the latest<\/a> from the World Federation of Advertisers (the WFA) claiming that 80% of advertisers use in-house marketing services of one sort or another, and that 75% are only \u2018somewhat satisfied\u2019 or less with their current agency roster. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt would be interesting to see the % who were \u2018somewhat satisfied\u2019 \u2013 after all that\u2019s still \u2018satisfied\u2019 even if less than ideal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If 80% of respondents are using in-house expertise it\u2019s hardly surprising that 75% are only \u2018somewhat satisfied\u2019 with their agencies. Presumably one follows the other; if you were fully happy with your agencies\u2019 services you would be less likely to invest in in-house resource. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However august the organization commissioning studies like this, those writing the reports and the press releases don\u2019t it seems have either the time or the inclination to research the background. They\u2019re not old gits like me, in other words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But us old gits have our uses. We know for instance that clients have always done some marketing stuff in-house. Typically, this has involved media in some shape or form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to creative work, it\u2019s hard to define neatly and concisely what makes advertising work so that it can be replicated at will. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Creatively it\u2019s easy to demonstrate that in-housing more often than not doesn\u2019t produce great work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But media is different. It\u2019s numbers, so surely the more I get for less, the better? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pre-online channels \u2018doing\u2019 media in-house wasn\u2019t quite so simple. Take buying TV. You needed BARB, BARB was expensive to buy and analysing it was both expensive and needed some skill and knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has all changed. The likes of FB and Google can give data away to anyone they like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, FB et al have impressive client-facing teams that disintermediate the agencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s up to the in-house team to use the data, but far more importantly it\u2019s also up to them to carry out whatever validation they believe to be necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in truth the degree of validation is nil, nada, zilch. \u2018Trust me, I\u2019m a platform\u2019 pretty well sums it up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, we have a situation where a massive % of total adspend goes to media forms whose principles of measurement are untouched by any form of independent evaluation or audit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As long as some humungous number is produced, preferably even more humungous than last time everyone\u2019s happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What about bots? What about the lack of correlation between likes and outcomes? What about changes in definitions of what constitutes a viewer leading to apples being compared with oranges? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are details, dismissed by the true believers as too technical to worry about. Well, of course they are when the option is to admit that you\u2019ve been wasting money for years chasing rainbows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With some in-house media teams not even reporting to the CMO, the lack of real accountability is indeed startling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advertisers have convinced themselves that the numbers given them by those doing the selling are correct and valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact is they\u2019re neither. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The emperor has no clothes, and nobody is too keen to be the first to point this out. Or rather, there are people pointing it out from stages around the world, but none of the speechifiers are it seems doing much about it if ad revenues on the platforms is any indication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advertisers need in-house experts with the nous to use their agencies to advise them (as Nick Manning\u2019s excellent piece<\/a> suggests). Agencies have the skills, but what they\u2019re too often missing is the backbone to tell the client that what they\u2019ve been doing is wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhich is what they would do if they were true advisors or consultants as opposed to reactive executors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This whole situation is a mess and is what happens when you have unvalidated data being treated by those non-specialists receiving it as gospel truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The advertisers\u2019 trade body in the UK, ISBA is acting to deliver on the promise of Origin, the cross-media planning initiative by hiring the ex-agency leader, Tom George as CEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t the non-sequitur it might appear to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once advertisers are in a position to compare exposure data on a like-for-like basis across channels then life will become simpler. Plans can be constructed on a firmer, more professional footing, and buys can be made that deliver the plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responsibility and accountability for online spend needs to be with the CMO; and agencies\u2019 honest advice on planning needs to be encouraged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Happy days. Easy peasy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are certain topics that recur in the trade press. There\u2019s ad spend forecasts, awards, people news, new business wins and in-housing. Us bloggers have our favourites: in my case, transparency, planning, and the various evils visited upon us by online platforms. And in-housing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1604,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}