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M&M’s Blog goes behind the headlines to offer a running commentary on the business dynamics within the international media and marketing industry. The M&M editorial team joins forces with industry experts and local market heroes to balance a bird’s eye view of global trends with the importance of local insight.

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• Is 2012 the right time to pitch your business?

  13 October 2011

  If I was a marketer I would be glad I waited out the (last) recession to review my media investments. It may prove that patience is valuable in seeking additional value from media spend. However, I would probably be getting ready to review in 2012 (if there is a current commercial imperative within the business). Get set, go!

  

  I wrote recently about some of the implications of media business reviewing next year and I have a few posts lined up on this subject looking at specific implications for agencies, clients, media owners and auditors.   

  For now, below are some thought starters on whether this is the right time for you:

  What does 2012 mean?

  It’s probably the year of value propositions. Agencies are likely to start seriously pushing back against the commoditization of media, a few media agencies are forming some strong new propositions based on data platforms and measurable performance. Providing for the first time a real sense that there may after all be a rational link to be found between investment and return when it comes to marketing. Hope I'm not speaking too soon but the signs are good.   

  Two scenarios: a) 2012 as a recovery market (maybe) – everything sounds better and budgets easing, time to innovate. b) 2012 as a Double-dip market (maybe) - agencies seeking volume, deals to be had, time to innovate. Take your pick...

  Plus of course its Olympics year when we all go brand crazy and marketing budgets sound like Scottish lottery syndicate winners. Perhaps not. 

  Getting ready

  Our advice at ID COMMS is always start your considerations early – it is never too early to seek help and get your own teams aligned and prepared. Reviews that rush to market too quickly (sometimes because they are prematurely leaked to the market) are not rewarding for anyone. The old adage "if you don't know where you're going just about any route will get you there" is never truer than in agency review. Pre-planning pays off in heaps, not just peace of mind but in financial gain too.  

  Opportunities next year

  Since the recession kicked in some big new client/agency contracts have created (see previous posts) this means many big trading positions have been established by reviews in 2008/09 which have left the market exposed in some places, some agencies struggling to deliver promises to clients in some areas. However there are smart clients that waited to see what their competitors did and can now take advantage of a very different media landscape whilst their competitors are ladened with savings-focused trading deals from 2009 that are not flexible enough to become value-creation deals and can't exploit the current excellent media thinking in agencies. The dust has settled, trading positions become clearer. These challenger brands are (and should be) looking for more than price reduction opportunities in the current market place. 

  Talent, talent, talent. Lots of fresh resource in agencies, the recession allowed agencies to cut out some dead wood and lose expensive resources that were underused or misused. Most agencies now seem to have much leaner, efficient, modern structures. The recession allowed them to rethink how they service clients, their propositions, how they build teams and where their strategic priorities should lie. They’ve had a couple of years to do this cleansing and rebuilding and now they are ready with fresh teams, new offices, new processes and structures. Ready to be put to the test by the next wave of post-recession / double-dip review.

  Agency world is bouncing back, the numbers are still tough but there are some strong propositions out there now, with new innovations in performance and data management. 

  If I had a budget, I'd be looking at a new approach for media next year. Start thinking...

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, Agency/ client relationships, Business models, Agency Developments, pitches, Measurement, ROI & effectiveness

• The great roster duplication challenge

  05 October 2011

  Think hiring an agency makes a marketer's life easier? Think again…

  
  

  Earlier this year ID COMMS had an audience with an extremely senior FMCG marketer in Europe, on route to our meeting we pondered what some of his biggest challenges might be: activating around the Olympics, portfolio management, creative excellence, navigating through user generated content and what it was doing to his brand. He certainly has an exciting role encapsulating all of these great marketing conundrums and more yet when we asked him directly what seriously keeps him awake at night the answer was none of those things. 

  What preoccupies his darkest thoughts is how to control and incentivize a huge (seriously huge) roster of agencies. 

  One of his biggest frustrations was the duplication of resources across the agencies. Roster briefings had turned into 30+ attendees, impossible to manage, each agency now bringing a head of strategy, head of digital, two or three account people – it was out of control.

  When we asked him what he thought the solution might be he said that whilst he knew he was working with some of the best agencies available, he also knew the people in each of those agencies that really made an impact on his business. Therefore in an ideal world he would be able to cherry-pick key talent, irrespective of agency and blend them into an uber-agency team, to create properly integrated marketing for his brands and avoid the time, money and sanity wastage that goes with managing such an unwieldy roster. 

  I think this is such a common problem. Not only is this issue a serious problem for effective budgeting but it’s a serious productivity issue. The “too many cooks…” adage doesn’t just apply to the culinary arts, more than ever agencies are overloading billable teams and resource and leaving their clients struggling to have to manage and co-ordinate the roster. At its worst, clients complain of having to up-resource their own internal teams just to manage the increasingly complex roster; so there are escalating costs on both sides whilst productivity of the team drops due to the time it takes to collaborate across vast teams.  

  As usual there is no silver bullet to resolve this but identifying the duplication and then identifying the most productive parts of your roster is the a good place to start. The best solution of course is to sit down (with some help and a blank piece of paper) and scope out exactly what resource your marketing team needs to engage externally, according to the modern rules of marketing. These rules, if you need to ask, primarily involve not necessarily starting with a creative agency as first pick. Instead, define a scope of work which ignores the traditional agency silos and starts instead with a few questions:

  1 what ambition do we have for our brands (the more solid the KPIs the better)

  2 what role will marketing play in this (ditto)

  3 what type of individuals will we need to engage from outside our organisation

  Then the search can begin and new rules of engagement created. Its likely many of your own people will hate it, but then that's what defensive marketing does to you. 

  For the moment, dare to dream....

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, Agency/ client relationships, Business models, Integration, collaboration

• It is no longer about costs. It is about costs.

  14 September 2011

  Are agency rosters getting harder to manage or easier? 

  (the picture is not a clue btw, honest)

  

  Earlier this month I heard again another very senior marketer ask a room of people (other very senior marketers) how to best manage a large roster of agencies. This is a big question, and in our experience becoming increasingly frequently asked. It's advisable (for sanity's sake)to consider this a simple problem rather than a complex one. 

  I believe the issue has two elements, firstly to get agencies aligned and focused enough to be able to collaborate in a constructive way that does not become a distraction for the business, second to avoid serious duplication of resource and therefore duplication of non-working marketing budgets (that is the bits that get paid in fees rather than actual marketing to customers for example).

  The first thing that strikes me is that as a general rule, we still hear more negative than positive remark about agency-land. Perhaps much of that is unjustified but however much evolution, collaboration and modern thinking exists in agencies now compared to five years back, there are still some fundamental, huge issues which sit on marketers desks and are not being addressed by their (often handsomely paid) agency execs.

  For many years marketing clients have been working through a process of rationalizing costs, whether by interrogating production budgets (and agency production income) or by leveraging down mass media costs and overall agency fees. For many marketers that process has reaped many positive rewards and costs have been reasonably managed to an appropriately competitive level (usually based on volume). However now the language is more commonly about value creation (or variants thereof) which is charged directly at a specific agency "we want more value from our contract with you" or at the roster as a whole "you guys need to work better together to create greater value". Both are valid. 

  We believe that marketing will be the next frontier of corporate productivity gains. Those gains won't come from cost cutting, they will come from a strategic approach to sourcing marketing services partners ("what do we need, who can supply that, how will we measure success and how shall we pay for that success"). Its about cost-management rather than cost-cutting. In the coming months and years we expect to be advising clients how to cut (yes, I said that out loud!) their marketing budgets by designing and organising their roster more efficiently around a business marketing strategy. 

  So, in short I think the recent era of cost-cutting in marketing (the naughty procurement) will be replaced with an overdue era of diligent cost-management (the smart strategic procurement), based mainly on a roster's ability to demonstrate value delivery.

  See, I told you it was simple....

   

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, Agency/ client relationships, Business models, pitches, Remuneration, Measurement, ROI & effectiveness, media costs, Ad Spend

• 2012, new business and the shape of my Jacuzzi

  07 September 2011

  This month we've seen what some are calling the beginning of a double dip recession, although nobody has actually dared say that out loud. America's credit has been downgraded for the first time and they’re pulling money out of Europe, the Eurozone is causing nervousness by not adequately addressing the issues in Greece, Portugal et al putting huge pressures on Germany and France economies and their confidence to the point where the Euro itself is at risk. Alongside this, various agencies have also naturally scaled back their growth forecasts for this and next year and some large brands are starting to review their agency arrangements more than usual for a traditionally quiet summer for new business.
  
  

  
  

  
  In 2003 Sorrell famously predicted a “bath-shaped” recession. I’m thinking its going to be more of a "Jacuzzi-shape" this time (see kindergarten quality diagram) and we are on the edge of our seats (ahem) waiting again to see how this will play out in adland.
  
  As we hurtle towards Q4, naturally brands start to consider budgeting for next year and will be re-evaluating their marketing investments in light of the insecurity of consumer spending and growth potential in the market.
  
  Is this all sounding rather familiar? True, but how might it affect our industry this time around? Will 2012 be any different to the madness of agency reviews we saw in 2009.
  
  I think we may be seeing the beginnings of another round of 2009 style agency reviews. GM’s recent announcement of a $3bn kick-start to this inevitable process rocked media agencies around the world. At the time we said 2009 would be the year of the pitch and indeed it was with a collection of behemoth global FMCG and telecom reviews. I expect that 2012 is shaping up to be the same, with a likelihood of many agency reviews commencing across Q4'11 to Q1'12  
  
  Over the coming days and weeks I want to consider the implications of this scenario for some of the key stakeholders; namely clients, agencies and media owners. Some of who are still battling with the legacy left from 2009 reviews where deflationary pricing triggered some very aggressive reviews and promises made in media.
  
  I'm going to share with you a chain of related posts that I've been writing for the past few months in somewhat anticipation of this scenario happening.
  
  Keep an eye open and stay out of the Jacuzzi for now…
  

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, Agency/ client relationships, auditors, pitches, Ad Spend

• $3bn GM global media review: cost-cutting or cost-management?

  26 August 2011

  You’ll no doubt have found it hard to miss the news that this week General Motors announced a review of its global media spend, estimated to be in excess of $3bn. The business is currently split regionally, there is no suggestion yet that this is a consolidation and we don’t yet have sight of the broad brief. I found it interesting that much of the debate and discussion when this was announced was the assumption that this was inevitably a “pre-double-dip” cost-cutting exercise which many accused Unilever and Vodafone (amongst others) of conducting in 2009 as the first recession hit adland.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I would like to believe that this review has a strategic ambition but there’s not yet much word coming from GM, or indeed the market, to suggest this. The appointment of an auditor (R3) to run the review probably isn’t reassuring the incumbent agencies either…. 

   A review of this scale is going to remain in the headlines for its duration, many perhaps seeing it as a bell-weather for what double-dip agency reviews might look like in the coming (terrifying) 18 months for agencies. I would encourage GM and their auditors to take the opportunity to make a strategic ambition a publicly visible core of this review and hopefully avoid a frenzy of cost-cutting reviews in the wake of this big news from GM if the only news that trickles out is alarm concerning aggressive cost demands…

  
  

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, auditors, pitches, media costs