The agency’s relationship with Yamaha began when Fox met the company’s national product planning and research manager, Chris Reid, at a roundtable discussion on social media at a marketing event earlier that fall. Reid was impressed by Fox’s knowledge of the blogosphere and approached her after the discussion to talk more about the medium. Reid and Fox arranged another meeting, and soon after Reid offered Social Media Group an account.
In March 2007 Yamaha launched Sled Talk, one of the first corporate blogs in Canada.
By the time Fox and Reid were invited to present a case study on the program two years later at the Canadian Marketing Association’s 2009 national convention, blogs had become the buzz of the marketing community. Both Yamaha and SMG were celebrated for increasing sales and engaging customers by allowing them to participate in a two-way conversation with the brand.
During its second summer in business, SMG landed another huge account: the agency was selected as Ford Motors’ global social media agency. Though it’s rare for such a large brand to put a new, independent agency on a global account, Fox says SMG often has an advantage over larger agencies with long histories when it comes to working with social media. “Our huge advantage is our flexibility,” she says. “We’re not something old that’s trying to be new. We’re a completely new model.”
Fox says her carefully selected staff’s expertise in emerging mediums like blogs and with social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace is what has driven the growth of her business over the past three years. While many the world’s biggest agencies have struggled to grow interactive divisions, Fox had assembled a small team—SMG has never staffed more than 18 employees—which strives to know everything there is to know about the world of social media. It’s this expertise that wins over clients, Fox says.
“If I had one dollar for every time I sat at a table with a new or perspective client and they said to me that their existing agency doesn’t understand social media, I’d be very rich,” Fox laughs.
Though Fox has found success in a tech-savvy sector of the marketing industry, her preferred method of communicating with clients is unabashedly traditional: the telephone. Almost all meetings with clients, many of whom are based in Europe and the U.S., are held by conference call. She has, however, added video conference rooms to both SMG offices, a tactic that allows employees in the Toronto office SMG opened this spring to connect with SMG headquarters, which is a seven minute walk from Fox’s home in Dundas, Ont.
Fox explains she chose to open the new office to entice young social media savvy marketers, who may not want to re-locate to the under-populated Dundas, a town of only 25,000. “From a cost perspective, as well as a retention and recruitment perspective, it made sense to open in Toronto,” she says.
This may be the first of many future SMG-branded shops, as Fox says she’d consider opening additional offices—if she is able to find talented employees and business continues to grow. She says it’s also likely she will eventually open up shop south of the border, where many SMG clients are based.
“The reality is most of our work is in the U.S.,” she says, adding that even in during the recession not one of her U.S. clients has cut back on social media spending.
If that all goes according to Fox’s plan, Social Media Group won’t be a small business for much longer. “The plan is and always will remain world domination,” she says. –Russ Martin
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