{"id":949,"date":"2017-08-15T15:53:48","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T14:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=949"},"modified":"2017-08-15T15:53:48","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T14:53:48","slug":"agency-reboot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/agency-reboot\/","title":{"rendered":"Agency Reboot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Farmer, strategy consultant to several agencies and author of \u2018Madison Avenue Manslaughter\u2019 wrote an interesting piece on MediaVillage.com<\/a> the other week in which he pointed out that even though the ANA has been (correctly) criticising agency practices for the last couple of years the agency\u2019s own association, the 4A\u2019s has hardly been robust in putting up any kind of counter argument.<\/p>\n

Michael was reacting to the latest ANA work on the lack of transparency in the ad production business. His counter argument runs that yes agencies have been guilty of opaque business practices, but that on the other side, advertisers have been guilty of undervaluing their agencies for many years.<\/p>\n

Although the \u2018but they drove me to it officer\u2019 defence is a weak one, Michael still makes a good point.<\/p>\n

Indeed, The Cog Blog<\/a> has made the same point, albeit from a different perspective. My view is driven by the various reported misdemeanours of the media agencies, keeping rebates and becoming so infatuated with the ever more Byzantine deals of their trading divisions that they\u2019ve lost sight of the immense benefits of objectivity in media planning.<\/p>\n

Agency CEO\u2019s who read this blog, or at least those who have reacted to it have in the past accused me of being unrealistic and naive. \u2018Clients won\u2019t pay for planning\u2019 they say. As a result, the agency is driven, no doubt despite its better nature, to earn a crust by in effect defrauding their client, even if a line-by-line examination of many contracts may well make the point that they\u2019re within their legal rights to act as they do.<\/p>\n

Whose fault is it that clients don\u2019t think planning is worth paying for? Procurement officers is the knee-jerk response but that\u2019s not fair. Sure, they may be the last link in the chain, but this story starts to go wrong way before they get involved.<\/p>\n

The truth is that the agencies themselves haven\u2019t valued planning sufficiently to be able to make a strong enough case for them to be paid for the service. If they don\u2019t value the skill why should their clients?<\/p>\n

Imagine yourself as a media agency CEO facing this dilemma. You\u2019re short of your revenue targets. Given that there\u2019s no magic new business tree, your only options are: convince your clients to pay for a service you\u2019ve been giving away for years; or beat up your favourite media owner for a slightly larger rebate.<\/p>\n

Most go for option two.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a useful analogy in the market research world. A few years ago, BJ&A did some work for ISBA on the role of procurement in negotiating market research contracts. We interviewed several procurement chiefs (whose main aim was to do all they could to understand the MR business), some market research leaders (some of whom were determined to stop their procurement colleagues presumably in an attempt to maintain the mystery) and a few research agency CEO\u2019s (who were all too often caught in the middle).<\/p>\n

One of the research agency people we spoke to made a good point. He said that for years many of his colleagues in market research agencies had charged for fieldwork, the \u2018doing\u2019 if you like and had given the interpretation (the \u2018thinking\u2019 bit) away for free.<\/p>\n

When fieldwork switched to being more of a commodity, delivered online the agencies tried to start charging for interpretation. The client response was unsurprising: \u2018why should we pay for something you\u2019ve been giving us for years? What\u2019s changed?\u2019<\/p>\n

If you substitute buying for \u2018fieldwork\u2019, and planning for \u2018interpretation\u2019 you have the self-same problem as faced by the media agencies.<\/p>\n

Heaven forbid that the media agencies might have something to learn from anybody else, let alone the market research world, but actually they do.<\/p>\n

Demonstrate the true value of what you do is the basic lesson. And if you believe that what you do goes far beyond negotiating cheap prices (as it surely does) then prove your worth. Furthermore, embrace procurement and explain why what you do is worthy of their support.<\/p>\n

Deliver quality thinking, demonstrate business benefit (after all, you do this when there\u2019s an award at the end of it) and charge. Work with the 4A\u2019s and the IPA, even go so far as to collaborate with your competitors if that\u2019s what it takes.<\/p>\n

Trading is being cleaned-up and anyway it won\u2019t be long before much of it is automated (\u2018fieldwork goes online\u2019), the management consultancy businesses are coming after planning (about which more in the coming weeks), so now\u2019s the time to reboot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Farmer, strategy consultant to several agencies and author of \u2018Madison Avenue Manslaughter\u2019 wrote an interesting piece on MediaVillage.com the other week in which he pointed out that even though the ANA has been (correctly) criticising agency practices for the last couple of years the agency\u2019s own association, the 4A\u2019s has hardly been robust in […]<\/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\/949"}],"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=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}