{"id":851,"date":"2016-11-10T08:37:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T08:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=851"},"modified":"2016-11-10T08:37:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T08:37:36","slug":"the-strange-case-of-irwin-gotlieb-and-the-auditor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/the-strange-case-of-irwin-gotlieb-and-the-auditor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Case of Irwin Gotlieb and the Auditor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first element within the ANA\u2019s enquiry into agency rebates and other alleged malpractices was published back in June and contained the results of 150 confidential interviews with media practitioners. Its conclusions may have surprised many advertisers but I am yet to find anyone with an agency background who was shocked by the findings.<\/p>\n

You might have thought that once the ANA conclusions were out there a smart strategy for the agencies would be to batten down the hatches, put their own houses in order, speak privately to their clients and make as few public statements as possible.<\/p>\n

And to be fair this is what most of them have done.<\/p>\n

Except for Irwin Gotlieb, GroupM\u2019s Global Chairman who it seems prefers the attack-as-the-best-form-of-defence option.<\/p>\n

There is no other way to explain an extraordinary interview Irwin gave on stage at the Video Everywhere Summit, as reported in Mediapost<\/a> on October 28th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

In this, he said \u201cThe entire effort was a biz-dev [business-development] effort. \u2026 The ANA allowed themselves to be part of a third-party\u2019s business development.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then went on to name the auditors Ebiquity by name. Irwin is not a huge fan of media auditors.<\/p>\n

For those with short memories, WPP is engaged in a legal action against Ebiquity\u2019s Firm Decisions for an alleged breach of an NDA involving documents sent in error by GroupM to FD. This may or may not have been on Irwin\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

Irwin wants us to believe that the ANA\u2019s Board of CMO\u2019s (many his clients) was somehow duped by Ebiquity; that Ebiquity then managed to doctor 150 interviews conducted by another organisation altogether (K2), not to mention the interviews conducted by Irwin\u2019s ex-colleague Jon Mandel which started this whole merry-go-round spinning in the first place.<\/p>\n

So Ebiquity, according to Irwin managed to persuade the ANA\u2019s Board, K2, Jon Mandel and more than 150 unsuspecting respondents to help their new business effort.<\/p>\n

Irwin must have a very high opinion of Ebiquity\u2019s influence, not to mention their organisational abilities.<\/p>\n

Irwin concludes his argument by saying that as no scandal has emerged then the whole ANA thing must have been overblown: \u201cHow much has surfaced? Have you heard a lot? Has a major scandal surfaced?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe others prefer to discuss private and confidential matters in private.<\/p>\n

The fact is that following the ANA\u2019s work the industry will be the better for having well informed advertisers, partnering with agencies who are fairly paid to behave totally transparently in the advertisers\u2019 best interests.<\/p>\n

The external, objective monitoring of performance has never been more relevant than today \u2013 whether we\u2019re talking of measuring Facebook or auditing media agencies.<\/p>\n

Irwin Gotlieb has been an outstanding media professional for very many years.<\/p>\n

But his unshakeable belief that everyone not with him is against him does him no credit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first element within the ANA\u2019s enquiry into agency rebates and other alleged malpractices was published back in June and contained the results of 150 confidential interviews with media practitioners. Its conclusions may have surprised many advertisers but I am yet to find anyone with an agency background who was shocked by the findings.<\/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\/851"}],"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=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}