Cerebra

Being a proactive and innovative contributor to any client service team requires that you familiarise yourself with digital marketing basics and developments and of course your client, but that goes without saying.

A reactive approach in managing a client’s account is certainly not the most beneficial way of going about things. Long-term futility aside, how much will you ever learn about, teach and progress your client?

Media strategists are slowly starting to understand digital as both the client and the agency demand a more holistic approach, but what about social media?

For many, the environment is daunting as it goes against what most media strategists are trained to investigate (such as reach, frequency and Gross Rating Points). Social media means consumers have the voice to talk back, but for many, it doesn’t even feature as a blip on the radar as a channel because it’s foreign to traditional media strategy which is all about broadcast.

To me, social media fits in the media mix just as much as TV, radio or print. However, the current agency briefing model doesn’t lend itself to this type of thinking. A few different approaches I’ve seen are:

Recently (a fellow Cerebran) and myself visited the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra as a team building exercise. While listening to the music I started thinking how Cerebra is like an orchestra.

It all starts with the composer
What do Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss and have in common? A bunch of composers and then John, Cerebra’s strategist … I promise it isn’t a riddle.

Cerebra’s tag line is ‘We are community’ which refers not only to the culture fostered within our company but also through our role as curator of our clients’ communities. In our last post Our Identity Part 1: The Cerebra Mission Statement and Manifesto (or who we are and why we exist) we spoke about our mission statement and manifesto - the answers to “who we are” and “why we exist”. In this post we’re going to talk about “what we do” – the lifecycle that all of our clients’ communities go through before reaching maturity and self-sustainability.

Welcome, Chef. I’m guessing the reason you are here, reading this piece is because you’re hungry for some cool, creative content.

Before we start, I’d like you to wash your hands… Yup, that’s right, wash your hands clean of all the generic brand bollocks. Get right in there, scrub under your fingernails and make sure you get all the ‘sales’ out from under there. That’s better.

Ingredients:
- Strategy
- Personality
- 3 to 5 hypothetical customers
- Content streams (with sources)
- Rich media
- Calls to action
- Time relevant content

Method: