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. Continue reading →

Posted in agency solutions, customer relationship management, Evalu8ing - Relationship Performance Monitoring, green marketing & sustainability, industry news & trends, interesting observations, strategic management | Comments Off on Take the Pledge! End Madison Avenue’s Manslaughter!

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

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Darren Woolley
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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 →

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, industry news & trends, marketing procurement, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off on Why performance based payments need to be an incentive not a disincentive

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

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Darren Woolley
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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. Continue reading →

Posted in customer relationship management, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, media planning & buying, Podcasts, return on investment | Comments Off on Managing Marketing: Dealing with the rapidly increasing complexity of the media market

How long payment terms impact client / agency relationships

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Darren Woolley
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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 because 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. Continue reading →

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, industry news & trends, marketing procurement, return on investment | Comments Off on How long payment terms impact client / agency relationships

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.” Continue reading →

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, agency solutions, industry news & trends, marketing procurement | Comments Off on The Ad Industry at War with Itself

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. Continue reading →

Posted in agency solutions, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, interesting observations, marketing process optimisation, Podcasts, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off on Managing Marketing: The importance of understanding culture to stay relevant in a changing world

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. Continue reading →

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, agency solutions, industry news & trends, marketing process optimisation | Comments Off on Who’s Guilty and Who’s Innocent in the Industry’s Transparency Wars?

The Three Ring Circus: Money. Agencies. Marketers.

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Stephan Argent
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The simultaneous performance of money, agencies, and clients is a Three Ring Circus of wild, confusing and engrossing, but very far from entertaining. In fact, some agencies’ futures 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. Continue reading →

Posted in industry news & trends, interesting observations, marketing process optimisation, marketing procurement, strategic management | Comments Off on The Three Ring Circus: Money. Agencies. Marketers.

ANA and 4As Duke It Out in a Complete Mismatch

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Michael Farmer
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ANA, ever-faithful and aggressive on behalf of its advertiser members, struck a second blow to 4As recently — a right uppercut to the chin — with a new ANA study of advertising production practices. The report detailed “a range of improper behaviour, including allegations that some agencies have steered production contracts to their in-house production and post-production outfits by urging other companies to inflate their prices during the bidding process,” as reported in WSJ. Continue reading →

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The 3 hottest digital disruption discussions at IBM’s Watson Summit Australia 2017

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Anton Buchner
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In 1987, Deep Thought, a computer designed to play chess, defeated British chess master David Levy. However, it was then easily beaten in a two game match by Gary Kasparov, the Soviet Grandmaster and World Chess champion.The development team was subsequently hired in 1989 by IBM and evolved to a new name Deep Blue – a play on IBM’s nickname Big Blue. After redevelopment, Deep Blue played Kasparov in 1996, and came out of the blocks firing, winning the first game. However, Kasparov went on to win the overall 6 game match. Continue reading →

Posted in data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, interesting observations, social media & digital marketing | Comments Off on The 3 hottest digital disruption discussions at IBM’s Watson Summit Australia 2017

How TrinityP3 is helping marketers restructure their marketing for the future – three case studies

Posted on August 14, 2017 by TrinityP3 Consultants
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The market is changing and becoming ever more complex, and therefore business and marketing strategies are changing to meet the challenge. But while strategies change, often marketing structure remains largely the same. At best, companies will make capability additions where needed, simply adding to the legacy structures of the past. Others will vacillate between centralised and decentralised structures and variations in between. What is often required, however, is a rethink and re-evaluation of the marketing structure against the strategy and the requirements of that strategy. Continue reading →

Posted in case studies, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, marketing process optimisation, return on investment, strategic management | Comments Off on How TrinityP3 is helping marketers restructure their marketing for the future – three case studies

Managing Marketing: Reviewing the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference in San Diego

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Darren Woolley
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Lyndon Brill, Senior Consultant at TrinityP3 and Darren discuss the sessions and topics that captured their attention at the annual Advertising Financial Management Conference, this year in San Diego, USA. Covering everything from Block Chain, to Transparency. Bot Fraud to Compensation and more. Continue reading →

Posted in agency remuneration / compensation, industry news & trends, marketing procurement, media planning & buying, Podcasts, return on investment | Comments Off on Managing Marketing: Reviewing the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference in San Diego

“Creativity” Versus “Improved Results”: The Paradigm Needs to Change

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Michael Farmer
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Ad agencies and advertisers are victims of the belief that “creativity” is the basis of their current relationships, and that “more creativity” will give them more of what they need. Ad agencies have promoted “creativity” since the days of Bill Bernbach, more than 50 years ago, when agencies were at the top of their game. Advertisers, as their clients, continue to hire agencies for their perceived creativity, provided costs are rock bottom. However, “creativity” is no longer delivering improved brand performance or increasing shareholder value. The search for more creativity is making victims of agencies and CMOs alike — neither lasts very long in a relationship. It’s time for a new paradigm. The “Creative Paradigm” is out of date. It’s not working. Continue reading →

Posted in agency solutions, industry news & trends, interesting observations, marketing process optimisation, social media & digital marketing | Comments Off on “Creativity” Versus “Improved Results”: The Paradigm Needs to Change

How much time do you waste in meetings per week?

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Anton Buchner
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It’s strange how the universe works. Or maybe it was an amazing algorithm predicting my behaviour. Having just completed a marketing team assessment project for a client where one of the findings was meeting overload, up popped this Infographic by Oisín Grogan, The $200 Million Business Coach: Continue reading →

Posted in industry news & trends, marketing process optimisation | Comments Off on How much time do you waste in meetings per week?

Managing Marketing: The concept of social media for sales in B2B relationships

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Darren Woolley
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Tom Skotidas is the Founder and General Manager of Skotidas Consulting Group, specialising in social and digital demand generation. Here he talks with Darren on the power of social media to generate sales and revenue as well as build business reputations and relationships. Continue reading →

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