---

 

Read the thoughts of our Executive Chairman on the Madison Avenue Manslaughter

Michael Farmer is Executive Chairman of TrinityP3 USA LLC, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Branding and Integrated Communications at The City College of New York (CCNY) and founder of Farmer & Company LLC. He is also the author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter, a book about the decline of strategic partnerships between advertisers and their ad agencies. Madison Avenue Manslaughter was awarded the Axiom Gold Business Book Award for the best marketing / advertising book of 2016 which you can read more about here.  

Advertisers with Performance Problems Turn to Management Consultants

The typical consulting firm charges out its people at a multiple of 5.0x their salaries, higher than the ad agency multiple, which ranges from 2.2x to 2.5x. The high consulting fees can only be justified if improved results are the outcome. It takes high-level consulting relationships to solve high-level performance problems. Most ad agencies work at a lower level with their clients and focus on creativity as their value-added — creativity that builds brands and engages consumers. The problem is, it isn’t working all that well today. Read more on this here.    

Agency Remuneration: A Loser’s Game

Chief Marketing Officers and their colleagues in procurement have been driving down agency remuneration for more than a decade. Simultaneously, they have been growing Scopes of Work, experimenting with digital and social marketing. Is marketing getting something for nothing, or is it playing a loser’s game? Read more on this here. 

Organisational Mishmash: The Ad Agency’s Unaccountable Structure

The global ad agency has become a complex, unmanageable mishmash of organisational positions. Complexity reigns. Accountability is invisible if it exists at all. No wonder clients are able to take such advantage of their agencies, loading on unpaid out-of-scope work and cutting fees! Top agency executives, though aware of the problem, are unable to launch a management counter-offensive. No one has the responsibility for the problem or the authority to turn things around. Read more on this here.   

Why cost benchmarking is the waterboarding of the advertising industry

Procurement and benchmarking rose to corporate prominence once “increased shareholder value” became the advertiser’s mantra. Marketing declined in importance, from an investment to achieve brand growth to a cost to be optimised. Benchmarking consultants jumped on the bandwagon. 4As shamefully accepted the ANA benchmarking trend with hardly a whimper, leaving its members to fend for themselves. Read more on this here.     

Ignorance of Pricing is Ruining Ad Agencies

All companies sell products or services at a price, and managing price is a major responsibility of top management.  Car companies sell cars, and sticker prices are marked on side windows.  Coca-Cola sells concentrate to its bottlers, setting price per gallon to match market circumstances. Bain sells consulting studies to corporations and prices them by study length and complexity. Agencies, though, are confused about what they sell and how to price it.  Their ignorance of pricing is ruining agency operations and destroying agency value for clients, employees and holding company owners. Read more on this here.     

Take the pledge to end the Madison Avenue Manslaughter

There have been few strategic winners during the past decade, other than the disrupters – Google, Facebook, Amazon and the unicorns of online commerce. Legacy brands are languishing. Trust has eroded. Advertisers and agencies alike are battered, like addicts caught in a vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior, their relationships increasingly unmanageable. Madison Avenue’s Manslaughter (MAM) has taken its toll. You can make a pledge to end these destructive practices here. 

 

What’s Hot

Here are the most read, most shared and most commented on articles from the TrinityP3 blog in the past month:

1. Losing pitches, part 2: a further 7 ‘less obvious’ reasons why agencies lose pitches
2. The 3 hottest digital disruption discussions at IBM’s Watson Summit Australia 2017
3. Struggling with your strategy? Try the Costanza Maneuver
4. The Three Ring Circus: Money. Agencies. Marketers.
5. How many agencies is too many when it comes to roster size?
6. Who’s Guilty and Who’s Innocent in the Industry’s Transparency Wars?
7. Managing Marketing: Reviewing the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference in San Diego
8. How TrinityP3 is helping marketers restructure their marketing for the future – three case studies
9. The danger of confusing best practice with common practice
10. Are all your strategies getting in the way of delivering marketing performance?