The highlight of the conference was meeting one of the most extraordinary women I have come across. General Eva Burrows is tiny lady, with a huge personality. At 80 years old, she has snowy white hair and a smile that transcends any age group, status or position.

This little lady who barely reaches my shoulder has lived an amazing life. General Burrows is only the second woman to be elevated to the rank of General of The Salvation Army worldwide. The rank of ‘General’ in The Salvation Army is the highest rank that a Salvationist can achieve and makes her the equivalent of the Pope.

This amazing lady was interviewed by Salvos Store CEO, Allen Dewhirst and had some amazing stories to tell. Although General Burrows retired from active service 16 years ago, she still works tirelessly with her local corps group to actively support, help and encourage those people living on the fringes of our society.

At a young age General Burrows was appointed to train teachers at the Howard Institute in Zimbabwe, from there she moved on to become Commander in Sri Lanka and Scotland before taking on the role of Territorial Commander of the Australian Southern Territory. In 1986 Eva Burrows was elected to the rank of General and the world leader of The Salvation Army. This was a truly amazing achievement. Despite her age, Eva is optimistic and practical. She doesn’t believe in following the rules, if the rules serve no practical purpose, forging her own path and inspiring millions as she went along.

At the end of the evening, I had the honor of having the chance to meet General Burrows and have a photo with her. Standing there with my colleagues and the General, it was a slightly surreal experience. This is a lady who has met every important person in the world, from the Queen of England, to American presidents, Fidel Castro to Mother Teresa and yet she still had time to talk to me and a one on one level.

Eva Burrows has led and continues to lead an amazing life that is an inspiration to those of us whose lives seem mundane by comparison. In the few minutes that she spoke to the crowd of 250 delegates, Eva managed to inspire us telling to pursue our goals and not to let obstacles get in our way.

General Eva Burrows is a truly inspiring woman and is a wonderful role model for woman around the world. Her influence and example will stay with me for a life time.

I have to say it’s one of the perks of the job that I get to go shopping at my local Salvos Stores during work hours. I love the different things that you can find. Despite being slightly conservative, I’m drawn to the unique items that you can find, from fabulous eighties dresses to brand new designer clothes with tags and all. I love wandering around in the bric-a-brac section looking a fabulous pre-loved tea pots and wondering where they’ve come from and how old they are.
On this particular shopping trip, um… I mean garment sourcing; I had to come up with 4 outfits, 2 new and 2 old. Finding the old outfits was the most fun. With permission from Salvos Stores I was allowed to go out to the back sorting room and watch the fascinating process of how clothes that are donated are sorted into salable / unsalable piles, then priced, hung and placed in the store. I was told that nothing gets wasted, anything too old or damaged to sell in store is sent overseas either to be given to people in need or to be created into rags. Love the recycling nature of it all. Makes you feel like your old clothes have a new life again, not to mention the reduction in landfill.

Anyway, while I was in the sorting room, I spent time rummaging through huge sugar sacks of clothes looking for old unsalable garments. It was a slightly strange experience as I felt like I was rummaging through someone’s dirty laundry basket, and pulling out some odd garments. It made me think that about all the labor that goes into making your local Salvos Stores what it is, and that sometimes it can be an unpleasant experience for those that work out the back. But they keep on keeping on. Ultimately I found what I needed thanks to some handy assistance from the staff and volunteers at the store.

Overall it was an interesting experience and a fun way to spend a couple of hours of the working day – all part of the broad DGM customer service offering. My recommendation, check out your local Salvos Stores, it’s a fun way to spend the afternoon. Keep an eye out for the TVC… and check out the cool outfits.

With production in its final stages, and media planning and buying all but finalised, we are not only anticipating an exciting launch for the new campaign, but importantly a strong and positive result from the audience.

We can’t wait to get things started full throttle so stand by for more updates on the campaign and its progress. Remember we always like to hear your feedback, so don’t be shy, drop us a line at info@dgmcollective.com.au or post a comment.

Only taking and making appointments with ‘potential new clients’ is not a very smart way to approach things. Why shouldn’t we be talking to our so called competitors. Our agency is full service, we can buy media, provide all your graphic design requires, assist with your strategic marketing plan, facilitate market research and produce a fully animated TVC from start to end. Not everyone has that capability. So after speaking with this small agency, who has a great list of quality clients, we realised there were so many ways we could work together, share information and both financially benefit from the outcome.

It was so refreshing to have an open and frank discussion as to how we could help each other. Of course you have to protect your own IP and clients when undertaking such meetings, but lets be honest if another agency requires us to produce some creative overflow work for them, or help on a project they don’t have the creative resources to complete – I am hardly going to then go on and poach their clients or steal their information!

If a mutually beneficial relationship, with honesty and transparency can be developed, why would you then shoot yourself in the foot by doing the dreaded poaching of a client? It makes no sense what so over to me. If we can continue to work on upcoming creative projects, we are expanding our work base, generating revenue for our business and also helping another agency cement their service offering to a valued client. It’s a long term approach to a relationship that can pay great dividends.

That’s why I am constantly surprised at the hesitation to form great synergies between agencies. Let’s share a little to benefit in the long term. We can’t always do it all, and why not use a fellow agency that has a great flash specialist, or 3D animator rather than try and produce something that’s sub standard or deter your client from undertaking certain projects just because you don’t have the internal ability to do it.

At the end of the day, your client will be happy, your sharing a work load and everyone is generating income for their business. What’s the down side in that?

I was amazed at the open minded approach of this person. Cut a long story short, this person only deals with large agencies as they are “safe for their organisation, and that is what they require.” Hhhhmmm, so much for left of centre and brave!

These days small boutique agencies have so much more to offer creatively, strategically, are client focused and offer substantial financial benefits. C’mon marketing people get serious about the money you spend and how you spend it and who you spend it with…ever wondered who payed for the marble foyer!

Maybe next time when someone from a small agency wants to chat with you , take the call. At the end of the day communication is your job. Oh and stop with the “we already have an agency bit”, that campaign has been run. Open up to the enormous opportunities that present themselves. Some may cost hardly any money at all but may have the biggest impact…

So why did this particular marketing person take this approach on choosing their agency. Is it really about safety or because everyone else does it?

But if you take a step back, when developing a creative concept and the look and feel of any campaign, website or project – who do you want to impress most with the creative? Some would say the client, and yes this is somewhat true, but I personally feel when designing, creatives working together with account managers or the marketing team need to design purely for the desired target market and no one else.

If the creative design entertains, intrigues, interests and importantly is remembered by the customer or target audience then it has 100% successfully done its job. Too often as designers and marketers we concern ourselves with what everyone else will think. Of course the creative needs to be accepted and liked by the client and contribute positively to the overall brand – but at the end of the day it needs to be emotive and result in an action or transaction of some kind from the consumer, no one else.

I have presented creative, that personally has not been my cup of tea. Not because it was poorly designed, but maybe I didn’t like the symmetry of the design, or the colours used in the environment of the TVC would not have been what I would choose. However if it reaches the desired target audience and the client is happy and believes it will achieve objectives, then whether I like the design is irrelevant. What is important is if I believe it will engage the consumer and generate real results.

I can only present creative that I believe will work – nothing more and nothing less. Too often we think, what will our peers think? Or I don’t like it so no one else will. I say that is a severe case of tunnel vision.

Will it sell more widgets, will it stop Mr. Jones from turning over the TV when the ad comes on? – if the answer is yes, then it is great creative. No longer can we afford to create things we love, or we think might do the job. Consumers are presented with too much these days – too many ads, messages, emails, pop ups to be interested anymore. That is why the challenge is with us to give them something that keeps them watching or helps them remember. Finding new ways of achieving this is certainly not impossible, a TVC we are currently working on at the moment I think is going to achieve this goal in more ways than one. But it has taken a huge collaborative effort from our entire team with input from the client and direct feedback from their customer base to get to that point with the creative.

Don’t just look at the brief and make your mind up quickly on what creative you think will suffice. Consider a variety of elements, put it through the ringer with existing customers. And dont be afraid to ask for 100% honest feedback and criticism. I think it is the only way to generate effective creative that doesn’t just clog up the noisy consumer environment.

During a Marketing degree you undertake various subjects of study, obviously a large percentage of them focused on the core marketing principles. Even though I was only there 5 years ago, there was absolutely no mention of digital media, social marketing, online advertising and so on. People were talking (and ever so vaguely) about search engines and optimisation but again I stress in a very limited fashion.

This presents a significant challenge for us marketers and agency people. Even though I quite recently exited the tertiary system, the foundation that university study provided on your practical implementation is not there for the digital media force. Clients are demanding it be considered and implemented, agencies are continually considering it as part of the integrated mix now. However do we all really understand the power, mechanics and potential of this newly integrated approach? So many digital agencies are popping up and people proclaiming to be experts in the area. I don’t doubt these people are very well sounded in the field, but are any of us experts yet given the short time it has been part of the mix? I think some people have just spent more time online and adapting their lifestyle around the plethora of social networking sites, online communities and digital communication.

I like to think of myself as a quick learner, and I have been lucky enough to attend some great conferences and events recently focusing on online marketing, search engine optimisation and utilising social marketing effectively. I believe in the past few months I have really upped my knowledge base and each day I am feeling more confident in presenting these integrated approaches and trying new things.

However we only have case studies and very short term success stories to research and evaluate. I often wonder if this rapidly growing trend is here to stay, and if we can adapt to it being such a focus now, and how the market and demand will react in a few years time? Deciding on traditional media, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, Flicker, blogging and the rest is not an easy decision. Do we risk communicating on channels we have no control over in a lot of instances – or do we stay with the old traditional methods of getting the message out there? I don’t think there is one set answer, other than to be open minded and adaptable in such a dynamic and at times volatile environment.

I recently heard someone give a fantastic tip (a rival agency actually) – don’t stop listening and examining what consumers want. As simple as that is, and at times we all say to ourselves if we only knew what consumers want and respond to we would all be rich. But really it is that simple, listen to what they want and give it to them, in the communication channel they prefer.