Howard Stern schools digital agencies w/ facebook

by Jason

 If you work at a digital agency--especially a big one--a consider yourself warned. By none other than Howard Stern.
 
I’m a proud Howard Stern fan, and wanted to share an insight I got from the show a few weeks back. An incident on the show illustrated exactly what’s wrong with digital agencies that get too big to get out of the way.

He  (the “client”) had a relatively simple request for the folks who run his website (his “digital agency”). He wanted to post a video to his site. He made the request live on the air, and waited.

After a few minutes, his producer claimed “they—the guys who run the site—can’t post a video on the site.” In other words, the “agency” told the “client” that it wasn’t possible to do what he wanted to do with his site.

What did Howard say?

 “Get back to me with a plan?” No.
“Let me know when that’s possible?” No.
“Can you explain why we can’t?” Nope.

He didn’t ask them anything. He solved the problem himself.

His solution? Forget the website, then. Create a Stern Show page on Facebook and post the video. “We’ll have it up in less than 5 minutes.” That would be a CLIENT END-AROUND AN AGENCY BOTTLENECK. That’s what they did.

Now, I have no idea whether his site, HowardStern.com, is run by an agency or an in-house team at Sirius, but the lesson is clear. The ability to post media and solve problems at your own pace in the digital space isn’t enough to make you valuable to your clients. In fact, if your process is bloated and bureaucratic, you end up impeding the client. You're slower than your clients are.

So the question for digital agencies and the people who work at them is…what do you offer your clients that they can’t do themselves with 15 minutes and a Wi-Fi connection?

If you don’t have an answer, you have a huuuuuuge problem.

Oh, and a few days later they joined twitter, so follow @sternshow

Follow me @bender00

Comments

[michelle]

Excellent point! And as a proud Howard fan myself, I love the HUUUUUUUUGE reference! Makes me laugh every time.

[jacob]

curious to whether it was a legal issue and where on facebook the video is

[Jason Bender]

Thanks for the comments...they're huuuuuuge. LOL I can't stop laughing at that.

Jacob, it wasn't a legal issue...it was just a test video Howard shot with his dog while testing mobile phones. See it here (they finally got it up on the site) http://tinyurl.com/d2kwh5