Visible Amps Up Focus On Agency Channel

  • by May 10, 2011
With increasing numbers of agencies requesting greater amounts and types of social media data, monitoring/analytics company Visible Technologies has tripled the number of its staff devoted exclusively to agency business.

Todd Harrington, after building the firm's agency business to 44% of total revenues over the past two+ years, will now be joined by Eric Forst and Eric Berkowitz on the agency-only front.

Forst, formerly Visible's West Coast account executive, was named vice president of strategic agency partnerships. Based in Los Angeles, he will focus on strategic planning and technological fulfillment for agencies worldwide.

Harrington, formerly vice president of agency partnership strategy, remains on board as vice president of agency relationships, based in New York, where he will focus on day-to-day work with Visible's agency clients. Those include Interpublic's UM, Omnicom's Tribal DDB Worldwide, Dentsu's mcgarrybowen, Publicis Groupe's Razorfish, independent True Worldwide, and WPP's GroupM and M80 units.

Also based in New York, Berkowitz will serve as manager of agency partnerships. He was formerly an account manager for both brand and agency clients.

WPP is one of Visible's funders, so Harrington will also work on a "strategy specifically for the WPP family," Visible Chief Marketing Officer Debbie DeGabrielle told Online Media Daily.

That strategy will presumably include WPP creative agencies as well. Harrington, a veteran of creative shops such as Saatchi & Saatchi and WPP's Y&R -- recently told OMD that having succeeded in getting media agencies and public relations firms on board the social media wagon, a key goal is now to sign up more creative shops. "We're the world's largest focus group," he explained.

Overall, Harrington pointed to far greater agency acceptance of social media monitoring and analytics over the past year. Previously, he said, "it was like a foreign language to agencies. ... Like a kid in the corner, [we're] now allowed to come to the front row."

Through April of this year, Visible's agency business had grown 24.9% over the same period in 2010.

Visible, which launched a new platform last October and now boasts of more than 1 billion posts in its database, said it is developing greater demographic and psychographic segmentation capabilities, more forms of reporting and pre-configured dashboards.

One upcoming trend, Harrington said, will be using social media data to determine "intent to buy."

DeGabrielle pointed to "two very large agencies planning to add very large market research capabilities in house," as well as recent large increases in agencies' pharmaceutical clients getting into social media, noting that Visible's platform can help ensure the pharma firms are in "regulatory compliance."

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