Dockers president Steve Harris has enthusiastically embraced change throughout his career.
WITH the 2011 footy season kicking off this week, The Brand Agency managing director Steve Harris has that glint in his eye that fellow Dockers fans would instantly recognise as the mark of a true believer.
It’s a steely alloy of passion, disappointment and eternal hope that has united Dockers fans for a decade and a half, and taken Mr Harris to the position of football club president in 2009.
It’s a role he clearly relishes and an opportunity to combine his passion for Fremantle with his business acumen in a highly charged and ever-changing environment.
Because if there has been one constant in Mr Harris’ 24-year career in the advertising industry, it has been change.
It’s a challenge that clearly energises him even as it threatens to topple the paradigm that delivered him the managing director’s office in one of Perth’s most successful advertising agencies.
The Brand even provided the initial research work for the Dockers’ rebranding, however Mr Harris handed the account over to Block Branding once he took up the role as president.
The Fremantle rebranding has resulted in the team adopting a new playing strip as well as a new logo, and there are plans for a new team song.
The biggest change to hit the advertising industry in recent years has been the rapid evolution of digital technology.
In a matter of years, digital advertising and social media has migrated from marginal to mainstream and its power and potential are game changing for everyone.
Mr Harris has no doubt that this is where The Brand needs to invest to safeguard its future.
“The change is massive and frightening and I am the first person to put my hand up and say one person can’t get their head around all of this,” Mr Harris says.
“All the old paradigms of the power sitting in the corner office have changed and now it’s about anyone who has an idea and wants to work hard.”
The Brand will celebrate its 20th anniversary in June, at which time about one in five of its 80 staff will be directly working in digital.
In just one year Mr Harris has built a digital team of 14 people, and expects this to increase to about 25 within 18 months.
At 44 Mr Harris is one of the wise ‘old heads’ at The Brand, old enough to remember telex machines and other technological dinosaurs such as faxes; but he says the digital shift is not just about new technology.
“We have a client in the mining and engineering services industry and they are looking to recruit a large number of engineers,” Mr Harris says.
“Three years ago we would have run that campaign in newspapers ... now we are running several hundred thousand dollars worth of media on facebook.”
And it’s also changing the way advertising agencies make money and chase new business, given with big margins on digital work.
“It’s redefining the profitability of advertising agencies and it’s redefining the sort of clients you can take on,” Mr Harris says.
“We are taking on projects of $70,000 to $100,000, and because of that we might make 100 per cent margin.”
Digital strategy director Simon Reid joined The Brand from Sydney to head up the digital operation, but Mr Harris says the digital capability is integrated across the agency, rather than operating as a stand-alone division.
“What some ad agencies have done less successfully overseas is set up a separate digital division and it has ultimately overtaken the main agency,” he says.
“What is important in what we are doing is that it is integrated into the main business, it is not run as a separate business.”
The only thing holding back The Brand’s digital transformation is manpower.
Mr Harris admits finding the right people with the right skills is a challenge that has forced the agency to look as far afield as London and Europe for personnel.
But he says there’s no alternative to this course of action because without investment in digital capability the future is uncertain.
“Structurally what I think will happen in advertising, it will be like when TV commercials came out and advertising agencies that didn’t have the competency to create TV commercials didn’t exist 18 months later,” Mr Harris told WA Business News.
“Potentially that is what is going to happen in Perth. And ad agencies won’t be able to solve that problem because there aren’t the people around to go and do it.”
Never one to miss the chance to chat about footy, Mr Harris says some of the best work being done with digital technology and social media in Australia involves the AFL football clubs.
Mr Harris’ own professional association with the Dockers dates back to 2002 and The Brand’s work developing marketing and advertising strategies for the club.
Now, if you’re not in town when the Dockers are playing you can follow the game on Twitter and post a comment for the president on the Dockers facebook page. You know he’ll read it.
