Challenging Problem:
The marketing team had a strong and long-term relationship with the incumbent media agency, but had noticed a drop-off in quality across the past 12 months.
Additionally, contract material was out of date. The marketing client was unsure about whether or not to pitch the agency business in order to test the market.
Solution:
Rather than going to pitch, TrinityP3 recommended conducting a Contractual Evaluation and Remuneration Benchmarking Exercise, concurrent with a Media Transparency, Performance and Value Assessment.
Process:
The Contractual Evaluation and Remuneration Benchmarking Exercise:
- Gathered a comprehensive set of data points, including current contract, new fee proposal, addendums detailing historical additions to scope, rate-cards detailing diversified revenue streams/non-scope charges, current plans for the next 12 month period.
- Conducted a detailed evaluation of all data points, including contract inclusions and structure, resource structure and levels, and comprehensive financial benchmarking using our industry pool.
- Structured, presented and discussed a written report demonstrating our findings and key recommendations against which the client could achieve short, medium and longer term value gains calibrated to improve agency and marketing performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.
The Media Transparency, Performance and Value Assessment
- Conducted in-depth stakeholder interviews with marketing team members and agency team members
- Gathered all outputs from a nominated time period, including briefing material, agency strategy documentation, implementation and trading responses, annual trading contracts, post analysis details, process timelines and proof of systems/tools usage.
- Conducted a detailed assessment of process, operations and outputs and presented a comprehensive report of findings.
Timeline:
The project was completed in four weeks.
Result and feedback:
Our findings revealed the following:
- Dedicated agency resource was significantly low, exacerbated with a recent rise in volume of work. Furthermore, the balance and composition of resource was sub-optimal.
- Consequently, the fee paid to the agency, relative to size and scope of business, was also too low.
- The outdated contract ensured that in other areas, the agency was not competitive.
- Whilst the quality of the agency output was generally good, it was in some areas not delivered in language or style that the client could engage with. In addition, the marketing client needed to improve internal expectation management at C-Suite level.
Our recommendations demonstrated how to achieve the following:
- A market-commensurate fee for the agency in return for a higher and more balanced resource. Whilst the fee increased in dollar terms, it was more efficient from a cost per FTE perspective.
- Fee increase offset by significant reductions in the cost of ad-serving, which was uncompetitive in its current state.
- Several changes to contractual inclusions and structure which generated greater transparency, and also unlocked potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional value, over time.
- Process changes on both sides designed to generate higher effectiveness and cut-through in agency output.
Our report allowed the marketing team to make internal improvement recommendations that benefited both the marketer and the agency.
It allowed the relationship to become both more efficient and more effective.
It also ensured that the marketing team could continue with the agency with confidence, and without the stress and cost of a market pitch.
TrinityP3’s Media Transparency, Performance and Value Assessment takes a holistic look at the operation of your media agency, assessing against best practice at every stage of the journey. It aims to give you the tools to improve the output of your media agency.
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