Speed Dating for Marketeers

For the past two days I’ve been representing LAW Creative at Marketing Week Live in the ‘Ask the Experts’ zone.

The zone is promoted as providing ‘a unique opportunity to get free advice from a wide range of agencies specialising in Creative and Design, PR, Digital, Media Buying and Planning, Sponsorship, Market Research, Advertising, Branding, Live or Customer Experience Design’. It’s the first year they’ve run this area and essentially it’s speed dating for agencies and clients.

Leading up to the event there are a number of communications sent to attendees encouraging them to book online a 20-minute session with one of the ‘experts’. As an agency you receive an email telling you who would like to meet with you and when they would like to meet with you which you can either choose to accept or decline. For instance we had a couple of ‘sales’ based approaches that we declined. Once at the event, attendees are encouraged to book a ‘drop-in’ appointment with the agency relevant to their requirements.

On arriving at the event the ‘ask the experts’ zone is located on the mezzanine floor of Olympia in a good position. There are around 20 agencies within the zone and I find my table. There’s no option to exhibit anything so I’ve brought the obligatory agency brochure and business cards.

Our first few appointments that have been booked in for a couple of weeks are ‘no-shows’ but the organisers fill the slots with ‘drop-in’ appointments which fills the time but means that the meetings are ‘on-the-fly’ with no prior knowledge of the individual in front of me it’s speed dating in its purest form!!

It’s a very mixed experience. From one lady who created extremely high-end and unique speakers to a gentleman starting up a cheesecake business from his kitchen at home, it was great to lend some support and advice regarding where to start but at the same time it’s clear that from a price perspective we wouldn’t be able to work with them. The general advice was ‘stop doing everything badly and focus on doing fewer things with more thought and focus’.

I have also been fortunate to meet a number of blue-chip organisations who need some help with strategic planning, brand campaigns and digital projects which I hope will lead to some great new relationships for the agency.

Overall it’s been a very interesting experience but time will tell if it has been a profitable one.

Brett Sammels
Client Services Director
LAW Creative