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Budget Reductions Create Opportunity to Fine-Tune Agency Network

28 May

 

Advertising concept: Ad Agency on digital background

For marketers seeking to generate efficiency gains, looking internally to rethink the processes used to manage planning and creative development workflows can yield significant benefit.

As importantly, looking externally at “how” and “where” work is being performed across an organization’s network of marketing services agencies is extremely important. This involves an objective assessment of the current network of agency partners, their resource offerings, capabilities, performance, and the roles and responsibilities assigned to each.

Without periodic assessment, agency networks can become bloated beyond a marketing team’s ability to effectively manage these vital resources. This risk can be compounded in companies where marketing positions are vacant or have been eliminated as a result of a budget reduction decisions – leaving fewer client-side personnel to manage dispersed agency activities.

Reviewing and creating an inventory of roster agency capabilities and the roles assigned is never a bad thing when it comes to identifying unnecessary expenses or opportunities to consolidate resources and protect against redundancy. Amongst other benefits, since the work necessitates a review of each agency agreement and remuneration program tenets, output should include a comparison of agreement terms, conditions, requirements, and bill rates to ensure consistency (where applicable) and reasonableness of agency bill rates and other costs.

This practice is even more apt when marketing budgets are being cut and agency scopes of work reduced. Such assessments form the objective basis for eliminating duplicative activities and or resources, paring specialty agencies that are not being fully utilized, and eliminating unnecessary fees that are putting downward pressure on working dollars.

Consider; How many agencies do you have that are managing influencers? Involved with social media or content production? How many different agencies are being utilized for studio services or broadcast production? How many agency trading desks are being utilized for the placement of programmatic media? Are you utilizing specialist firms that may no longer be required based on changes to the marketing budget (e.g. event management)? It is highly likely that there are opportunities to consolidate work among fewer partners to simplify workflows, improve communications and reduce costs.

If you are utilizing a “lead” agency to coordinate activities, briefings, production and trafficking across your agency network, it may be worthwhile to solicit their input on potential agency roster moves. Further, once a plan is formulated, collaborating with the lead agency’s account team to affect transitions can be critical to the success of consolidations and the reshuffling of assignments. If you do not employ a lead agency model, the time may be right to consider this approach.

Streamlining external agency networks will improve communication between marketer and agency, enhance business alignment and instill clarity on success metrics. In the wake of current crisis driven budgetary adjustments and uncertainty, companies may want to give serious consideration to such an approach.

“Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.”

                                                                                                                   ~ Tony Blair

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Adjusting Marketing Budgets is Multi-Dimensional

5 May

budget cutAs we began 2020 no one could have predicted the level of upheaval the economy would experience as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes forced on businesses as a result of government mandated shelter in-place policies, while critical for curtailing the spread of the virus, have been devastating. According to consulting firm, Brand Finance “America’s Top 500 Brands could lose up to $400 billion” due to COVID-19’s impact on the economy.  

Organizations have sprung into action, many slashing advertising spend, along with other expenses as they seek to offset dramatic reductions in revenue and to deal with mounting cash flow challenges.

As marketers approach the mid-point of the second quarter it is clear that the changes to their fiscal budgets will be significant and potentially lasting. In a recent poll of marketing and advertising executives, by Advertiser Perceptions, 77% of those surveyed expect ad spend to be soft through the first-quarter of 2021.

Thus far, many companies have taken a wait and see attitude with some of their advertising and marketing commitments as they rightly weigh options related to modifying, rescheduling or cancelling advertising commitments. Moving forward, decisive action will be required to safeguard and recall funds pre-paid to agencies, production resources, events management companies and media sellers for creative that will never come to fruition, media that will never run and sponsorships that will be postponed or cancelled.

Equally as important is the need to review and likely revise annual agency scopes of work, staffing plans and remuneration programs that have been impacted by the reduction in marketing spend.

These can be challenging and complex conversations to have with your agency partners and in turn, with third-party vendors, particularly because their organizations are dealing with comparable business and financial issues. For the purposes of this article, we want to focus on the client/ agency portion of the ledger, rather than external commitment and resource reallocation reviews that are likely currently underway.

A disciplined approach, focused on contractual terms and current financial facts, will yield the greatest return as you seek to right size your marketing budget in a fair, responsible and expeditious manner. This approach also recognizes that in addition to the goal of reducing costs, companies are seeking to improve financial flexibility and limit risks and exposures. Stephen Covey wisely suggested, it is best to; “Begin with the end in mind.” Same applies now, it is best to begin with a review of current governing documents between advertiser and agency, and any year to date agency financial reporting, in order to answer this handful of straightforward questions:

  1. Does the Agency Agreement afford you the right to modify your Scope of Work and or retainer fee? If so, what is the notification requirement in your agreement?
  2. What Scope deliverables have been completed to date?
  3. Where is the Agency on their Staffing Plan commitments?
  4. What P.O.s have been issued to the agency? For open P.O.’s what is the open balance on each P.O.?
  5. Do you have a detailed Job History Report, that provides financial details for all jobs, open or closed? Can you identify which jobs have been completed? Of those that remain open what are your options to postpone, modify or cancel any of them?

Answers to questions such as these will assist in facilitating productive interactions with all stakeholders, across multiple fronts ranging from informing budget reduction and reallocation decisions to the potential impact of internal or agency-side staff reductions on financial management processes and controls and the corresponding risks.

One area that must be addressed is agency remuneration. Reductions in overall spend, scaled back Scopes of Work and revised agency Staffing Plans necessarily impact agency compensation, whether commission or fee based.

For their part, agencies have rightly taken steps to address the impact of client ad spend reductions. To date, each of the major holding companies have announced plans to reduce expenses. These reductions include; employees being furloughed or laid-off, involuntary salary reductions, the waiver of bonuses and 401k contributions, executive management taking massive pay reductions and a freeze on non-billable expenses… all designed to lower their cost base.

If your agency is on a direct labor-based remuneration program, the reduction in the agency’s direct labor and overhead costs means that the fees which you pay should be reduced accordingly. With this compensation schema, even a modest change in an agency’s cost structure can have a meaningful impact on the fee calculation.

It should be noted that the goal of the compensation review is not to wring out savings at the expense of the agency, but to adjust the fees to reflect the reality of the revised 2020 marketing and advertising budget and corresponding changes to the Scope of Work.

Marketers have a fiduciary obligation to their organizations to account for, safeguard and recall funds targeted for reduction. This can best be done working in collaboration with their agency partners, while affording those partners a high level of respect and empathy. Once the budget right sizing process has been successfully completed, all stakeholders can refocus their attention on the future, perhaps drawing motivation from retired 4-star U.S. Army General, Colin Powell who once said: “Always focus on the front windshield and not the review mirror.” 

 

 

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Navigating Marketing’s Turbulent Waters

26 Oct

waypointHaving choices can certainly be a good thing. But an overabundance of options carries its own set of challenges. Thom Browne, the American designer once said that: “When people have too many choices, they make bad choices.” 

While an apt description of the $560 billion global advertising industry or not, the expansion and fragmentation of the advertising sector, fueled by rapid advances in technology has complicated things for many of the industry’s stakeholders. Consider the following:

  • In addition to traditional TV, there are over 100 streaming services available in the U.S.
  • According to Internet Live Stats, there are 1.7 billion websites on the worldwide web
  • Fast Company estimates that there are over 525,000 active podcast shows
  • Author Scott Brinker identified 7,040 MarTech solutions in his 2019 Marketing Tech Landscape
  • Agency Spotter indicates that there are 120,000 ad agencies in the U.S., 500,000+ worldwide
  • Inc. Magazine has identified 700,000 consulting firms across business functions globally

As the plethora of options have grown, so has the level of angst and uncertainty among marketing practitioners and suppliers alike. For an industry that has always prided itself on its ability to adapt to change, the current environment is somewhat unsettling.

Complicating things is the consumers growing disdain for advertising, which the New York Times profiled in a recent article entitled: “The Advertising Industry Has a Problem. People Hate Ads” in which it chronicles some of the attitudes and behaviors being exhibited by consumers that could have a profound impact on the industry. In the article, the Times referenced a recent report from Group M, which put forth the proposition that these are “dangerous days for advertisers.”

Let’s face it, there are few “tried and true” approaches that marketers can fall back on to guide their strategic and resource allocation decisions in this environment. Further, given the rate and rapidity of change from a legislative and technology perspective there are simply not that many industry guideposts to assist marketers in effectively charting a course forward or in evaluating progress.

While we believe that there will be a contraction in the supply chain, marked by a consolidation of agency brands, consulting firms, martech solutions providers and media outlets, we don’t believe that this suggests a return to simpler times.

To reduce the level of dissonance, marketers will likely seek to streamline their “world” by rightsizing their agency networks, clarifying roles and responsibilities among their suppliers, transitioning certain work in-house and taking a more considered and cautious approach to the adoption of “shiny new objects” whether related to technology or messaging options.

Given the continued focus by their C-Suite peers on marketing performance, CMOs will maintain a dual focus on driving revenues, while achieving efficiencies across their supply chain to boost working dollars as a percentage of total marketing spend. This is not an either/ or option. Recognizing this “reality” an advertiser’s agency and consulting partners can provide critical support by focusing on the identification of waypoints on the path to performance, rather than pursuing a grandiose focus on future-think outcomes. In the words of 17thcentury Japanese shogun leyasu Tokugawa:

“Let thy step be slow and steady, that thou stumble not.”

 

 

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Advertising Delivery Models Are Evolving. How Will the Holding Companies Respond?

12 Jan

dreamstime_xs_127777381When agency holding companies were birthed, they did nothing that directly impacted client businesses. They were corporate entities that owned a number of smaller agencies and the attendant portfolios of real estate, trademarks, copyrights and licenses attached to those agencies. Their primary role was to create shareholder value through structural leveraging.

As time progressed, three things happened that form the basis of the challenge faced by agency holding companies today.

Firstly, aided by low barriers to entry, there was a proliferation in both the number of agencies and the types of functional specialist shops that came to be. In the early days there were “above the line” full-service agencies and “below the line” shops such as sales promotion, direct marketing and PR. Over time, specialists in diversity advertising, shopper marketing and digital media have come into vogue. Highly focused agencies continue to emerge today, as witnessed by the arrival of Amazon “specialist agencies” that assist marketers seeking to do business with or sell goods online via Amazon. Along the way, specialization led to fragmentation and full-service agencies fell by the wayside. Marketers in turn saw their agency networks expand in size as they added specialist firms to their rosters creating a range of agency stewardship and coordination challenges.

Secondly, the holding companies continued to acquire marketing services and advertising agencies. Part of their acquisition strategy involved bringing on specialist firms across a range of competencies to fill out their service offering. Another part of their strategy involved the acquisition of branded agency networks to consolidate activity within select clients (e.g. WPP’s acquisition of Ford agencies J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam) and to create walled silos that would allow them to handle competitive advertising accounts. Financial benefits were realized by consolidating functions and paring expenses in areas such as human resources, legal and finance while allowing the acquired agencies to operate independently in virtually every other area.

Finally, along the way the holding companies began to compete as agencies, creating stand-alone client service entities such as; Enfatico (Dell), Team One (Toyota), GTB (Ford) and We Are Unlimited (McDonald’s). The value proposition with these dedicated agency teams was to provide larger advertisers with scalable, seamless solutions served up by the most talented personnel from across the holding company’s portfolio of agency brands. While the premise was certainly compelling, the holding company model did not readily lend itself to a blended workforce concept and often suffered from the lack of centralized business platforms.

Fast forward to 2019 and advertiser preferences remain unchanged. Advertisers desire breakthrough, transformational business solutions served up on an integrated basis and of course, they want them faster, better and cheaper.

In their search for a better “mousetrap” advertisers have begun to take certain aspects of their advertising in-house and or have engaged non-traditional partners including management and technology consulting firms to augment their traditional agency rosters. Of note, the consulting firms, represented by global monolithic brands, blended workforces, common processes and centralized business platforms have made significant inroads with CMOs. This has raised speculation among many industry pundits with regard to whether or not the consulting firms would supplant advertising agencies. Fueling the speculation has been the management consulting firms’ pursuit of agency acquisitions to round out their marketing/ advertising service offerings, it will be interesting to see how well they fair integrating those acquired firms into their organizations both structurally and culturally.

Many in the industry are waiting for the revelation of a new “agency model” that will emerge to magically address advertiser desires and resolve agency holding company challenges. It is our belief that these pundits will likely be waiting for some time.

Advertisers, for their part, will continue to seek out and retain responsive, agile marketing partners that can provide breakthrough, scalable business enhancing solutions. While the idea of an integrated, end-to-end provider is intriguing, it is likely not feasible. Rather, assembling a team of specialists, albeit narrower marketing agency networks, with the advertiser serving as strategist and integrator across the “marketing ecosystem” as Martin Sorrell, Chairman of S4 Capital refers to it is the most likely solution.

As for agency holding companies, we believe that Arthur Sadoun, Chairman of Publicis Groupe got it right when he stated that “the old holding company model is dead” in April of 2018. Advertisers will not embrace a one-stop solution from any of the holding companies. Thus, the holding companies will likely continue their recent focus on right-sizing their networks through the consolidation of both brands and functions and the divestiture of redundant and non-core entities. After all, how many agencies that place or distribute digital media or in-house studios does a holding company need? There may also be a subtle shift from a focus on cost reductions to enhancing the holding company’s ability to cost efficiently scale operations. This could include an expansion of the old “shared services” model, looking beyond HR, Finance and Legal to create centers of excellence around functions such as Data Sciences, Technology, Media Procurement and Production to provide clients across their network with faster, better and cheaper solutions in these areas.

While many lament the decline of the agency holding company, other than the world’s top advertisers, most organizations hire agency brands. While some of the agencies they hire may be owned by the same holding company, more often they are not. Thus the challenge of finding “integrated” solutions for the development of relevant, quick, agile and engaging solutions has been the purview of marketers… at least since the days when the full-service agency model was the standard. As such, the evolution of the advertising delivery model will more than likely be driven by advertisers and less so by agency holding companies.

 

 

 

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Iconic Ad Agency Brands Continue to Disappear

25 Sep

Y&R logoI was struck with both a twinge of disappointment and nostalgia when I read the news that WPP is considering folding the Young & Rubicam agency into VML, renaming the entity VMLY&R.

Born in the 1920’s at a time before television and digital media even existed, Young & Rubicam was truly an iconic agency brand that went on to produce memorable work for clients such as Jell-O (“Bill Cosby with Kids”), Lays Potato Chips (“Betcha can’t eat just one”) and Bristol-Meyers (“Excedrin headache”) during the 1960’s and 70’s. A cutting-edge agency that produced the first color TV commercial perhaps it is only fitting that it is being merged into an agency which specializes in leveraging emerging technologies and digital media to help brands forge and manage consumer connections in the twenty-first century.

For sentimentalist, however, who remember the golden era of advertising, when full-service agencies ruled, serving their clients’ as valued, trusted strategic partners and when remuneration was straightforward and transparent (15% commission rate) Young & Rubicam’s transformation into VMLY&R is but another sign of an industry in search of a new identity. Thus the Y&R nameplate will join the likes of other legendary shops that have become distant memories of a bygone era:

  • Ted Bates
  • N.W. Ayer
  • Marsteller
  • Needham Harper & Steers
  • Wells, Rich, Greene
  • Kenyon & Eckhardt
  • Papert, Koenig, Lois

The decade of the sixties ushered in the rise of the agency holding company, courtesy of Marion Harper and his Interpublic Group of Companies and a turn to Wall Street for public funding to fuel three decades of merger and acquisition activity, the likes of which we will probably never see again.

This ultimately led to the decoupling of agency services and the emergence of specialist agencies. Initially, this was a tenable situation when there were a limited number of agencies including, creative shops, media agencies, diversity firms and direct marketing agencies. But as the number of areas of specialization continued to mushroom, so too did advertisers’ agency rosters as shops focusing on disciplines such as; experiential marketing, digital media, social marketing and brand activation were born.

The industry’s move toward specialization led to fragmentation, increased competition, margin erosion and talent acquisition and retention challenges for the agencies themselves. Some have argued that this scenario, coupled with the emerging role of corporate procurement in the marketing arena, and the downward pressure on agency fees that resulted, fueled the growth in non-transparent revenue practices implemented by many agencies.  

Ironically, while these practices satisfied the holding companies short-term profit motivations, the revelation of these non-toward initiatives, which belied what advertisers believed to be an agency’s fiduciary responsibilities ultimately cost them the trust and confidence of advertisers. This, in turn, has opened the door for management and tech consulting firms to challenge ad agencies traditional market position.

Interestingly, the approach taken by the consulting firms is more reminiscent of the old “full-service” agency model, than the multi-brand specialist approach, which epitomizes today’s holding company model. Monolithic, global consulting brands delivering strategic, end-to-end, integrated solutions through a team of diverse, highly trained consultants steeped in their firm’s culture, processes and tools.

It is likely that WPP’s move to merge Y&R and VML signals the beginning of the next wave of holding company consolidations and potentially divestitures as they seek to pare their agency brand portfolios in an effort to eliminate redundancies, reduce overhead costs and streamline service delivery. Wave one this effort led to the disappearance of many of the great names in the agency world, either dropping them from their respective company nameplates or opting for acronyms, which resulted in Ogilvy, Benson & Mather being shortened to Ogilvy, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn becoming BBDO and Doyle Dane Bernbach adopting the DDB moniker.

In the end, agencies can only hope that their consolidation and repositioning efforts boost their position with advertisers and assist them in defending their core business. After all, the challenge, as the legendary Bill Bernbach once intoned, is; “Getting your product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer.”

 

 

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Will AI Render Media Agencies Obsolete?

11 Sep

artificial_intelligenceArtificial intelligence (AI) is already reshaping how advertising is developed, planned and placed. The marketing applications being envisioned and adopted by agencies, consultancies, publishers and advertisers are nothing short of remarkable.

From the onset of “Big Data” it stood to reason that the concept of predictive analysis, the act of mining diverse sets of data to generate recommendations wouldn’t be far behind. Layer on natural language processing, which converts text into structured data, and it is clear to see that “deep learning” is on the verge of revolutionizing the ad industry. As it stands, algorithms are currently optimizing bids for media buying, utilizing custom and syndicated data to match audience desires (or at least experiences) with available inventory.

Effective, efficient, automated methodologies for sorting through vast volumes of data to evaluate and establish patterns that reflect customer behavior for use in segmenting audiences and customizing message construction and delivery holds obvious promise.

So, what does this mean for media agencies? Will they be at the forefront of automation technology? Or will they be swept away by the consultancies and ad tech providers that are already investing here?

If media agencies desire to remain in control as the industry evolves, there are real challenges that they will have to address to remain viable:

  • Re-establish role as “trusted advisor” with the advertiser community. Recent concerns over transparency, unsavory revenue generation practices and a failure to pro-actively safeguard advertisers’ media investments from fraud and from running in inappropriate environments have created serious client/ agency relationship concerns.
  • Attract, train and retain top-level talent to re-staff media planning and buying departments. The focus will need to be on bridging the gap between developing, and applying automation technology and providing high-level consulting support focused on brand growth to their clients. Presently, media agencies are not effectively competing for talent, whether in the context of compensation and or personal and career development options being offered by their non-traditional competitors.
  • Provide a framework for addressing the compensation conundrum. Whether this is in the form of cost-based or performance-based fees tied to project outcomes, commissions or hybrid remuneration systems, tomorrow’s successful media agencies will need to establish clear, compelling compensation systems. These systems will need to reflect value propositions that will differentiate them from an expanded base of competitors, while offsetting (to some extent) non-transparent sources of revenue that many media shops have come to rely on in recent years.

This will not be an easy path for media agencies, particularly for those that are hampered by legacy systems, processes and management perspectives that may limit their ability to more broadly envision and ultimately, assist client organizations addressing their needs and expectations.

Either way, the race is on, as management consulting firms are acquiring various marketing and digital media specialist firms and as media agencies raid the consultancies for personnel to build out their strategic consulting capabilities. The key question will likely be, “Which business model holds the greatest promise, in the eyes of the Chief Marketing Officer, for improving brand performance?”

 

 

 

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The Ad Industry is Metamorphosing

30 Jun

dreamstime_xs_83082522“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” Most of us are familiar with the opening line from Charles Dickens in his epic work A Tale of Two Cities. Many marketers may even consider it an apt description of both the current state of the advertising industry and the challenges that they face in sustaining brand relevance and driving growth.

Phoenix risingSo, who will marketers count on to assist them with the tasks of deepening brand engagement with core target segments, revitalizing sales and profits in a low-growth environment and in differentiating their brands for competitive advantage?

Over the course of the last few years, many have opined on the viability of the ad agency model and what it portends for advertiser/ agency relationships going forward. And with good reason. Concerns cited include threats from non-traditional competitors such as management consulting and technology firms encroaching on their turf, talent recruitment and retention challenges and margin compression due to downward pressure on fees and expanded scopes of services.

It may be as some predict that management consulting firms will leverage their capabilities in the area of strategy and integration to pirate work from ad agencies and that ad-tech providers will enable marketers to take certain tasks in-house. The question remains, how will marketers adjust to this dynamic and the evolution of their agency networks to potentially include consulting, data and ad-tech firms? There are already very real challenges related to agency stewardship today due to under-resourced client marketing staffs.

The aforementioned challenges, combined with the rate of digitization and the emerging role of artificial intelligence occurring within the ad industry, certainly pose challenges for advertising agencies and could serve to lessen their stranglehold on the marketing and advertising sector. In a recent McKinsey article entitled; “The Global Forces Inspiring a New Narrative of Progress” the authors note that “disruption is accelerating.” They opine that this dynamic is raising serious concerns for many organizations relating to the question, “How long can their traditional sources of competitive advantage survive in the face of technological shifts?”

That said, in spite of these risk factors and other marketplace developments, ad agencies are doing just fine:

  • Agency holding companies have continued their aggressive acquisition drives, supporting both their horizontal and vertical integration strategies. While overall M&A activity is down from 2016 levels, WPP and Dentsu have consummated twenty acquisitions with a combined value of $700 million through the first 4 months of 2017. (Source: R3’s “State of Agency M&A report” for January – April, 2017).
  • While down from 2016’s 5.7% growth rate, global ad spending is projected to grow 3.6% in 2017 (Source: Magna Global, June, 2017). Of note, this is higher than the International Monetary Fund’s projected increase for global GDP growth.
  • Even though 1Q17 Advertising Industry gross margins fell to 44.15%, the industry itself is healthy. For instance, within the services sector, the Advertising Industry achieved the highest gross margins, net margins, EBITDA margins and pre-tax margins for the quarter (Source: CSIMarket.com).
  • Some 86% of mid-sized ad agencies are confident that this year will be better than last in terms of profitable growth (Source: Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) survey).

Importantly, since the demise of the “good ole days” of full-service agencies and the fifteen-percent commission remuneration model, agencies have demonstrated a unique ability to not only keep up with industry changes, but to take the lead from both a thought leadership and innovation perspective. They have been able to scale, attracting more clients and deeper talent pools, they have invested in emerging technologies to deal with increasingly complicated, data driven processes and to pioneer the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence to efficiently execute deliverables ranging from digital media investment to creative adaptations… all while dealing with evolving client expectations.

Further, it bears noting that the publicly traded holding companies; WPP, Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Dentsu, had combined estimated worldwide 2016 revenue levels of $60.7 billion (Source: Advertising Age, June 2017). When one considers the pre-dominance of the estimated billing process and agency remuneration schema that includes direct labor and overhead cost reimbursement plus guaranteed profit margins of 14% to 17% or more, one must also respect the financial clout that these publicly traded entities wield.

Is there a need for near-term belt tightening to offset softer 2017 ad spending levels? Yes. Do the holding companies need to consolidate agency brands and realign capabilities to boost the efficacy of their service delivery models and generate much needed efficiencies? Yes. Will agencies need to improve their talent recruitment and retention practices, across a diverse range of specialties? Yes. But no business is immune from these challenges, including management consultants, ad-tech platforms and publishers.

The big question the industry in general and marketers will need to assess is related to whether these players will be able to boldly transform their current business models, repositioning their firms to deliver integrated, multi-specialist services in a nimble, cost efficient, on-demand manner.

Broadly speaking, all participants are facing challenges as the ad industry undergoes its current metamorphoses. We believe that it is too early to predict winners and losers or to suggest that marketers adapt an attitude of empathy toward any of their marketing supply chain partners. After all, it is their marketing spend that has built this sector into a $457.4 billion global machine in 2017 (Source: Statista, 2017). And they must vigilantly safeguard and optimize that investment.

Below is one of the closing lines from A Tale of Two Cities, one that many may not be as familiar with:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…”

With this parting thought, Dickens’ suggests that the main character in his novel and the city of France will be resurrected, rising above their present strife and “made illustrious.”

Here’s hoping that the ad industry achieves similar transformative success.

 

 

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Did You Trust the Banker When You Played Monopoly?

26 Jan

Monopoly

If you were a “gamer” (in the days when board games were the norm) that implicitly trusted both the banker and the individual who controlled the distribution of the real estate properties when playing Monopoly, than this article isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if you are one who turns a wary eye toward those in control of assets, particularly your assets, then we would like to pose one question: “Do you know what happens to your company’s marketing funds once checks have been distributed to your agency partners?”

In our experience, few if any individuals within an advertiser organization have a clear perspective on the disposition of approved funds once an agency invoice has been paid. The primary reason for this is that the industry still operates largely on the concept of “estimated” billing and the pre-payment of funds from the advertiser to the agency. Over the years the resulting transparency gap has been compounded by the fact that few if any advertisers require their agencies to provide copies of all third-party vendor invoices with their final project or campaign billing. Most advertisers have document retention and audit rights clauses in their agreements, but few act upon these contractual rights.

As contract compliance auditors, we review thousands of agency bill-to-client invoices as part of our hard copy vouching and testing process. In general, the lack of specificity contained on these invoices, particularly when one recognizes that there is often little accompanying back-up can be startling. For example, imagine coming across an invoice for the production of television commercials for a major seasonal advertising campaign that simply stated; “Holiday Campaign TV Production – $785,000.” Was that for one commercial or six? Were these :15 second spots or :60’s? Is this for a U.S. campaign or a global effort? Apparently, answers to those types of questions aren’t always required to process payment for that invoice… as long as the invoice amount doesn’t exceed the approved purchase order, if there is an approved purchase order.

Do you know if your agencies are abiding by the contractual guidelines for competitively bidding jobs? Do you know whether or not the agreements with the agencies in your network even requires three bids or at what spending threshold? More broadly, do you know which of your third-party vendors are actually related to your ad agency partners (i.e. shared financial interests, investors or corporate lineage)? If so, was this disclosed in advance of work being awarded to those related parties?

If you’re like most advertisers, you are billed in advance of production or media commitments being made on your behalf, or at least prior to the activity occurring. Likely, your company pays that invoice within 45 days of receipt. Any idea how much time elapses prior to your third-party vendors being paid or whether their billing to the agencies is scrutinized for accuracy? Let’s assume there are credits issued by third-party vendors or approved funds that are not spent by the agencies, how long does it take for the agencies to identify and return those funds to you? Who is involved in determining the disposition of those funds? Marketing? Or are checks cut and sent to finance?

Do you compensate one of more of your agency partners based upon a direct labor model, with estimated monthly fees tied to a contractual staffing plan predicated on the hourly time investment of specific individuals? How often to you see time-of-staff reporting from the agencies? Monthly, quarterly, annually, ever? Have those fees ever been reconciled to each agencies actual time investment? Have you ever tested your agencies time-keeping systems to assess the accuracy of the reports that may be shared with your team?

We have good news for you, news that can provide answers to each and every one of these questions. There is a proven means of closing this transparency gap and providing your organization with the processes and controls necessary to assess the disposition of marketing funds at each step of the advertising investment cycle.

It is called agency contract compliance auditing, it is an industry best practice and it will provide insights, answers and recommendations that will benefit an advertiser’s agency stewardship efforts and their agency partners’ financial management performance.

If you still have some apprehension about this complex ecosystem called marketing, consider the words of former Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes when weighing the pros and cons of a contract compliance audit; “When in doubt, do it.”

Interested in learning more about safeguarding your firm’s marketing investment? Contact Cliff Campeau, Principal with AARM | Advertising Audit & Risk Management at [email protected] for a complimentary consultation on how to implement or enhance your organization’s marketing accountability initiative.

 

 

 

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Turnover: Temporary Anomaly or Omnipresent Reality

26 Feb

 

 

agency compensationChief Marketing Officers come and go every twenty-three months or so. The average Client-Agency relationship tenure is thought to be around three years. So has anyone really noticed that average ad agency turnover is reportedly running between 28 – 30 percent? 

In an industry where change and upheaval have become constants, the agency talent crisis has likely not received the attention that it deserves… outside of the agency community. Clearly, this is a dynamic that agencies in general and agency HR executives specifically are acutely aware and are trying to address. After all, in a service business that is highly reliant on talented professionals with diverse skill sets to create and deliver their product, the talent challenge cuts to the heart of agency sustainability. 

During the fall of 2014, Digiday published an article entitled; “Anatomy of an Agency Talent Crisis” which suggested that entry-level salaries were one of the primary challenges in attracting college graduates to even consider a career in advertising. In light of the 4A’s annual talent survey findings, which found that “most entry-level salaries” for agency personnel “were between $25,000 – $35,000,” most agency insiders understand the challenges in attracting and retaining top tier talent. 

The question, which has not been addressed is; “Why aren’t agencies paying more to secure top college graduates?” If a capable young person armed with a college degree can earn a starting salary of $70,000 by going to work for Accenture, McKinsey, Booz & Company, Adobe, Google or Microsoft then it stands to reason that advertising agencies must close the salary gap if they hope to attract their fair share of talent. As the American inventor and businessman, Charles Kettering once said: 

“We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.” 

Importantly, this is a decision which the agency community owns. Their ability to pay higher salaries to attract young graduates is not hindered by the fees being paid by advertisers. Unfortunately, many advertisers have little exposure to many of the agency “worker bees” deployed on their account, spending most of their time interacting with more senior “point people” such as account directors, creative directors or senior media planners. As such, advertisers may have little transparency into the high turnover rates being experienced within the agency community. 

That’s not to say that advertisers aren’t paying a price from a learning curve perspective, which can affect the caliber of an agency’s work or the number of iterations required to generate satisfactory outputs. 

What is intriguing when looking at the fully-loaded hourly rates being charged by agencies, is that there appears to be plenty of room to increase compensation for junior to mid-level personnel. 

There are a couple of issues which impact an agency’s willingness to free up funds to address the pay scale issue. The first is the growing salary disparity between entry-level personnel and senior executives. One need look no further than the 4A’s own 2014 talent survey, which found that in the same year in which entry-level personnel were earning on average between $25,000 – $35,000, they had an agency report a $1,000,000 base salary for a Chief Creative Director position. 

Additionally, agency holding companies are growing and require resources to fuel their expansionary appetite. This growth comes largely via acquisitions of specialist agencies and investing to support in-network horizontal integration strategies which have spawned the birth of digital media trading desks and the creation of global cross-platform production hubs. 

Ultimately, market dynamics will force the agency community’s hand when it comes to a reapportioning or prioritization of resources to address the competitiveness of their salary offerings. Smart agencies will move to address this issue, recognizing that the lack of success in recruiting top college graduates combined with 30% staff turnover rates, is clearly not a formula for success.

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Is Legacy Thinking Impeding Your Progress?

7 May

ana agency financial management conferenceEmerging media, rapidly expanding technologies, a changing tax and regulatory environment, talent shortages and a global paradigm shift where marketing is being “outsourced” to the end user. These were just some of the topics addressed by Marketers and Agencies alike at the ANA’s annual “Agency Financial Management” conference in Naples, Florida in early May.

While there may be significant issues to be faced in the near future, the marketing industry remains a significant component of the global economy whose rate of growth outstrips that of most developed countries GDP growth.  That said there are changes required of the industry’s stakeholders to better prepare their organizations’ to successfully navigate a complex landscape fraught with both risks and opportunity.

This dynamic will require a fresh approach by clients and agencies alike along with a willingness to shed the bonds of legacy thinking, which has retarded industry progress on a number of key fronts in recent years.

One of the themes to emerge from the conference is that marketing is difficult, expensive and challenging.  When combined with talent, resource and education restraints being faced by many marketing organizations there is a belief that marketers are leaving dollars on the table.  Contributing factors range from digital media value erosion to a lack of transparency into certain aspects of the supply chain such as trading desks to the absence of industry governance on the issue of cross platform audience delivery measurement.

Underlying these challenges is the fact that client-side marketers, procurement professionals and marketing service agencies are still working on evolving their relationships and gaining better alignment on how best to optimize the advertisers’ return on marketing investment (ROMI).  Central to the success of this collaborative effort is the need to build trust and mutual respect among these stakeholders.

Interestingly, marketers expressed a strong, almost universal need for the introduction of uniform controls, competitive fee structures, tighter statements of work and the use of agency performance incentives to assist in positively driving change.  One aspect of boosting ROMI is the elimination of “waste.”  Based upon our experience in the area of agency financial management consulting, we have found that an excellent starting point for marketers in this area is to clarify the roles and responsibilities of their agency partners, minimizing redundancies and identifying those agencies that are considered strategic partners versus those that provide project-based support.  This provides a solid starting point for determining  “where” to begin in terms of initiating change and inviting those select partners to be part of the process.

On the “good news” front it was clear from the results of a recent survey conducted by the ANA and presented at the conference, that the trend toward an increased level of collaboration between marketing, finance and procurement is taking seed.  Further, as evidenced by findings from a separate survey conducted by the 4A’s, the agency community has clearly begun to accept procurement’s role in the agency sourcing and contract negotiation process.

There is one area however, which has the potential to seriously disrupt marketers’ efforts to optimize their ROMI… transparency, or more specifically, the lack of transparency that permeates the industry.  This was reflected in the results of survey data from the ANA, WFA, ISBA and ACA where “transparency” was identified by advertisers as one of, if not their top concern.  The lack of clarity and in some instances, honesty surrounding issues such as data integrity, audience delivery, trading desks, reporting and financial reconciliations creates financial risks for advertisers and undermines attempts to improve trust levels between clients, agencies and media sellers.  As Mike Thyen, Director of Global Procurement for emerging markets at Eli Lilly and Company so aptly stated:

“Where there is mystery, there’s margin.”

Examples of the potential for financial leakage related to a lack of transparency included the results from the aforementioned WFA study, cited by ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice, which found that for every dollar invested by advertisers in digital media, only fifty-five cents on the dollar flowed through to the publisher.  Inherent in this single example is the lack of transparency surrounding programmatic media buying, agency trading desks and the lack of auditable outcomes in terms of audience delivery, media rates paid and trading desk margins.

Changing times require firms to evolve and innovate in order to remain relevant with their customers and to improve their operations.  When it comes to marketing, the rate and rapidity of technology driven change is such that viewing today’s opportunities through an “old school” prism is certain to create risks and limit marketers’ ability to fully leverage their investment.   Keeping an open mind, forging strong relationships between marketing and procurement, implementing controls and reporting to enhance transparency and investing in one’s agency partnerships represent key actions to be considered to successfully face the changes which are underway.

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