant a huge upswing in the demand for specialist writers. This may be writers who can hit the ground running and blog at length about a certain subject, to creative writers who can write witty packaging copy – to writers who can takethe ever-growing complexity of technical products in our life, from computers and phones to new software applications – and turn it into something that our ever-decreasing attention span can accept – a two-minute video or blurb.

For those companies, and agencies, that do embrace specialist niche opportunities, the rewards can be great. As a CEO once quoted over lunch: “Where there’s mystery, there’s margin.”

Certainly for Air New Zealand, flying is no longer a mystery, but the lost art of upholstery seems to be.