Lower Cost Does Not Mean Higher Quality in the Ad Industry

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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If we were on a guided tour of the advertising industry, here are the points of interest that ought to be on every sightseer’s list. 1) The Advertisers.  “Lower cost” is their strategy du jour, with reductions in media spend, cuts in agency fees, continued use of cost benchmarks and investments in less expensive internal agencies.  Amazing!  Increased shareholder value — marketing with the stroke of a pen, crossing out columns of unnecessary figures. Continue reading →

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Marketers and Procurement Who Want to Talk Turkey With Their Agencies Can Learn A Lot From Chickens

Posted on April 20, 2018 by Stephan Argent
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OK, what the heck have chickens got to do with marketing and procurement teams negotiating with their agencies? The answer is: Everything. It goes like this: If you’d been craving some Kentucky Fried Chicken in the United Kingdom a few weeks ago you’d have been out of luck and perhaps crossing the street to Burger King instead. Why? Because at the end of last year, KFC chose to change to DHL, a lower cost distributor, which, as it turned out, provided a poorer quality of service with little or no contingency planning. Continue reading →

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Marc Prichard, the low creative ratio at your agencies is not their fault, it’s yours

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Darren Woolley
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Okay, perhaps not yours Marc, but when you recently stated that you would like three quarters of your agencies to be creative, it made me reflect on the literally hundreds of agency remuneration deals we have benchmarked, negotiated and managed over the past 18 years and the fact that in every case the agency resources required were directly related to the requirements and expectations of the marketers. Continue reading →

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Who’s In Charge? Marketing or Procurement?

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Stephan Argent
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Whether you’re a client looking for marketing services, or an agency pitching your wares, the question of who’s really calling the shots can be a pivotal one. On the one hand, the organisational perspective might be that marketing teams are evaluated on and are seeking things like improved performance, chemistry harmony between teams and agencies, creative brilliance and / or strategic smarts. Continue reading →

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Ageism in advertising is as much a cost issue as a perception one

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Darren Woolley
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uis Loizou, a Freelance creative Director in the UK recently shared on Linkedin his thoughts “I’m not 54. I’m 22 with 32 years experience”.  It is a passionate and considered argument for why older advertising creative professionals have not passed their used by date, but are actually “still passionate but with pragmatism and discipline”. Continue reading →

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The challenges in measuring the value your agencies contribute to your marketing

Posted on March 12, 2018 by Darren Woolley
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How do you calculate or assess the value of your marketing spend? In the past three years we have had a large number of projects designed to achieve just that – a fact based assessment of the value of the marketing spend. Specifically marketing communications or advertising and largely focusing on spend with external agencies and suppliers. Continue reading →

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Has “Digital/Social” Become the Dollar Menu of the Advertising World?

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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The new McDonald’s Dollar Menu, which includes a sausage burrito for $1, a Bacon McDouble at $2 and the Classic Chicken Sandwich for $3 is designed to boost same-store sales. While this represents the company’s best shot at traffic increases for 2018, the chain will need more than $1-$2-$3 discounted items to maintain margins and stock market price.  Wendy’s and Taco Bell have responded with their own discounts, and the prospect of an industry price war looms. Continue reading →

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Plan B: Turning the Madison Avenue Manslaughter into a much needed makeover – Part 3

Posted on February 28, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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On Tuesday December 4, 2017 Michael Farmer, author of the award winning marketing business book Madison Avenue Manslaughter presented his Plan B for the industry to turn the manslaughter into a make over that would get brands and agencies moving again. This is the transcript and video of the final of three parts of that presentation where he delivers Plan B to the industry. Continue reading →

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How Financial Services is approaching agency rosters and remuneration – Three case studies

Posted on February 26, 2018 by TrinityP3 Consultants
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Financial Services is particularly competitive. Already there are a plethora of brands across the category, there is now significant disruption caused by FinTech start-ups, plus increased competition and fragmentation of the category.The market leaders are focused on innovating and transforming to stay ahead of the competition, but they are also looking for more effective and efficient ways to build and maintain their share of market and share of customer wallet. Continue reading →

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Agency Performance management – Become an instant expert

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Anton Buchner
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Following on in our ‘Become an Instant Expert’ series of posts aimed at demystifying marketing in a tech-driven world, we’d like to focus this post on agency performance. Outlining some of the important areas to understand and make more efficient in order to maximise the value of your agency partners and suppliers. We often hear junior marketers say that they are swamped with the current scope of work that they are handling, and that they’re wasting too much time managing multiple agency partners. Sound familiar? Continue reading →

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Plan B: Turning the Madison Avenue Manslaughter into a much needed makeover – Part 2

Posted on February 21, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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On Tuesday December 4, 2017 Michael Farmer, author of the award winning marketing business book Madison Avenue Manslaughter presented his Plan B for the industry to turn the manslaughter into a make over that would get brands and agencies moving again. This is the transcript and video of the second of three parts of that presentation where he defines the issues that Plan B must address to be successful. What is Plan B? Before you decide what Plan B is, decide what kind of Plan A problems have to be solved. I think a lot of people are getting this wrong because you hear people say, ‘our real problem is there is no talent’ or ‘we are not digital enough’ or ‘there are too many pitches’ or ‘the bench markers’. Continue reading →

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Plan B: Turning the Madison Avenue Manslaughter into a much needed makeover – Part 1

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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On Tuesday December 4, 2017 Michael Farmer, author of the award winning marketing business book Madison Avenue Manslaughter presented his Plan B for the industry to turn the manslaughter into a make over that would get brands and agencies moving again. This is the transcript and video of the first of three parts of that presentation where he defines why the industry needs a Plan B. Continue reading →

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Is it time marketers rethink agency competitive conflicts of interest?

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Darren Woolley
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A major and complex issue for marketers when looking for new agencies, or going to market with a tender, is concerns over conflict of interest. That is, not wanting to select an agency that already has a client that is a competitor. But what constitutes a competitive conflict will vary from advertisers to advertiser and category to category. It will also increasingly vary as the relationships between advertisers and their agencies evolve. Some categories are incredibly broad in what constitutes a conflict, such as financial services or alcoholic beverages, and therefore can quickly limit the choice of agencies without conflicts. Continue reading →

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Who are the Winners and Losers in the Game of Advertising?

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Michael Farmer
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Advertising is a business game, played with great intensity by advertisers, agencies and holding companies in competition with one another.  Forget about partnership; that’s a myth from the past, when everyone focused on creating great work that drove growth in media spend and gains in brand market shares. How quaint the industry used to be!  That’s before CMOs became utterly confused by digital and social media and before the blood combat among procurement, agencies and holding companies drove out all the profit, talent and fun from the industry.  Continue reading →

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7 ways you might be demotivating your existing agencies

Posted on February 2, 2018 by Nathan Hodges
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All marketing teams – naturally – want enthusiastic, committed and motivated agencies working alongside them to improve their business performance. In attempting to get to that ideal end-state, however, marketing teams can underestimate – or miss completely – the effects their actions often have on the motivation of their existing agencies. Here are seven of the easiest ways to demotivate an agency team. Have you ever been guilty of any of them? Continue reading →

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