I think the most accurate place to go for definitions for phrases is Urban Dictionary. Granted, a majority of the phrases you can look up there are NSFW, but one of my favorite expressions is defined on the site.
- I Know A Guy —
- A phrase to calm your friend down after he/she has done something wrong and is looking for some help.
Whereas many marketing firms and advertising agencies have become niche experts, without the ability to cross-platform strategize, Account Executives at Davis Advertising are tactic agnostic. They listen; they hear your issue; and they can calm you down, based on their ability to pull in the appropriate expert to help you cope with your marketing issue. Actually, our AEs know multiple ‘guys’– so they can pull in a handful of experts from different fields and sit them all down at one table, in order to determine the best course of action.
A niche expert has trouble seeing outside of their field of expertise. Don’t ask a digital strategist if radio is a good spend of money; they will immediately go into a diatribe about the lack of ROI and poor reporting. Don’t ask a TV media buyer about the value of YouTube videos, as they will undoubtedly find flaws with the distribution having the right reach or frequency. A brand expert may understand your new website’s focus on UX, but probably isn’t up to date on all of the accessibility guidelines required for the UI.
That’s why it’s great that our Account Executives simply “know some guys.” We intentionally want our Account Execs to be masters of none, so that they do not fall into the pitfalls of rating one strategy or tactic as “better” than another. That way, if you need a branding expert, one can be brought to a meeting. Need to boost awareness across many different platforms? No problem, we have digital media buyers, traditional media buyers, and web developers to build out the landing pages to complete actions. We have the analysts that can drill down into actions occurring, and tell the others in the group what to fine-tune. We have experts in finding the right talent for your radio spots or actors for your television commercials, and in producing the actual creative.
At the end of the day, would it be more efficient to hire multiple experts, each from different companies that are all fighting to say, “We are the most important!”? Should your focus be on the marketing war erupting among the different strategies? Not surprisingly, that could cause some problems; hopefully you have a friend to help calm you down when you’re looking for help…
But don’t worry, I know a guy.
