Copyright © 2018 Darren Woolley

ISBN: 978-1-925846-55-3 (eBook)

Published by Vivid Publishing
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Subjects include: marketing management, strategic management, marketing and advertising, digital marketing, marketing strategy

What the world is saying about the Top 50 Marketing Management Posts:

 

Darren Woolley and the TrinityP3 team really do have their fingers on the pulse of global advertising, and what brands need to do to adapt and prosper in today’s hyper-competitive markets. The tools, processes and recommendations in these articles provide guidance that every advertiser can benefit from.

Kevin Freedman, Chief Executive, Freedman International

Darren Woolley was the last face I expected to see nightly in my bed, but the distinctive books with his face on the cover are a great find. The succinct posts are insightful, informative and inspiring. There’s a level of authenticity that makes the book refreshing to read. Essential reading for practically improving your marketing leadership. Finish it quickly to avoid alarming your partner further!

Ben Wilks, General Manager Marketing, Volkswagen Group Australia

When we are all so short on time but need to keep pace with the change that is going to be more than just a series of the latest buzzwords, Darren is elegantly able to distil some of the core topics that really matter, answer some of the pressing questions, and importantly, encourage us all to ask the next question.

Rita Harding, Executive Director, Marketing & Campaigns, Transport for NSW

In a world full of noise, Darren sets himself apart with his authentic, human and resilient approach – all the attributes of a great brand. He has a keen understanding of the balance between organisational effectiveness, brand-building and genuine connection with customers. While others are chasing headlines, Darren is chasing tangible, measurable outcomes. He is relentless in continuing to challenge us all – marketers and businesses alike – to think differently and never become complacent.

Nicole Sheffield, Executive General Manager, Community & Consumer, Australia Post

Darren Woolley is one of those rare beasts: both a genuine expert and a leader of experts. Battling an out-of-control agency roster, with a media plan that’s a black box, spiralling agency fees, and declining advertising performance? For help with managing the complexities of modern marketing, I highly recommend Darren and TrinityP3.

Jon Bradshaw, Director, Brand Traction

Darren can always be relied upon to say it how it is, in an industry that rarely does. And he’s not afraid to question the common marketing rhetoric, if it’s not common sense. Like when everyone is obsessing about digital transformation, he turns digital posts into an analog book.

Brent Smart, CMO, IAG

The authors

Michael Farmer1 is the Executive Chairman of TrinityP3 USA and author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter: an Inside View of Fee-cutting Clients, Profit-hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies, which won the Axiom Gold Business Book Award for the best marketing/advertising book of 2016. He currently serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Branding and Integrated Communications at The City College of New York and is at work on a new book about the challenges facing chief marketing officers.

Darren Woolley2 is the founder and Global CEO of TrinityP33. With his background as an analytical scientist and creative problem-solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought-leader on all aspects of marketing management. Darren is a negotiator, author and founding member of the Marketing FIRST Forum4. He is also a past Chair of the Australian Marketing Institute5, an ex-medical scientist and an ex-creative director. And in his spare time, he sleeps.

David Angell6 is the General Manager of the fast-growing Melbourne market and the national Head of Media at TrinityP3. In these roles, David brings his media-specific, broader commercial and relationship expertise to bear on a diverse range of projects, with one core objective – achieving beneficial results for our clients. David has been a media agency practitioner for 15 years, holding several senior positions in the UK and Australia. During this time he has worked with a number of blue-chip organisations.

Anton Buchner7 is a Senior Consultant with TrinityP3. He is one of Australia’s leading customer engagement consultants, with an eye for discovering greater marketing value and a love of listening to what customers are really saying about a brand. Anton has helped take local and global businesses to the next level, including Microsoft, Nestlé, P&G, Gloria Jean’s, Foxtel and American Express, among others. Anton is an innovative lateral thinker with a passion for refocusing business teams and strategies, creating visionary data-driven communication plans, and making sense of a more complex digital marketing environment.

Christopher Sewell8 is a TrinityP3 Business Director with wide-ranging knowledge of all areas of the advertising and procurement world. He specialises in helping companies understand the environmental impact of their marketing spend. Chris is also the CEO of The Gaia Partnership9, which has built the online CO2counter application to measure carbon emissions in all forms of marketing communications.

Stephan Argent10 is a former agency planner from England and has held senior roles in agencies in both Canada and the US. Recently he was Vice President of Digital Media at CTV and is now President of Listenmore11, Canada’s leading independent marketing and agency search advisory and consultancy.

Julian Barrans12 is the Business Director, South-East Asia for TrinityP3. He has worked as a business, marketing and branding professional for over 30 years, with more than half of that time in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, working both client side and agency side. He is a creative business leader who truly understands the importance of team building and working with the right partners, as well as making decisions based on sound business strategy and practices.

Dan Hestbaek is the co-founder and CEO of Hestbaek Consult, the leading marketing management consultancy in the Nordic region. He is recognised as a global thought-leader on trends and behaviour in the advertising industry, as well as a keynote speaker on best-practice standards for both advertisers and agencies.

Areef Vohra13 is a former Senior Consultant with TrinityP3. Before joining TrinityP3, he was Managing Director of Active International Australia, the world’s largest independent corporate trade company. He has held senior positions with several companies, helping Australia’s leading media agency and owner brands with their senior talent acquisition strategies.

Adrian Jenkins14 is a founder and Director of Financial Progression15, a firm of chartered accountants that specialises in marketing contract compliance. They help the marketing, procurement and finance directors of household-name brands achieve financial transparency and understanding in their agency relationships.

Trevor Young is a keynote marketing speaker, strategist and adviser who helps companies and individuals harness the power of owned, earned and social media to build public recognition for their business or personal brand. He blogs at PR Warrior16, hosts the podcast Reputation Revolution, and authored the book MicroDomination. In 2015, Brand Quarterly included Trevor on its global ‘50 Marketing Thought Leaders over 50’ list. Follow Trevor on Twitter @trevoryoung.

Richard Knott17 is the Regional Director, APAC, for Celtra, and a co-founder of Puzzle Creative Technology Solutions. He is also the Chair of the IAB Mobile Advertising Council in Australia. With over 20 years’ experience in advertising across most mediums and in many countries, he is passionate about the power of creativity and how it is woefully under-utilised in digital.

Peter Bray18 is the Director, Business Development, ANZ for Celtra, and a co-founder of Puzzle Creative Technology Solutions. He has been riding the ad-tech wave for the past seven years and feels it is time for marketing organisations to focus on delivering better and more relevant advertising experiences to their customers. Prior to Celtra, Peter spent time at Forrester and InMobi, and was the President of the International Advertising Association (IAA) Young Professionals Australia Chapter.

Mike Morgan19 is a founder and Director of High Profile Enterprises20, an agency that specialises in improving business performance online using a range of search engine optimisation, content marketing and social media strategies. High Profile Enterprises was the first New Zealand agency to appear on the Content Marketing Institute’s (US) ‘Content Marketing Agencies’ list. Mike has been included on lists of the ‘Top 100 most followed SEO experts on Twitter’ and ‘41 rising stars in SEO you should follow’.

 

Footnotes

CONTENTS

Introduction

Our 19th year of operation sees TrinityP3 continue to develop and experience growth – not just growth through our expansion globally, but the growth and development of new tools, resources and our consulting offering.

The consulting business and our offering has matured, with projects more focused on strategic management consulting, including restructuring the marketing function across a range of client categories, and improving performance metrics for marketing and the agencies and suppliers working with them. With Michael Farmer and his team in the US, we developed a new ScopeMetric Unit (SMUTM)1 for media known as the M-SMU, and we’ve published an Agency Fee Decision Tree2 to assist marketers and agencies in assessing the best agency fee model.

It is by being responsive to the needs of our clients that we have developed new and innovative solutions to many of the major challenges facing clients today. We call them the Big Six, as follows (in no particular order):

1. improving marketing performance and especially driving growth, at a time when many businesses struggle to deliver top-line growth

2. assisting in the digital and data transformation of marketing through technology that allows organisations to become customer-centric at scale

3. improving media transparency and maximising media value and investment performance in the face of a murky media supply chain

4. optimising the performance of marketing agencies and suppliers to eliminate waste and duplication and deliver improved results

5. becoming more agile and nimble in marketing implementation, and being more responsive more quickly to the market and customers

6. delivering growth in an ethical, social and environmentally sustainable marketing manner against the UN sustainability initiatives.

This has brought a renewed focus on our clients, to ensure we deliver the maximum results in addressing their most pressing marketing challenges.

In analysing the results for 2018, it is great to see that a large number of posts in the top 50 are written by the TrinityP3 consultants, including Michael Farmer, our Chairman in the US; David Angell, our Head of Media; Julian Barrans, our Business Director in South-East Asia; Anton Buchner; Christopher Sewell; former consultant Areef Vohra; and Mike Morgan, Director of High Profile Enterprises.

Also included are contributions from current and past members of the Marketing FIRST Forum: Stephan Argent in Canada and Dan Hestbaek in Denmark. And there is a healthy dose of thinking from our guest authors, including Adrian Jenkins from Financial Progression, the PR Warrior Trevor Young, and Peter Bray and Richard Knott, the co-founders of Puzzle Creative Technology Solutions.

Of course, without Mike and his team at High Profile Enterprises, who manage our SEO, social media and content, this would be a much smaller publication read by a much smaller audience.

I also want to thank all of those people – marketers, advertisers, procurement professionals and agency personnel – who took the time to provide feedback on our first five books of Top 50 Marketing Management Posts.

Looking back across the collection, this book is definitely becoming a compendium of the top issues and topics that have caught our attention in the past 12 months, and those that have prompted interest and engagement from you – the marketing, advertising, media and procurement professionals around the globe.

Today, the TrinityP3 blog has almost 1500 posts covering a wide range of marketing management topics and is read by more than 200,000 people each year, a number that continues to grow. We are grateful to everyone who participates and engages in the conversation, either by commenting on social media or sharing our content with their colleagues and friends.

When we reviewed the blog posts with the highest readership during 2018 to prepare this new edition, we were pleasantly surprised to find that 111 posts had been published in the five previous editions – 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 – and continue to enjoy huge popularity.

These evergreen articles are listed on the following pages so that if there is a post you are interested in, you can either read it in one of the books, which are available from most online bookstores, or on the TrinityP3 blog.

Thank you again to Paul Smitz for editing and proofing to make us all seem a little more coherent and intelligent. Thank you to Xinying Cheng for the layout, finished art and design to make it all look great, and the production management to make it all happen with a minimum of fuss. Thank you also to our printer, 17print, for committing our thoughts and insights to ink on paper.

And a big thank you to our ever-expanding group of clients at TrinityP3, especially those who have continued to work with us over the years. It is through your engagement and support that we are able to develop and provide greater insights and share the trends, to help in some small way to improve the advertising, media, digital, data and marketing process for all.

Thank you also to all of our readers and commentators, and those who share our content with others.

This is the best of our 19th year. We look forward to writing, publishing and sharing more with you in the coming year.

Thank you.

Darren Woolley, founder and Global CEO
TrinityP3 Marketing Management Consultants

 

Evergreen marketing management posts of 2013

1. How many billable hours are there in a year? – Darren Woolley, 22 March 2007

2. Of the three types of collaboration, which type do you need? – Shawn Callahan, 5 October 2012

3. Defining the scope of advertising agency services to determine agency compensation – Darren Woolley, 7 September 2011

4. 12 innovative media options you may not see proposed by your media agency – Darren Woolley, 18 June 2012

5. How to build effective marketing workshops – Andrew Armour, 8 February 2013

6. A step-by-step approach to calculating ad agency resource rates and head-hour costs – Darren Woolley, 22 October 2012

7. Two different ways to assess and evaluate agency performance – Darren Woolley, 1 February 2013

8. Some of the differences between traditional and digital media planning and buying – Darren Woolley, 1 June 2012

9. What is included in your advertising agency overhead cost and what is not? – Esther Selvanayagam, 31 August 2012

10. The importance of chemistry meetings in the advertising agency selection process – Darren Woolley, 7 December 2011

11. The importance of overhead in agency compensation – Darren Woolley, 14 July 2011

12. How to calculate your agency head-hour rates – Darren Woolley, 13 April 2011

13. Media negotiations and media buying benchmarking – Darren Woolley, 9 December 2011

14. Replacing ‘above the line’ (ATL) and ‘below the line’ (BTL) with content and channel – Darren Woolley, 1 July 2010

15. When should an advertiser pay pitch fees when selecting a new advertising agency? – Darren Woolley, 9 January 2012

16. Do you want a digital agency or a technology partner? – Darren Woolley, 22 February 2013

17. Nine kinds of agency pitch process and counting – Nathan Hodges, 29 July 2013

18. How the scientific method can be used to ‘test and learn’ marketing strategy – Darren Woolley, 16 December 2011

19. Three ways to make sure that social media expert is really an expert – Darren Woolley, 7 December 2012

20. Why in-house advertising services work … and why they don’t – Darren Woolley, 25 February 2013

21. The world’s worst advertising agency scope of work defined by a marketer – Darren Woolley, 14 May 2012

 

Evergreen marketing management posts of 2014

1. Top-down or bottom-up budgeting: Which approach is best? – Darren Woolley, 21 February 2014

2. The role of marketing procurement: a procurement leader perspective – Darren Woolley, 13 June 2012

3. The important differences between scope of work and schedule of work – Darren Woolley, 4 December 2013

4. Five top trends for call centres and the pricing model dilemma – Anton Buchner, 18 September 2013

5. Five brands that have successfully reinvented themselves in the digital age – Anton Buchner, 24 February 2014

6. 10 ways marketing and procurement can work together for better results – David Little, 17 March 2014

7. Why service-level agreements (SLAs) are not relevant to marketing services contracts – Darren Woolley, 24 August 2008

8. How many KPIs are optimal to drive agency performance? – Darren Woolley, 2 September 2013

9. 10 sponsorship principles that procurement must consider – David Little, 17 February 2014

10. How to avoid the 10 classic strategic decision-making traps – The Buyer, 12 February 2014

11. 10 brands that have successfully reinvented themselves – Stephan Argent, 6 November 2013

12. Six things every marketer should know about great pitch consulting – Anita Zanesco, 9 September 2013

13. The important differences between scope of work and schedule of work – Darren Woolley, 4 December 2013

14. Top 10 considerations when selecting a new media agency – Darren Woolley, 23 November 2011

15. A simple way to check your advertising agency fees – Darren Woolley, 16 April 2014

16. Five ways agency account management can become indispensable again – Anita Zanesco, 30 September 2013

17. 10 things procurement needs to know about digital marketing – David Little, 7 February 2014

18. Defining the changing role of the advertising agency – Stephan Argent, 31 May 2013

19. The hidden flaws in agency timesheets and retainers – Darren Woolley, 23 May 2014

20. Did you want collaboration, cooperation or coordination with that marketing process? – Darren Woolley, 27 August 2012

21. How procurement grades marketing expenditure strategically – The Buyer, 25 October 2013

22. Who does your media agency really work for? – Stephen Wright, 18 October 2013

 

Evergreen marketing management posts of 2015

1. What’s the role of today’s advertising agency? – Stephan Argent, 24 April 2015

2. How to provide fact-based feedback to unsuccessful agencies in a pitch – Darren Woolley, 15 April 2013

3. Measuring the 4Cs in selecting agencies and managing agency relationships – Darren Woolley, 14 October 2013

4. Top 10 ways to avoid trouble when using music in advertising – Darren Woolley, 7 November 2011

5. How do you manage a successful transition to a new agency? – Darren Woolley, 5 November 2014

6. The difference between paying consultants on percentage of savings and success fees – Darren Woolley, 25 February 2009

7. Agency websites: who’s your target audience? – Stephan Argent, 4 January 2013

8. Why advertising agencies can no longer ignore conflicts of interest – Darren Woolley, 1 September 2014

9. Reasons why performance-based remuneration or payment by results often fail – Darren Woolley, 4 September 2010

10. The best producer model for TV advertising production – Clive Duncan, 5 July 2013

11. 10 tips that are the answer to a winning pitch chemistry meeting – Anita Zanesco, 21 May 2014

12. How fees are calculated for agency compensation – Darren Woolley, 16 August 2011

13. Marketers should set production budgets or pay the consequences – Clive Duncan, 24 May 2013

14. Challenging the payment terms for television commercial production services – Clive Duncan, 22 June 2012

15. Trading desks, demand-side platforms and programmatic buying explained – Darren Woolley, 8 September 2014

16. What type of marketing management consulting do you need? – Darren Woolley, 23 December 2013

17. Top 10 questions to ask a strategic marketing consultant before you engage them – Darren Woolley, 21 November 2011

18. How neuromarketing provides richer insights into the customer journey – Beate Duesterwald, 25 May 2015

19. Things to consider when selecting a new advertising agency – Darren Woolley, 13 February 2012

 

Evergreen marketing management posts of 2016

1. Client–agency relationships in advertising: four problems that cause breakdowns – Zena Churchill, 3 February 2016

2. The latest trends in agency remuneration – Darren Woolley, 4 January 2016

3. Three more brands that have successfully reinvented themselves in the digital age – Anton Buchner, 18 April 2016

4. Five comm on business email mistakes that will derail your relationships – Anita Zanesco, 9 December 2013

5. How digital marketing fits into the marketing mix – Anton Buchner, 14 November 2014

6. 10 programmatic questions to ask your prospective media agency – Stephan Argent, 30 September 2015

7. What is included in the overhead when calculating the agency retainer? – Darren Woolley, 31 March 2010

8. Are your agencies agents or independent contractors? – Darren Woolley, 9 September 2015

9. Strategic ways to use media added value – Darren Woolley, 22 February 2011

10. 10 essential principles of agency remuneration – Stephan Argent, 22 July 2013

11. The role of procurement in marketing from a brand marketer’s perspective – Darren Woolley, 20 June 2012

12. How the best of the best approach digital marketing – Anton Buchner, 19 November 2014

13. Defining value-based agency compensation – Darren Woolley, 5 October 2011

14. Risk vs reward in value and performance-based agency compensation – Darren Woolley, 25 November 2013

15. Four thoughts on advertiser–agency relationships: Colgate-Palmolive and GPY&R – Darren Woolley, 21 January 2015

16. 25 client and agency personality types that will influence relationships – Darren Woolley, 18 January 2016

17. Top 10 ways to ensure transparency and accountability in all your print productions – Darren Woolley, 28 November 2011

18. Top five client accounting demands that make agencies feel unvalued – Nick Hand, 12 December 2012

19. The five universal principles of successful pitch management – Nathan Hodges, 17 July 2013

20. Client–agency relationships: confessions of an ex-client – Bruno Gralpois, 22 June 2016

21. The importance of business ethics: goodbye to corporate greed? – Jeremy Richman, 6 November 2015

 

Evergreen marketing management posts of 2017

1. What are the biggest challenges facing marketing today? – Darren Woolley, 12 July 2017

2. Managing Marketing: the challenges facing the advertising agency business model – Darren Woolley, 21 April 2017

3. Communicating with consumers in the technology-driven environment – Kylie Ridler-Dutton, 6 January 2016

4. How to define an agency scope of work to deliver increased value – Darren Woolley, 15 March 2017

5. Agency remuneration: a loser’s game – Michael Farmer, 24 April 2017

6. Is there any difference between an agency and a marketing supplier? – Darren Woolley, 6 April 2016

7. Managing Marketing: the challenges of marketing and advertising in the financial services category – Darren Woolley, 9 June 2017

8. 12 reasons why brainstorming does not work – Darren Woolley, 19 September 2012

9. Why are you still paying production mark-ups to your agency? – Lyndon Brill, 4 May 2015

10. Why working and non-working spend analysis does not work anymore – Darren Woolley, 29 August 2016

11. Why the difference between political and government advertising matters – Darren Woolley, 2 August 2013

12. Eight ‘less obvious’ reasons why agencies lose pitches – David Angell, 26 May 2017

13. The importance of financial analysis in determining marketing priorities – Darren Woolley, 1 February 2017

14. Ignorance of pricing is ruining ad agencies – Michael Farmer, 28 June 2017

15. The important difference between collaboration, relationship and performance benchmarking – Darren Woolley, 30 June 2011

16. How many brief types does an advertiser need to brief their agency? – Darren Woolley, 14 June 2017

17. How procurement is becoming customer-focused – The Buyer, 9 August 2013

18. A new approach to segmenting marketing and advertising agencies and suppliers – Darren Woolley, 17 September 2012

19. The transition from one agency to the next is becoming more complex – Darren Woolley, 30 May 2016

20. What is the best agency remuneration model for every advertiser? – Darren Woolley, 1 August 2016

21. The secret to transitioning from print to digital media – Chris Sewell, 16 February 2015

22. A prototype model for the marketing communications process – Darren Woolley, 3 April 2013

23. Which comes first: the media plan or the creative? – Bill Merrick, 8 March 2017

24. The problem with digital transformation – Erik Ingvoldstad, 1 March 2017

25. The negative impact of overworked agency staff on agency remuneration – Darren Woolley, 13 February 2017

26. Losing pitches, part 2: a further seven ‘less obvious’ reasons why agencies lose pitches – David Angell, 11 August 2017

27. Has the future of the media agency just been shown to us? – David Angell, 14 September 2016

28. Managing Marketing: dealing with the rapidly increasing complexity of the media market – Darren Woolley, 11 September 2017

 

Footnotes

POST 1

Confused about the advertising industry? Who isn’t? Read on!

Posted 13 June 2018 by Michael Farmer

Holding company shares are falling. Their ad agencies are shrinking, with low morale, low salaries and hiring freezes. Accenture and Deloitte are the new, growing competitors. Advertisers are cutting spend but investing in-house. Chief creative officers (CCOs) are disappearing, not entirely due to sexual harassment charges.

Confused by some or all of this? Read on!

1. What’s going on with the holding companies?

Holding companies are entering the third phase of their strategic development.

Phase One (‘squeeze the fat’) lasted from 1980 to 2005. Overstaffed agencies – holdovers from the commission era – were bought and then encouraged to raise their profit margins, from 5% to 10% to 15%, through tough annual budgets. The agencies downsized, and they could certainly afford to do so. Downsizings were appropriate.

Phase Two (‘maintain/grow under fee pressures’) began after 2005. Holding companies continued to set ambitious targets, but their agencies downsized instead of managing price and fees upwards in line with growing workloads. Agencies cut staff and juniorised, eliminating much of their senior talent and leaving too few people to handle growing (and undocumented) scopes of work. Quality suffered, along with relationships and fees. The focus on downsizing rather than on price management turned out to be a major strategic blunder.

Phase Three (‘centralise and downgrade the silos’) is the recent holding company development. Agencies are short of talent and insufficiently integrated or creative, so holding companies are taking over as super-agencies.

Publicis Groupe calls this ‘The Power of One’. WPP’s concept is ‘horizontality’. IPG and Omnicom have yet to brand their approach, but they’re out selling it anyway. The super-agency organisation faces a dilemma: it is staffed by the very agency people whose poor managerial practices created capability problems in the first case.

Holding companies are aware of the need to upgrade and correct managerial deficiencies, but they have little experience to draw on. They must certainly document scopes of work and negotiate fees appropriately lest they repeat the errors that plagued their agencies.

2. What’s going on with advertisers?

Since 1980, advertisers have been governed by ‘increased shareholder value’, which means executives must deliver results or find another job. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) jumped on the digital/social bandwagon and migrated media spend.

At the same time, they significantly increased digital/social scope-of-work workloads for their agencies, reasoning that digital/social work was either cheap or free compared with TV/print/radio. Lurking in the background, though, were the non-consuming millennials, who became the largest demographic group; e-commerce (that is, Amazon); and the financial meltdown of 2008.

The net result: brand growth ceased, and digital/social spend did not provide a solution. CMOs lost credibility and their job security declined to 3–4 years.

Procurement stepped in to aggressively cut costs. They slashed agency fees and media spend. This, of course, accelerated the decline of the outside ad agencies, which did not put up enough of a fight. Advertisers are now investing in in-house agencies to do the ‘low value’ work in the scopes of work, but surely they will be tempted to go the whole hog and do more high-value creative work, replacing or at least competing with their outside agencies.

In the meantime, brands remain stagnant.

3. What’s going on with scopes of work?

Digital/social marketing significantly altered scopes of work. A 1993 ‘traditional’ scope of work requiring 50 creatives contained about 400 executions – eight per creative per year. By 2013, the count had increased to 600 executions – 12 per creative per year.

In 2018, the integrated scope of work contains as many as 15,000 deliverables, involving email marketing, Facebook posts, and a variety of little social executions that can see a typical creative cranking out 300 deliverables per year, or one per day, with little strategic content.

Predictably, few clients think that they need high-cost agencies to do this kind of work, so the scopes of work are migrating elsewhere, particularly to in-house agencies and to low-cost countries like India. High-priced CCOs have no obvious role in this high-volume world, so agencies may begin cutting them out.

4. What’s going on with the consulting firms?

Management consulting has been a growth industry since the 1970s, and consultants have perfected the art of doing strategic work and then implementing projects to generate results. Consultants have focused on organisation, manufacturing, distribution, supply-chain management, cost reduction, digitalisation and information technology (IT). Low brand growth is now getting their attention.

Deloitte and Accenture are big players, acquiring media and creative agencies at a rapid clip. They are not trying to ‘get into the agency business’, as many agencies believe. The consultants see their newly acquired agencies as part of their implementation capability, required to retain clients after brand strategy work has been done.

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What does this mean? Agency brands are under serious threat, but the agencies brought this on themselves. Their holding company owners have no option but to do a better job of it, although they must now contend with in-house and consulting firm competitors along with all the other management challenges associated with organisational transformation.

Where will this end? This is a question that cannot be answered today. Let’s hope that it won’t take an autopsy to answer it in the future.

This post was first published at MediaVillage1.

Do you carry out detailed reviews with all your agencies? Are these reviews quarterly, half-yearly or annual? Are contracts and remuneration reviewed annually with each agency in the roster? Contact us to learn about roster performance management2.

 

Footnotes