Essence acquire social media specialist Punktilio
May 25th, 2011 categories: company news,news,TeamTags: 2.0,agency,business,Digital,essence,London,social media
Yesterday, my brother and I sold our Social Media agency – Punktilio – to one of the leading independent digital agencies, Essence. I’m a huge believer in social, so, apart from the obvious, why sell?
Punktilio started life as a rock n’ roll band. We moved from Oxford, England to Los Angeles, California in 2003 – just as Myspace launched. By 2005 we’d become part of a huge cultural shift that saw bands dropping record labels in favour of the ‘DIY’ model, and it was social media that made this possible – we could now connect with fans directly, attracting them to our shows and having them buy music and merch from us. Musicians were the catalyst that made social explode, and we were leveraging it five years before brands and agencies even thought about it (note – a brand and a band are no different).
During a trip back to the England I discovered the UK’s largest social network, Bebo. It was without a music offering – I called them up and asked why. Long story short, I was lucky enough to meet Michael and Xochi Birch, who offered me a job there and then to help build Bebo’s music offering. I spent the next 18 months sitting on a rocket ship as HMS Bebo grew into one of the biggest social networks in the world. The amount of brands and agencies that flocked to our network was overwhelming – they knew they had to get into social, but they didn’t have a clue about why, where or how. That was a light-bulb moment for me. When Bebo sold to AOL in 2008 I got down to the serious business of creating the best social media agency in the world. Our first client was Dolly Parton, closely followed by Simon Cowell’s music label Syco.
As more brands started to flock to the social web, Punktilio changed its focus from music to brands. What we were able to offer (that the big media groups couldn’t) was a truly specialist understanding of how this new world rocked; we weren’t trying to mould social to traditional thinking, we had coal-face knowledge and understanding, we thought differently, social was natural for us. Not only could we build successful communities packed with genuine engagement, but we were also able to remain fluid, consistently morphing as the space did – when Facebook brought in another change, we were so close to it all that we could react and exploit in real-time. The biggest win for us was the ability to deliver deep insight and ROI – we can tell a client exactly where each penny of each pound gets spent and what it actually delivers – something the big guys are still struggling with. And now, one of the most important deliverances from ‘fluff’ to ‘bottom line’ is the fact we can sell products and services directly through social. The social web is the new web, and that made Punktilio a fairly hot proposition.
So, why sell? Truth is, social media can’t be limited as a specialism in it’s own bubble: just as users don’t segment new and traditional media, nor can we. Social impacts everything – there isn’t a brief that doesn’t incorporate social, but more importantly, there are very few actions that don’t deliver a social media reaction. This means that social has to be a part of bigger, more joined up thinking, cutting through the very heart of line – or perhaps even the other way around. I’m not suggesting for a minute that social doesn’t demand very specific knowledge and skills (note – avoid ‘social media gurus’) but it has to be genuinely integrated and part of the complete picture. My personal belief is that the future of MarComs lies in the fused skills and knowledge of Social, Marketing, and Technology. The social media hype hasn’t died or diminished, it’s now dominated and switched from something early adopters did to a mainstream utility. And this is why we chose Essence – the future’s digital, and social media is very much the heart of it.
Hal Stokes, May 24 2011
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