Meet the Author

It’s the late 90’s. The internet wasn’t cool yet. The tech boom and bust wasn’t even in full swing at that time. Stacy Sutton Williams was heading up interactive at a division of Kilgannon. They had started building websites in ’95 when web design was little more than text, bad imagery and tables. Stacy had taken a six-hour correspondence class in SEO to become an “expert.” There were no keyword tools. Meta tags ruled the day. Search engine submission was a thing. And she was rocking her clients' early digital minds.

She fell in love with it. She attended one of the first ever Search Engine Strategies conferences in 2000. She met other digital marketers. She met other entrepreneurs.

Confident. Determined. And with short, spiky red hair that screamed world watch out, she decided to start an SEO company named “Search Engine Goddess” and decided to use a cartoon version of herself as the logo. Not too long after she rethought the name (and logo) and decided upon Prominent Placement.

What makes an agency great?

Not good. Not new and innovative. Not hip. But actually great. Think The Beatles, Hemingway, or Muhammad Ali great.

And once an agency is great, how does it sustain that greatness?

These aren’t easy questions to answer. Even more daunting, there are more than 20,000 agencies trying to answer this same exact question. Sure, there are legends in advertising who have a really good grasp on how they became great. But like most things, it’s easy to define what made you or your agency successful in retrospect.

In the sister post to this, The Ever Elusive Pursuit of Greatness, we discussed why we are creating the Intelligence team. In this post, we want to explore what that really means.

I know I’m biased, but I’m in awe of our Creative and UX teams’ ability to understand users and create experiences that change behavior and delight clients. Their ability to combine qualitative research, client knowledge, and their core design and user experience skills to create amazing digital experiences is something I, frankly, can’t relate to. I can barely draw a circle or even write my name legibly.

I’m also equally impressed with the other Nebo teams. Our copywriters are brilliant and have a gift to communicate that I’ll never be able to replicate. As for Paid Media — I’m not even allowed to sign in to AdWords anymore. SEO — mad scientists doing mad scientist stuff. Developers — well, enough said. I used to be a developer and now I don’t even know how to FTP into our dev server. PR and Social — let’s just say I don’t have the temperament to have a live feed of things I might say or tweet, much less understand their craft.

Trying to figure out how to market to millennials is the new "is it the year of mobile?" conundrum marketers are fretting about. How can brands get these seemingly uninterested, disloyal hordes of potential customers to fall in love with their brand? How can brands create messaging and ads that move them from awareness to consideration to intent to become mindless brand loyalists willing to buy whatever breakfast cereal the global conglomerate releases this year?

Business is simple. Buy low, sell high. Find a market opportunity and serve a need. Create the right processes, hire the right people, and utilize the best technology. Boom. You’re off and running. Work hard to keep your competitive advantages. Stay ahead of the competition. Hire the right agency. Retain the best employees. Listen to the right consultants. Stay true to your mission statement. Perform a SWOT. Listen to more consultants. Revise your business plan. Evolve your brand and mission. Continue to stay ahead of the competition. Try to not get swallowed up by the next disruption. Read business books. Hire your competitor’s employees. Buy a smaller, but more agile competitor. Think about selling. Layoffs? Restructure. Hold the fort. Listen to your attorneys. Listen to your finance people. Strategize.

It’s not simple.