Whatever side of the table you sit on, marketing is in confusing times. For the CMO there’s a dizzying array of platforms, trends and technologies to comprehend. For the agency, budgets are shrinking, reaction times are more demanding and it’s difficult not to get distracted by the shiny new digital opportunities appearing at every page swipe. This raises a bunch of challenges. How do CMOs and agency heads get clarity from the muddle? Are the established agencies too entrenched in the old ways of doing things? Are the new agencies too digital-obsessive? How to navigate this maze?
There have been many column inches and indeed pixel widths devoted to this debate in recent months. Danielle Sacks wrote a great essay ‘Mayhem on Madison Avenue’ in the Dec 10/ Jan 11 edition of Fast Company, and many industry bloggers have been giving their view. Sean Corcoran is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, his post on 2011 Agency Predictions is worth a read.
Yet, whatever the changes, the CMO is still hungry for ideas; ideas are essential in order to distill a brand product(s) into a series of easy to understand, clear and simple communications. And however complex this business has become, I think most we’d agree that’s what it’s all about.
So does the ideas business need a new model? How do we need to rethink the agency/ client relationship? Here are my five considerations for CMOs, agency owners, account directors and industry watchers in rethinking the paradigm:
- Think Partnerships: If you can break down the barriers so the agency becomes part of the brand, rather than it just being ‘another supplier’, there is value for both sides. For the agency, it’s not about submissively and blindly executing the brief, it’s providing greater value by questioning the brief, turning it on its head, knowing the client so well that you can suggest a new direction. At Mason Zimbler we advocate that clients have an ‘open brief but clear goals’; we have a laser-focused understanding of the results we need to deliver but are afforded some flexibility as to how we get there.
- Be Smarter With Data: Performance and measurement data is much misunderstood as a cold dehumanised commodity that can only tell you how successful a lead generation campaign is. But by using data to better understand user behaviour and insight, it can revolutionise and innovate. Exploit data insights to change how organisations behave and how marketers engage with audiences. By blending ‘data and creative’, you can combine the best of creativity with the most intelligent analytics to produce even better results.
- Break Out of The Silos: Break down traditional agency divisions so people think and operate across silos. We’ve seen how the productivity of ideas and results increases when you throw people together. Clients are seeing the value of that too, Fast Company told the story of when integrated agency Mullen pitched (successfully) to JetBlue’s SVP of Marketing Marty St.George “..we all noticed through its pitch process that you couldn’t tell who the creative people were from the media people or the planning people. They all finished each other’s sentences, regardless of what we were talking about”.
- Stop Behaving Like A Factory: Don’t confuse ideas with production. At Mason Zimbler we’re trying to move from a ‘production model’ towards a ‘Big Ideas innovation agency’. Production and Ideas are two different disciplines so they need separate approaches in not just management but also valuation. Idea creation is not as commoditised as web coding or data mining, after all, how do you value an idea devised by a Creative Director in the shower? Fast Company quoted Peter McGuinness, CEO of New York agency, Gotham “We have to figure out how to get paid for the big idea, and what that idea is worth”, so be weary of commoditising innovation too crudely.
- Rethink Pitching: By refocusing the relationship as a partnership, some of the pitch process feels broken, with huge drains on resources where five or eight agencies pitch against each other. We have to bust the myth that the bigger an account or campaign is the more agencies need to be involved. Plurality of ideas is not always a good thing: better to have a small number of intimate agency relationships respond to a brand they know well rather than putting it out to tender. The management consideration from the client side is huge whereas the cost for agencies to pitch is getting prohibitive, the odds just don’t stack up. Of course there are always times when you need fresh perspectives from new agencies, but both client and agency need to be more confident about the value of solid long-term relationships.
We’d probably all agree that, tough times lie ahead for the agency world. It’s inevitably a case of ‘distinct or extinct’. Agencies need to be brave enough to reconsider how and where they add value and reinvent themselves accordingly.
As Sean Corcoran says in his advice to CMOs, effective change requires co-operation between client and agency: “To succeed in this environment, you should commit to your agency relationships (i.e., don’t hire them to be strategic and then treat them like vendors or vice versa), set clear roles with the agencies, and constantly evaluate your agency performance and knowledge”.
Whilst the debate on the future of the industry is well advanced, I think there remains work to do on putting these theories into action. We need to be brave enough to start taking action, for if we can’t address our joint ability to innovate, we run the danger of taking the greatest risk – that of risking nothing at all.
