TrinityP3 Blog - Trends in Strategic Marketing Management

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This post is by Michael Farmer, 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.

Did you hear about the infamous Army briefing during the Vietnam War? “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.” The briefing referred to a terrible act, the annihilation of a Vietnamese village by overwhelming American firepower, carried out during a terrible war that was lost in any case.

So it goes when tactics, rather than strategies dominate a conflict. Less gruesome, but relevant is the bungled tactical war between advertisers and agencies. Well-meaning tactical “best practices,” used extensively and nearly universally by marketing procurement departments, are worst practices that destroy agency capabilities and annihilate partnerships. Unfortunately, agencies are equally complicit in their destruction.

The Relationship War began, like many wars, with a skirmish and a few opening shots. In the ’90’s, media commissions were giving way to labor-based fees, and advertisers were clueless about agency headcounts, salaries, overhead rates, and profit margins (let’s leave aside the stupidity of adopting this labor-based approach).

Advertisers asked their agencies to provide the necessary cost details. Agencies demurred, offended by the request, failing to recognize that procurement folks had been used to knowing intimate details from their manufacturing and distribution suppliers, and they expected the same transparency from their marketing communications suppliers.

The agency refusal to cooperate infuriated procurement. As one exasperated executive told me in 2003, “Who the hell do they think they are, anyway? A bunch of prima donnas. I’m going to whack their fees by 10% — maybe that will send them a message.”

Agency fee cutting became procurement’s raison d’être, and over the decades fee-cutting took on many sophisticated forms: Continue reading “When “Best Practices” are Worst Practices”

Posted in agency solutions, customer relationship management, industry news & trends, interesting observations, strategic management | Comments Off

Six reasons why you may have many more agencies and suppliers than you need

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

We provide a very popular solution called Agency Roster Alignment where we analyse and map the current roster against the advertiser’s strategic needs, spend and satisfaction with the incumbents.

Some of the really common responses when we report back on the current rosters is, first, many are surprised at the number of agencies and marketing vendors on the roster and, second, how they could have ended up in this situation with so many agencies and suppliers. Let me deal with the first response and then expand on the second in the observation points below.

First off, when we talk about rosters we are not simply talking about the major agencies such as creative, media and digital, plus perhaps a PR company, a design studio, and that sales promotion firm you use occasionally. We are talking about all of the agencies, suppliers and vendors that you spend your budget with, including market research firms, event companies, mail houses, technology solutions providers, and everyone in between.

Just as marketing has become more complex, the number of vendors, agencies and suppliers has grown too. But the fact is there are some very solid reasons as to why you may have more agencies and suppliers than you need. And that is not a good thing, as each extra one on your roster is consuming time and money by just being there. Continue reading “Six reasons why you may have many more agencies and suppliers than you need”

Posted in agency solutions, interesting observations, marketing process optimisation, marketing procurement, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off

17 ways advertisers can make their advertising production more transparent

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Lyndon Brill

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This post is by Lyndon Brill, Agency Remuneration Expert at TrinityP3. Lyndon has worked at the highest level in the advertising industry for over 10 years and is ideally suited and experienced to assist our clients in achieving their maximum growth potential.

In light of the recent ANA Production Transparency Report in the US, and the growing trend for the ‘Big 6’ Networks to establish separate brands for production services, here is a list of key considerations for your current agency contracts. TrinityP3 believes terms and conditions should be transparent, and not support hidden agendas, especially where an agency may engage a related production supplier. So here are our seventeen areas or principles when reviewing your agency and production contracts:

1. Review your agency contracts regularly

The contract should contain transparent terms, which are clearly understood by both parties, and reviewed at least every third-year due to technological advancements and process efficiency within industry practices. Do you know exactly what the terms and conditions are of your agreement? If not, you should, transparency is paramount.

2. Be clear on the type of relationship your contract defines

Contracts are generally one of two formats. This is either one of Principal and Agent, or alternatively Principal and Contractor. Where the Agency is acting as an Agent, the Agency has a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the client, and procure production at the best possible price. However, where the contract engages the agency as a Principal and Independent Contractor, often terms allow for the agency to mark-up or provide less disclosure and transparency over the sourcing of external production services.

There has been a recent shift towards these agreements where the Agency acts as the Principal with production suppliers, to limit the ‘risk’ of audit and potential compensation in the case of a breach of terms of the agreement. The Agency engages suppliers, which are often deemed external 3^rd parties (although often related), which are not subject to the terms and conditions of any Master Services Agreement.

3. Investigate contracting third party production companies directly

A direct Production Services Agreement with the related 3^rd party production house is always recommended, which should include the same transparent terms as the Agency agreement, and especially include the right to audit. This supports the move away from ‘fixed price’ and ‘non-auditable’ external production agreements, which are common within the industry. Continue reading “17 ways advertisers can make their advertising production more transparent”

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, agency solutions, industry news & trends, marketing process optimisation, marketing procurement, television & electronic production | Comments Off

Do Clients Get The Agencies They Deserve?

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Stephan Argent

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This post is by Stephan Argent, President of Agency Search and Media Management Consultancy Le Riche Argent and a member of the Marketing FIRST Forum, the global consulting collective co-founded by TrinityP3

You’ve likely heard David Ogilvy’s famous words, ‘clients get the advertising they deserve’ but when it comes to their agencies… do clients get the agencies they deserve?

Over the last seven years or so, we’ve done enough marketer problem resolution work and agency searches to be able to answer that question with some conviction.

The answer is unequivocally, yes.

Invariably, agency relationship challenges can be traced back to their marketing masters and are a reflection of how the agency is being managed. But if you’re reading this with some scepticism and thinking, wait a minute, this is like saying dogs look their owners – consider these behavioural attributes: Continue reading “Do Clients Get The Agencies They Deserve?”

Posted in agency search & selection, agency solutions, customer relationship management, interesting observations | Comments Off

Take the Pledge! End Madison Avenue’s Manslaughter!

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Michael Farmer

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Madison Avenue’s self-destructive practices need to come to an end! In the wake of a decade or more of marketing cost reductions, CMOs have lost credibility and power; procurement departments have confused benchmarking with marketing, and demoralised agencies have seen their capabilities severely compromised through downsizing, juniorising, and Scope of Work inflation.

Cost reduction programs have run their course. They were never a credible substitute for brand growth as a way of delivering shareholder value.

There have been few strategic winners during the past decade, other than the disrupters — Google, Facebook, Amazon and the unicorns of online commerce. Legacy brands are languishing. Millennials remain a mystery. Digital and social marketing are question marks. Trust has eroded. Advertisers and agencies alike are battered like addicts caught in a vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior, their relationships increasingly unmanageable. Madison Avenue’s Manslaughter (MAM) has taken its toll.

Advertisers and agencies must develop a new paradigm and work in unaccustomed ways to restore brand growth and profitability. Continue reading “Take the Pledge! End Madison Avenue’s Manslaughter!”

Posted in agency solutions, customer relationship management, Evalu8ing - Relationship Performance Monitoring, green marketing & sustainability, industry news & trends, interesting observations, strategic management | Comments Off

Why performance based payments need to be an incentive not a disincentive

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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This is the eighth in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media and advertising today. The Golden Minute series is an attempt to prove Albert Einstein right when he said “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple”.

But he also said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. So we will leave it for you to judge. Please let us know here if there is a topic you would like us to cover in a Golden Minute.

How do you create high-performance teams?

Well if you look at what often passes as performance based compensation, you would think it is about taking money away from the agency before then setting an unreasonable and unrealistic performance metric, and then asking the agency to work at getting their money back.

Talk about all stick and no carrot.

Is it any wonder that so many marketers report that their agency performance remuneration efforts failed? Let’s be honest for a minute and admit that most of these performance models were really about reducing the agency fee and had very little to do with truly wanting to encourage performance. The technique would be applied usually as a way to get the agency to reduce their overall fee by 10% to 15% by placing it ‘at risk’ for an opportunity of earning back perhaps a maximum of 20%. Continue reading “Why performance based payments need to be an incentive not a disincentive”

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, industry news & trends, marketing procurement, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off

Managing Marketing: Dealing with the rapidly increasing complexity of the media market

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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Managing Marketing is a podcast hosted by TrinityP3 Founder and Global CEO, Darren Woolley. Each podcast is a conversation with a thought-leader, professional or practitioner of marketing and communications on the issues, insights and opportunities in the marketing management category. Ideal for marketers, advertisers, media and commercial communications professionals.

Scott Hagedorn, CEO of the world’s fastest growing agency, Hearts & Science talks with Darren on the important relationship between science and intuition in advertising, especially for marketers dealing with an increasingly complex world. The similarities and differences between agile marketing and the scientific method and role data play in decision-making.

You can listen to the podcast here:

Follow Managing Marketing on Soundcloud or iTunes

Transcription:

Darren:

Welcome to Managing Marketing and today we are at Mumbrella360 in Sydney, and I have the opportunity of chatting with Scott Hagedorn, CEO of Hearts and Sciences. Welcome, Scott.

Scott:

Hi, How’re you doing?

Darren:

Thanks for doing the trip across the big pond from the U.S.

Scott:

It’s been a very warm reception here in Australia. It’s been actually nice to see all the lights and the vivid stuff all set up.

Darren:

And I also think it’s a warm reception apart from Australians supposedly being very open hearted, what you’ve come to talk about and share is something I think people are really interested in hearing and that’s because there is a lot of confusion for marketers.

The world is incredibly complex; marketing is becoming more complex all the time. It’s not so much the answer that I hear but at least an approach to finding solutions.

The complexity and chaos of the media market

Scott:

Absolutely, and what we are trying to do right now I think is capitalise a little bit on the chaos and complexity that exist in the market. As we see things that are happening right now there are some pretty severe holes in the syndicated data sets especially around mobile and over the top and in some in-app formats where the data is just not there for the planners to utilise.

Then on top of that there’s concerns about digital brand safety and digital efficacy and whether or not it really works, and have we pushed the digital vendors too far down with procurement to where their CPM’s are actually generating a lot of the fraud and viewability issues.

Then you have some pretty complex supply and demand issues happening in the TV – traditional linear TV market places – where the actual inventory themselves, the pools are drying up and the costs are going up.

So it’s very complex for the marketers now to try and sort all that out and at the same time, you have a whole new kit of tools, with audience-based planning and data and data management platforms and all the technology that’s now seeking to automate what has been historically IO based buying and just all of that swirling around must be complicated for today’s marketer.

Continue reading “Managing Marketing: Dealing with the rapidly increasing complexity of the media market”

Posted in customer relationship management, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, media planning & buying, Podcasts, return on investment | Comments Off

How long payment terms impact client / agency relationships

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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This is the seventh in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media and advertising today. The Golden Minute series is an attempt to prove Albert Einstein right when he said “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple”.

Let me be completely up-front here, this is not just an issue for advertising agencies, it is also an issue for consulting companies like mine. There are many major companies who will put you through a detailed and protracted procurement process, negotiate your tendered price down and then inform you that they have payment terms of 90 days or more.

Others are less obnoxious in that they state their payment terms up front, which, depending on the type and size of the project being tendered, allows us the opportunity to politely withdraw from the process. There are plenty of other more reasonable companies willing to pay for our services on 30 days and sometimes less so that we do not need to waste our time on companies who basically expect their smaller vendors and suppliers to act as their source of free cash.

An on-going industry issue

This whole trend became popular during the global recession of 2007 / 2008 as CFOs of large companies realised their small creditors were a potential source of free finance. By simply extending standard payment terms from 30 days to 75, 90 and in a few cases 120 days they effectively achieved free, short term lending at a time when credit was increasingly more expensive to come by.

Mind you, the reasons often given by those left to implement this policy is often quite creative, from the fact that the company accounts department is so under-staffed that it takes 90 days to process the invoice, to the bleeding heart who tried playing for sympathy explaining that as a manufacturing business it can take 2 years from buying materials to recouping revenue from sales, or the finance genius who wondered “why the complaints when interest rates were so low that money is cheap” only to be asked then, if that is the case why was their own company not taking responsibility for their own cashflow issues?

Continue reading “How long payment terms impact client / agency relationships”

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, industry news & trends, marketing procurement, return on investment | Comments Off

The challenges facing Automotive marketers in selecting new agencies – Three case studies

Posted on September 6, 2017 by TrinityP3 Consultants

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The automotive industry is being disrupted globally. Electric motor vehicles like the Tesla are providing a viable and desirable alternative to the fossil fuels of the past. Diesel technology has been shown not to be as environmentally friendly as they would have us believe.

Autonomous vehicles are evolving, and at best estimate ten to twenty years away. In the meantime manufacturing costs have been reduced, while technology features are becoming common in even the most budget priced vehicles making the market more price sensitive than ever. The only question mark is the cost of the commodity resource prices of the raw materials of manufacture and the cost of transportation in a global market place.

No wonder brand and marketing are becoming such a hot focus in a market where these are increasingly providing the differentiators in a category that is all about maintaining margin and winning market share from the competitors.

No wonder we have seen an increased amount of motor vehicle brands look to review their creative agency arrangements in the past 12 months across the region.

But the challenges of this process are increasingly more complex as brands move from audience segments and advertising to customer data driven insights executed across a range of channels including traditional media and of course digital to deliver and reinforce the brand experience right through the sales funnel.

Case Study 1

Automotive – Agency Search & Selection (Australia)

Challenging Problem: In one of the most competitive auto markets in the world (measured by number of brands in this market per capita), combined with generic and vanilla auto advertising across the board, exacerbates the need for something different in strategy and communications, which means selecting an agency that’s both innovative, insightful and confident and capable enough to seriously challenge the client.

Creative Solution: Dynamic between dealer network and marketing particularly acute and finely balanced meaning complex stakeholder navigation required; internal communication was very important. Agency dynamics and demonstration of gravitas strong enough to handle this challenge was particularly important in this pitch.

So this pitch was more pronounced than most in regard of ‘agency needs to challenge the client’ and the pitch was for one pivotal brand launch, rather than the whole business. As a result of both of these things, it was both important and feasible to start with a list of pitching agencies that was relatively diverse for such a big brand – local to global, networked to independent, start-up to established.

Process: The TrinityP3 Search and Selection process was ideal in this situation as the Strategic Workshops with the three shortlisted agencies allowed the marketing team to work with and assess the capability and confidence of the agency to explore and push the client’s boundaries. The process also importantly allowed key stakeholders to participate in the selection process ensuring buy-in and ownership of the final selection decision.

Timeline: The process from initial search brief to appointment took 14 weeks with significant stakeholder engagement up front and global approvals and updates throughout the process.

Result and feedback: Whilst the budget was limited, the comparative measurement of agency value in this pitch was very much based on strategic capability, linkage of that capability to creative output, and ability to innovate in category, rather than pure dollars (which is of course as it should be).

This is a partly due to the circumstance of a product launch that was perceived as essential to shifting brand perception. Whilst ‘extension into retail’ was part of the creative brief, the bigger retail BAU piece was not part of this pitch (and would still be handled by the incumbent across the rest of the portfolio).

Continue reading “The challenges facing Automotive marketers in selecting new agencies – Three case studies”

Posted in agency search & selection, agency solutions, case studies, interesting observations, marketing procurement | Comments Off

The Ad Industry at War with Itself

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Michael Farmer

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This month marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of ANA’s “media transparency” recommendations, which followed a major investigation of media agency practices.

Lest we forget how central media transparency is to ANA, Bob Liodice (President and CEO of ANA) and Doug Wood (outside legal counsel) published a MediaVillage article in mid-July reminding us that “if the allegations against the [media] agencies are true, the behaviour is reminiscent of past high-profile financial scandals.”

There you have it! Lehman Brothers, Tyco, Enron, Worldcom, step aside! Media agencies and their owners belong in the same lineup as Bernie Madoff, Dick Fuld, Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Ebbers!

Continue reading “The Ad Industry at War with Itself”

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, agency solutions, industry news & trends, marketing procurement | Comments Off

Managing Marketing: The importance of understanding culture to stay relevant in a changing world

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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Sharon Foo is the Client Partner at Sparks & Honey and she talks with Darren on the importance of diversity, data and technology in understanding the cultural changes occurring in society and staying relevant to your audience, allowing you to change to meet the future needs of the market.

You can listen to the podcast here:

Follow Managing Marketing on Soundcloud or iTunes

Transcription:

Darren:

Welcome back to Managing Marketing. I’m still in downtown New York.

Sharon:

It’s mid-town—come on Darren.

Darren:

Well, mid-town New York and I have a great opportunity of having a chat with someone who, like me, has come from the other side of the world to be here, but now lives here: Sharon Foo who is client partner at Sparks and Honey. Welcome, Sharon.

Sharon:

Thank you.

Placing a focus on culture before strategy

Darren:

Look, this agency’s really interesting from my perspective and that’s because of the focus of the agency on culture. Now, Peter Drucker said, ‘culture eats strategy for lunch’. I’m wondering why do you think agencies (and you’ve worked at other agencies) have been so focused on strategy and developing strategies for their clients and really missed the whole culture piece?

Sharon:

First of all, thank you for giving me this opportunity. What I know I know, and what I don’t know, I don’t know because I literally joined Sparks and Honey about (in my mind) definitely less than 100 days ago. So, it’s been two and a half months so I’m still looking at this place with wonder, and still wondering what is it that got me so interested in this agency in the first place.

I’ve done advertising agencies so I get ‘driving awareness’. I’ve done shopper marketer agencies, which is really the other end of the spectrum and that’s about driving conversion.

Darren:

The last ten metres.

Continue reading “Managing Marketing: The importance of understanding culture to stay relevant in a changing world”

Posted in agency solutions, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, interesting observations, marketing process optimisation, Podcasts, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off

The danger of confusing best practice with common practice

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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This is the sixth in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media and advertising today. The Golden Minute series is an attempt to prove Albert Einstein right when he said “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple”.

Many of the challenges marketers are facing are new. Digital technology has had major impact in disrupting all aspects of business and particularly marketing because it has disrupted consumer behaviour too.

Therefore, while we agree that the foundations of marketing and marketing strategy are still essential, there are new challenges arising in the implementation because of the increased complexity and constant change.

In the face of these new challenges and complexity, many of the old tried and true solutions no longer work. Yet it is human nature to stick with what you know or what has been tried and tested, rather than trying something new.

But at what point do you give up on the usual solution and try something new. To quote Albert Einstein again, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome”. This is also one of my favourite all time quotes because it sums up the futility that occurs when you stop learning.

A proven methodology but customised outcomes

Continue reading “The danger of confusing best practice with common practice”

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, agency search & selection, Evalu8ing - Relationship Performance Monitoring, interesting observations, marketing procurement | Comments Off

Who’s Guilty and Who’s Innocent in the Industry’s Transparency Wars?

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Michael Farmer

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Bill Duggan recently penned a piece in MediaVillage.com continuing the ANA’s attack on ad agencies – this time over production transparency, which is the code name for unethical and possibly illegal bid-rigging activities conducted by some agencies to secure production contracts at favourable rates.

A previous transparency issue, media transparency, was investigated by ANA in 2016, and it confirmed instances of media agencies enriching themselves at client expense through rebates, kickbacks and other “non-transparent” practices, many of them not forbidden by existing contracts.

Duggan summarised ANA’s view about these two transparency issues: “The advertising industry continues to suffer from a transparency crisis, which has broken down trust between advertisers and agencies … the ad agency community now needs to acknowledge and address these issues rather than continuing to issue denials …”

There is, no doubt, a major transparency crisis in the industry. Is it the fault of ad agencies? Is it the cause of a breakdown in industry trust, as Duggan argues? Was there trust between the parties before the 2016 ANA investigation into media transparency practices, but the exposure of non-transparent practices destroyed the trust?

Not on your life. Duggan’s argument is a prosecutor’s view of transparency on behalf of ANA. It ignores other long-term transparency issues that ought to bring embarrassment to ANA and provide fodder for 4As. Less is said or known about them, though, because 4As has presented such a weak and ineffective case about them on behalf of its members.

Trust has been eroding between agencies and advertisers for over 25 years, ever since the shift of remuneration from media commissions to cost-plus fees. Advertisers then needed to understand agency cost structures, and to this end, they hired cost consultants and benchmarking consultants to tear apart agency cost structures and find a basis, other than agency actual costs, for agency remuneration.

The “benchmarked costs” used to set agency remuneration have been non-transparent to agencies.

“You say that your blended average salary is $100,000 per FTE?” asks a benchmarker. “Sorry, our industry benchmarks show $90,000, and this will be the recommended cost basis for your fees.”
Continue reading “Who’s Guilty and Who’s Innocent in the Industry’s Transparency Wars?”

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The Three Ring Circus: Money. Agencies. Marketers.

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Stephan Argent

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a very large rock, you’ll have noticed we’ve got a three-ring circus going on in Ad Land that’s been casting a very dark shadow for way too long.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of a three-ring circus is:

A circus with simultaneous performances in three rings
Something wild, confusing, engrossing, or entertaining

Well, it is a simultaneous performance of money, agencies, and clients. It’s wild, confusing and engrossing, but very far from entertaining. In fact, I’d classify it as downright bloody dangerous because it’s creating a chasm of mistrust that’s distracting everyone from focusing on what they should be doing, and both marketers and agencies are at boiling point.

Make no mistake, everyone’s at risk here. Some agencies’ future and very survival are at stake, while clients are at risk of squeezing the life out of the whole advertising industry – their own teams included – in their quest to lower costs and drive increased profits.

And while many have tried to manage the financial fallout, the brightest minds in our business still haven’t succeeded in creating a new financial model that everyone can stand behind.

So what the hell’s going on? Well, let’s see what’s under the circus tent: Continue reading “The Three Ring Circus: Money. Agencies. Marketers.”

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Are all your strategies getting in the way of delivering marketing performance?

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Darren Woolley

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This is the fifth in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media and advertising today. The Golden Minute series is an attempt to prove Albert Einstein right when he said “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple”.

As we have shared previously, much of the work we do with our clients is to align their structure and process to effectively deliver their marketing strategy. The starting point in this process is reviewing the agreed strategy so we can determine the requirements of that strategy that need to be delivered to achieve the results or objectives.

But with all of the complexity in marketing these days and the diversity of business objectives, especially in larger organisations, that are supported by marketing, we often find there is more than one strategy and often multiple strategies that are misaligned or even worse, in conflict with each other.

With marketing strategies, communications strategies, channel strategies, digital strategies, media strategies, and more, is it any wonder achieving alignment across these is so hard?

Aligning digital strategy to marketing

Digital technology and digital marketing has been particularly disruptive inside many organisations, to the point that it became common to have a digital marketing arm within the marketing structure.

These were populated with digital specialists to work beside the marketing team. The problem was that instead of integrating digital into the marketing mix, it often became a separate channel or work stream from marketing, working across more parts of the business than the marketing team.

Continue reading “Are all your strategies getting in the way of delivering marketing performance?”