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Q & A
Lee Rubenstein
President and COO
Tell us how TBA Global’s mission has evolved over the past few years?
TBA Global had a vision for creating a dynamic new platform to better serve clients' communication needs in a digital age. We combined an expanded concept of communications and non-traditional marketing solutions that integrate a strategic and digital viewpoint, with the TBA Global’s established expertise in the creative side of delivering meetings and live experiences. Advances in technology allow us to create rich media content that ‘tells a story’ and to then distribute the content across all manners of digital platforms. We saw an opportunity to use our legacy services as a foundation while we built out the future platforms that truly served client needs, creating deep connections between their brands and their key audiences, internal or external.
And that resulted in expansion into what new areas?
A few years ago we began to expand our areas of expertise by adding internal strategists and experts in areas we knew our clients would need. Now that allows us to work across a client’s enterprise using the knowledge we gained in each division to become a more powerfully informed and trusted advisor. Those areas include Digital and Mobile Media, Branded Entertainment and Content, Learning and Performance Improvement, and Employee Engagement. And wow, did technology change the landscape fast in all of them! Facebook, Twitter, social media, smartphone apps - the list goes on - we can get content into millions of the ‘right hands’ of engaged users at a low price point. While debates may rage around measurement, traditional media-buy money is being repurposed into these platforms because they provide engagement. Combine our strategy and solutions across all platforms, with our tactical expertise in delivering live experiences, and add in the financial benefit of consolidating a buy with TBA Global, and the clients really maximize results.
Does this change the way in which clients interface with TBA Global?
It appears that may be the case. What clients like about our approach is that we bring so many threads expertly together, and while we do that on a project basis, we have accepted some AOR engagements this year. Statements of work can be rich and complex when you include all the digital extensions that need to be added to what was a traditional project. Client feedback tell us that TBA Global ‘gets it’ where their traditional partners either appear to lack the expertise or have a predetermined agenda they are trying to push. We are platform neutral, in other words, we make no money by buying media. That’s not our goal. I guess we are defining new AOR segments where a client prefers our undivided long-term attention, in areas like entertainment-based consumer marketing, or mobile media. If we can do a deeper dive into our client’s business we can provide them with the resultant cost and results improvements that come from assigning us to a portfolio of assignments, whether its consumer facing brand marketing or handling an annual calendar of internal meetings.
So the growth comes from?
It was clear that the traditional ad agency model was broken; too many channels to communicate across, viewership too diffused to warrant the old economy media algorithms, a shift in consumer habits and how they wanted to interact with brands, all stuff everyone knows. This meant a great opportunity for us, no one ‘owns the hill’ of distributing content to key audiences so it was an open sandbox for innovators who understood the digital landscape, as well as the live one. The new money in our industry wasn’t going to come from more companies deciding to have more meetings- in this economy, there are even less. The new money comes from traditional advertising dollars repositioned to create deeper relationships and experiences with customers, some of whom will become their evangelists. Based on who owns us and how we were founded, it’s not unexpected that we have unprecedented access to marquee artists and entertainment properties. Therefore we spend time thinking about how we can uniquely activate on entertainment based IP. At TBA Global we can and do think it up, price it out, and pull it off—where others stall out after the ideation phase. Clients respect that.
How does the economy change things for clients and TBA Global?
This has been an amazingly transformational time and obviously not all of it good. When the economy went through its initial gyrations and the Feds stepped in to bail out the financial markets, there was much saber rattling about ‘wasteful and lavish’ spending in the private sector, with ‘events’ getting maligned in an unfair crossfire. When our country and US business needed to come together the most to keep the economy moving, the message instead became ‘keep your heads down’. To create an industry voice that could add to the national dialogue on why US businesses needs to meet, TBA Global created a grassroots concept we brought to life called Keep America Meeting (www.KeepAmericaMeeting.Org) where over 22,000 people who make their livings in the meetings, travel, and hospitality business listed their names and their stories; all of which were presented to members of Congress. People gathering in groups is the most efficient way to energize business results and build relationships, which then reinvigorate hiring. After almost a year of abstinence, clients are starting to come back around to the idea that they need to own what activities will drive their business growth; not outside influencers who aren’t connected to their business agendas. We’ll hang in there and support our clients however they need us to; we’re here for them in good times and in challenging times.
