I’ve been invited by The Conversation Marketing Summit to speak at the upcoming New York conference on June 10, 2008 about the topic, “Can Agencies Change.” I am going to be thinking through this topic with my colleagues here at the agency and hopefully will have some insightful commentary to share. Looking forward to speaking alongside colleagues Jon Raj (OMD), Daina (Moxie Interactive), and Jonah Bloom (Ad Age).

If you are interested in attending, here is the website to find out all of the details.

If you want to share in the comments section about the topic, “Can Agencies Change,” please feel free. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Here are some questions as thought starters:

• What are agencies doing correctly?
• What are agencies doing incorrectly?
• Where are the inefficiencies?
• Would you hire an agency?

Brands spend billions of dollars to be top of mind when consumers make their ultimate decision: to purchase or not to purchase. Consultants, advertising agencies, media companies, and analytics organizations all come together to expose and track a consumer brand’s message out to the public.

In no more than 1 second, a consumer brand can be harmed… a brand that has millions of dollars behind it and years of existence. Recently, this has happened to two major brands. You’d expect consumers to hurt these brands, but it was the brands themselves that broke consumers trust and in effect, drew negative media attention to them and let consumers all over the globe down.

Before you can let a consumer down, you need to build up trust.  An article on BrandChannel talks about building confidence in your brands and has a good quote.

Jacques Chevron, a partner in JRC&A Consulting in LaGrange, Illinois, explains, “Brands are rooted in the trust that the consumers place in them. They are what result from consistent behavior over time: Predictability, understanding, comfort and the trust that they create. Newcomers don’t have this. Some are in the same situation as the used-car salesman who says ‘Trust me’ to generate comfort. It doesn’t work well.”

Wal-Mart and Sony have both had to reach into the medicine cabinet and rip the band aid box open and apply them rather quickly in the recent past. Wal-Mart alongside their PR agency, Edelman, tricked the world into believing a semi-false story about a couple that traveled the USA stopping at Wal-Mart locations. Sony falsified a PSP promotion and had consumers believe they were watching a site independent of Sony.

In a world where transparency is so important, why would these brand kings do this to themselves? They employ significant agencies with allegedly fantastic expertise but try and trick the world and of course, it doesn’t work.

On Wal-Mart / Edelman

It’s ironic that Edelman Worldwide helped to write the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s code of ethics, which states: “Honesty of identity: You never obscure your identity.�

Ironic, of course, because the independent firm was publicly slapped—and publicly apologized—for being the force behind the Wal-Marting Across America blog that was unmasked as a fake created and paid for by Edelman. (Edelman Eats Humble Pie)

On Sony….

This one–the latest in a string of stealth marketing efforts–involves a “flog,” or fake blog, created by viral marketing firm Zipatoni to promote the Sony PSP. The blog, alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, was supposedly authored by an amateur hip-hop artist “Charlie”–whose cousin, “Pete,” craved a PSP under the tree.

Written in faux hip-hop and Internet lingo, the phony blog, which went live at the end of last month, quickly raised suspicions. Last week, some readers conducted a WHOIS search, which unmasked the site’s registrars as Zipatoni. (Sony Confesses to Creating ‘Flog,’ Shutters Comments)

Joseph Jaffe weighing in…

It boggles my mind how many mainstream marketers/agencies look at new marketing from the same one-dimensional, traditional, advertising based- and biased lens. When you think about it, it’s no wonder that the inevitable outcome every time is fakeness instead of authenticity.

And Greg Verdino sums it up nicely…

Half a step forward, full step back.

Would you trade your shiny new PS3 for Taco Bell dollars? $12,500 of them? Apparently, Taco Bell is running a promotion with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to give the first person who emails them agreeing to the opportunity (with a PS3) $12,500 Taco Bell Bucks that they can use at any Taco Bell.

Nice PR play for Taco Bell!