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McCann's Paul Green gets Social, Media

13 March 2009

Jacinta Coyle speaks to Paul Green - Executive Director, Digital Production @ McCann Sydney (http://mccannsydney.com.au)

Where are you originally from? Portsmouth, UK

What was your first ever job? I worked for a builder one summer when I was 13, as a dustman another summer, and I worked in a chicken factory prior to university. Whilst I was at uni I spent many evenings maintaining the fountains in Trafalgar Square in London – there aren’t many people who can say that!

MAC or PC? PC – but Macs have their place too.

How did you end up in digital? I had a girlfriend who knew some guys who started up a digital agency in London back in 1995. The agency, called AMX, was started by Malcolm Garrett, a famous graphic designer and Alistair Scott a technically creative genius. They saw the future in interactive design and the internet. One day I went to see what they were up to, they asked if I wanted to hang out for a couple of weeks, and in that time learned HTML and joined them fulltime. In my time there I work on some amazing and innovative projects, and moved from a developer role into production.

Biggest achievement thus far? Starting my own agency, Mook, back in London in 1999. Mook was a creative digital agency, meaning we created beautifully crafted websites and content, games and CD-Roms for mainly entertainment and youth audiences. I was Operations Director for 5 years until I sold my share in the company in order to move to Australia – one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. The other founding partners recently sold to global agency The Nitro Group.

Favourite campaign/client/project? The Sunday Times newspaper asked Mook to help them develop an innovative monthly entertainment package that would increase circulation, reach new audiences, and create revenues. It needed to capture the spirit and look of The Sunday Times brand; be easy to update over time; and be as user-friendly as possible.

After 6 months of consultation with several Sunday Times stakeholders, The Month was created. The Month was an interactive CD-Rom guide to the forthcoming month’s entertainment, and included over 150 music tracks and 60 video trailers in every issue, across 9 content areas. Each issue also had a unique and original Feature presentation designed for it. To aid the production process we also build an online content management system which allowed editorial staff to update content remotely and instantly. The Month was produced over 16 months (1.8 Million copies per issue) on a 2 week turnaround.

The great thing about this project was that we were engaged from the outset, working with a client who had absolute trust in our ability to deliver and to create the best product for them, and who took our advice and treated us a part of their team.

Social media – your thoughts? Social media is revolutionising communication, it has changed how people interact, at work, in marketing , and at a personal level for general interest and entertainment.

I think there is value in it for our clients if it is used properly, right now it reminds me of when the internet first became a marketing channel - everyone needed a website but they didn’t know why or how to use it effectively.

I think now clients want a clearer ROI before they go ahead with a project, a lot of our clients understand they need to set measurable objectives, but it is very hard to measure social media value.

Dell have proven social media can work as an effective business tool. In response to a blog which was set-up by someone who had had a bad experience with their products and support they proactively engaged with the blog and acknowledged the issues so they could be addressed. From that grew ‘Ideastorm’, a forum based website where people can suggest product development ideas directly to Dell, site user then vote on these. There may not be a clear ROI on this, but it is obvious through the level of engagement on the site that they are going to produce better products, inspired by the people who are actually going to be using them, and raising their customer satisfaction.

What does 2009 hold for social media? It will be big in some areas, recruitment is a great example, networks like Linkedin and Facebook will be used more and more to connect people looking for work and companies looking for staff.

I think we’ll see more enterprise social media usage as well, corporate blogging, RSS, wikis etc.

On the marketing side, I think social media is still a bit of a buzz word. People need to ensure they are building a social media strategy and work it into their broader online strategy for it to be effective. Social media also needs to be engaged on a long-term basis, the strategy needs to adapt based on the engagement with customers over time, what they want and need from their involvement. It is a commitment and requires patience.

I think 2009 will be a big year for social media for individuals, but from a marketing perspective I think it will be difficult to get clients to invest in it in the current economic climate. Business will more likely want a safe and quick ROI, and social media may be too risky for most clients. It is a huge opportunity but you do have to be prepared to take a bit of a risk.

Should clients be embracing social media? It depends on where and how their customers are engaging with each other and with the brand.

Can you give an example of how social media has been used effectively? Dell has made over $US1 million from selling refurbished PCs on Twitter. People subscribe to their Twitter feed and are pushed offers.

Another interesting example of how it can be used in the workplace comes from Deloitte. They built an internal site where staff list the dumbest things in the company, and they have now set about addressing them.

Some good sites to check out?

The best way to understand social media is to use it, here are some examples.

Paul’s Twitter feed – http://twitter.com/P4P4G

Dell’s Ideastorm site - http://ideastorm.com/

New aggregation site WotNews - http://wotnews.com

McCann Sydney’s Strategy Director’s blog - http://www.markpollard.net

Paul graduated Kingston University in London in 1994 with an honours degree in Manufacturing Engineering. He moved to Australia in 2005. He has over 14 years experience managing both technical and creative interactive media projects, as well as having a practical knowledge of many networking, server and development technologies. Currently Paul looks after digital production and development at McCann Sydney, and he’s training for his first half-marathon in May.

Written by: Jacinta Coyle

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