Category Archives: strategic management

How “Broken” Is Marketing at Major Advertisers?

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Michael Farmer

Marketing is not fully represented by the career-stressed Chief Marketing Officer. Marketing is not the digital/social specialist or the advertising manager. Marketing is not the head of promotions or the brand manager. Marketing is the network of corporate executives, loosely connected by money, expertise and objectives to achieve improvements in shareholder value, presumably from higher product growth rates. Marketing is the CMO, the heads of Business Profit Centers, the head of Indirect Procurement, the CFO, the CEO and their media, creative and other ad agencies. 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

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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Have It Your Way: A Marketing Award for a Commercial Mess

Posted on April 9, 2018 by Michael Farmer

Once upon a time, we learned that marketing had something to do with creating, keeping and satisfying customers. Marketing success created growth and profitability. Chief Marketing Officers had this responsibility and they spent gads of money with their media and creative agencies to make it happen. When economies were growing, especially in the decades after the Second World War, marketing was a straightforward activity and CMOs were successful. Recent times have been more troublesome, with e-commerce, digital/social and those pesky Millennials killing brand growth. Continue reading →

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Who’s In Charge? Marketing or Procurement?

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Stephan Argent

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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Who Will Put “Accountability” Back in “Account Management?”

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Michael Farmer

Account managers were giants of accountability during the Mad Men era, when agencies were paid by media commissions and it was important to convince client executives, up and down the line, that high media spending was good for brands. Everyone benefited from this. TV advertising was effective, so clients and brands benefited from this account management salesmanship. TV advertising unleashed the agency’s creative capabilities and allowed creatives to flourish and do their best work. Continue reading →

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Digital and Technology alignment – Become an instant expert

Posted on March 19, 2018 by Anton Buchner

Firstly, we should preface by saying that the digital and technology world has been normal for you, as you were born into it. So for many of you, you may be leading your marketing team on initiatives and ideas. But as you know what is normal now, won’t be normal in the future. The rate of change is getting faster and faster, as we enter the 4th industrial revolution with the advent of robotics, autonomous transport, artificial intelligence, infinite computing, and nanotechnology. Continue reading →

Posted in agency solutions, customer relationship management, data & direct marketing, industry news & trends, media planning & buying, mobile marketing, return on investment, social media & digital marketing, strategic management | Comments Off

Managing Marketing: Discussing creativity, innovation and their importance to business

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Darren Woolley

Ed Pank is the Managing Director of WARC Asia and a self confessed Digital Marketing Evangelist, Start-up Builder, Advertising Insight Generator. Here he talks with Darren on the importance of creativity and innovation in business today. They explore the nature of agency creativity and explore the role of the agency in developing customer and business innovation. 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

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

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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Managing Marketing: The impact of science and technology on media and marketing

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Darren Woolley

Ori Gold is the CEO of programmatic platform Bench, and here discusses the impact of science and technology innovation and the best way for marketers to deal with this rapid and constant change. Embracing complexity and applying the scientific approach of test and learn is central to thriving in the changing world of marketing and business. Continue reading →