Category: Fee Scope of Work

Here we review some of the more common mistakes incurred when tasked with developing a scope of work for a brand or product by an advertiser. Take a look.

The fact is that both agency and advertiser are responsible for optimising the performance of their relationships. Learn how the Scope Metric Model can help.

The value of your retainer is not how many people you get, it’s in what they produce and ultimately in what this achieves. Learn why you need a scope of work.

We talk and have written many times about the importance of scope of work in regards to setting or benchmarking agency remuneration based on productivity and not simply the cost of resources. But there is often confusion in regards to what is meant by a Scope of Work. The most common confusion is that the Scope of Work is the same as the Scope of Services or Schedule of Services found in most agency contracts. But there are some very fundamental differences between a Scope of Service and a Scope of Work for the agency.

This is the final in our series of articles on agency scope of work management. Managing the scope of work for your agency is possibly the easiest and fastest way to increase the buying power of your marketing budget by removing the duplication and uncertainty as much as possible from the agency work. In this way you are able to get more for your agency budget without simply driving down the rates and prices.

Being able to plan all of your requirements of the agency for the coming year is an ideal situation. But the world and the market is often an unpredictable place and your brand strategy needs to be able to frame how your responds to the changes in the market place. Luckily there is a way to frame your agency scope of work in a way that lets you obtain the benefits of the increased efficiency.

This is the second in a series of articles on agency scope of work management. Managing the scope of work for your agency is possibly the easiest and fastest way to increase the buying power of your marketing budget by removing the duplication and uncertainty as much as possible from the agency work. In this way you are able to get more for your agency budget without simply driving down the rates and prices. There has been a dramatic increase in the outputs agencies are producing for their clients these days, especially due to content marketing, social media and digital advertising. The multiplier effect on the scope of work can inflate the agency fee without the allowance for economies of scale. But economies of scale must be applied carefully to avoid undermining the process.

This is the first in a series of articles on agency scope of work management. Managing the scope of work for your agency is possibly the easiest and fastest way to increase the buying power of your marketing budget by removing the duplication and uncertainty as much as possible from the agency work. In this way you are able to get more for your agency budget without simply driving down the rates and prices. But why is specificity so important? Anyone that is involved in manufacturing, construction or technology knows, by clearly defining and specifying the actual requirements upfront you are better able to plan and execute the construction/manufacturing process more efficiently and effectively.

One of the topics that regularly occupies conversations with marketing services and procurement teams is benchmarking their existing agency arrangements. This of course is something that we have been doing for more than a decade across multiple regions and markets.But also across multiple disciplines including media, digital, public relations, social media, shopper marketing, event marketing, sponsorship management and even call centres.

An advertiser recently called with an issue that had lead to a dispute with their agency. The advertiser had a 30% cut in their marketing budget due to falls in sales and they had tried to negotiate a significant cut in the agency retainer to reflect the cut in the budget and hopefully a corresponding cut in the scope of work (but more on that later). The agency had refused any cut in their retainer on the basis that they had recruited a number of resources specifically for the account and they maintained it would be unfair to cut the retainer as this would require the agency to terminate some of these resources as they could not be redeployed within the agency.

TweetShareShareBufferPinThis post was updated on October 25, 2018 to note the significant development of the scope of work approach for agency fees. […]