Jeremy Nicholas worked in the UK, USA and Japan for consultancies and agencies including Red Spider and HHCL and Partners before joining BMF In 2001. He was appointed CEO of BMF in 2010.

BMF has changed since Nicholas joined. “BMF was tiny, so it was about 30 people back then.  And I was planning director. Then since then obviously the agency has grown a bit from 30 to a 200 plus shop now.”

In order to make the agency more agile, a structural change has been implemented. “We've split the agency into five teams,” says Nicholas. “Really there are three teams; there are two in Sydney and one in Melbourne and they have a creative leader, strategic leader, managing partner, client director, digital lead etc and each of them looks after a certain number of clients. It's like going back to a 60 person agency, so we've got three smaller teams to make up the bigger team if you like. Supporting them is the big BMF support team so that's me, the HR team, IT, Finance etc. And the other part, which is crucial, which runs across all three teams, is what they call the publishing team. So we've got a big digital development team which we do front and back end development, that we've really built that over time.”

Content

BMF also has a publishing team of journalists, writers and video content creators. They’re considering in future having an internal photographic team. “We've got a strong history of creating amazing broadcast work, big budget TV ads, that sort of stuff, but we're doing more and more long form content, or content where it costs between $2,000 -$40,000, where each individual piece is smaller or lower cost. A lot more documentary-style work and really that's in response to our clients wanting more and more content on websites and different sorts of places,” says Nicholas.

Community management

BMF do some community management, especially on large campaigns (like the Sam Kekovich Australian Lamb campaign), and contribute content to others, but Nicholas sees in-house community management as appropriate.

“I think more and more of it's done in-house and I think particularly where customer service is really important, someone the company needs to be doing that. It's an important sales and customer satisfaction channel and I think you need to have that in house, rather than outsourcing it, because it's their business, their brand, their voice, in that respect.”

Viral video

The elusive viral video is sometimes requested. “The question we always ask is why? And then you say, why? And then you ask why again and then why again so you kind of hone in on what exactly is the issue here that we need to get to. What we try and do is pick what's the problem or issue that we're trying to solve and then let's work with that and then that may or may not be a viral video that needs to be created. What we're trying to do all the time is create things for people, our clients, that entertains and engages people, and the best work will by definition go viral because it's entertaining, it's good.”

Social media

Whilst Nicholas is happy to hear clients are interested in social media, he’s similarly interested in tying down aims. Depending on whether social media is being used to increase share of voice, or if there’s already an engaged community who aren’t being managed well, or whether there are customer service issues, will impact on how it is approached. “Each are different roles that social media could have. I think you've got to be really clear on what that is, and what are we there to do and then start from that. I think once you get that sort of stuff out and you understand it, then that gives you a much clearer place and you can get out there and create something that's appropriate.”

Digital

As to whether clients are moving more of their budgets from traditional channels in to digital and social channels, Nicholas says it’s a trend he sees emerging. “I think there's a couple things happening. One is that digital is expanding more and more away from just screen based stuff to obviously interaction with different devices and things like the change room in a retail store. I see some budget moving to that, it's almost what I'd call brand experience digital if you'd like. There might be a movement even within the digital budget towards spreading of stuff in the real world if you like. I can see that happening.”

Nicholas says that the likelihood of a client’s products being purchased online can influence how much of their spend will move to digital. “I think the digital spend and the weight of digital spend varies dramatically from 70 to 80% at the more digital clients or companies where they're delivering their services online, down to ones where it's just at 3 and 4% from a product point of view. I can see the product ones getting up higher over time to 10 – 15%. Once you look at that digital investment, that's been diluted across more stuff, more sorts of digital things rather than just a mobile app and a Facebook page and a website and some digital display.”