A stroke of good fortune recently let me to swing by the Boston offices of Mullen, one of the nation’s most successful and, frankly, interesting advertising agencies. The firm works with great brands like Panera Bread, Ask.com, Stanley, CSX Transportation and the Boston Bruins, among others. It also has developed quite a reputation as a social media savvy ad agency.
To explore why, I took a few moments to talk to Edward Boches, Mullen’s chief creative officer (who also lists “chief social media officer” on his business card – very cool) about his agency’s approach and successes.
One of the biggest challenges brand-side marketers face in dealing with social media is incorporating the necessary time to monitor and respond to conversation online. Marketers are busy people. Most only spend about 10-20 percent of their time dealing with advertising or their agency partners. One of the biggest challenges for advertising and public relations agencies in relation to social media is getting brand-side trust to enable the agency to read and react to the social web without layers of approvals.
There’s at least one agency out there that seems to have developed a solution that helps mitigate both problems with an interesting tool and approach.