Tag Archives: Omnicom

Heritage or Baggage. What’s Your Perspective?

2 Apr

ddb-content-logo2-2019-1320x660Two different agency holding companies, with two different perspectives on the value of brand heritage and the role that heritage will play in their respective cultures moving forward.

In late 2018, WPP made the announcement that it was going to merge J. Walter Thompson, the world’s oldest agency brand with Wunderman. The new agency was christened Wunderman Thompson. This came on the heels of WPP’s decision to consolidate digital agency VML with Young & Rubicam renaming the combined entity VMLY&R.

Make no mistake, we are proponents of the holding companies moves to consolidate their brands to streamline operations, improve accountability and to simplify marketer access to agency services. That said, for the nostalgics among us, it was sad to witness the disappearance of two of the industry’s most venerable brands.

Thus, we were pleasantly surprised when Omnicom introduced its new corporate identity for DDB in March. The firm chose to leverage its heritage, adapting its original logo and paying homage to its three founders Ned Doyle, Mac Dane and Bill Bernbach by incorporating the agency’s original name, Doyle Dane Bernbach into its new identity.

A spokesperson for the agency stated, “As other agencies are commoditizing their agency names and turning away from their founding principles and visions, DDB is doubling down on the values that Doyle, Dane and Bernbach founded our agency on – creativity and humanity.”

In the words of Bill Bernbach: “Getting your product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer.”  

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Economic Growth Projections Raise Concerns for Ad Industry

25 Aug

economyAdvertising agencies are finding that organic growth will be a difficult objective to achieve in the near-term.

One contributing factor comes in the form of marketing spending constraints on the part of advertisers. Why? Organizations are feeling pressure to control costs in the wake of lack luster market conditions that are limiting growth and reducing margins.

The key economic indicator driving advertiser concern is “slow growth” which is impacting many sectors of the economy:

  • GDP growth of 1.2% during the 1st quarter and 2.6% in the 2nd quarter (short of the sustained 3%+ growth rate promised by the White House)
  • U.S. retail sales, excluding auto and gasoline, rose 0.5% in July ’17
  • Fast-Casual restaurant sales fell more than 3% in the first quarter 2017
  • U.S. automotive sales have fallen for seven straight months (Jan. – Jul.)
  • Homebuilder confidence sank, posting HMI’s lowest reading in over 6 mos.

Two CPG giants have announced dramatic moves, which reflect the nature of this challenge. Unilever signaled its intent to reduce the number of agencies on its roster by 50%, while cutting the quantity of ads produced by 30%. Procter & Gamble Co. indicated that it would trim $2 billion in marketing spend over five years as part of an enterprise wide expense reduction initiative.

It is worth noting that there are motivations beyond “cost reduction” driving these decisions by advertisers. Consider fast-food giant McDonald’s, which earlier this year trimmed the number of agencies that it works with from 60 to fewer than a dozen. Their goals included streamlining marketing and improving the consistency of their output… in addition to reducing expenses.

Unfortunately, the impact of slower spending by advertisers is being felt on Wall Street. According to an August, 24 article in the NY Times, WPP which had earlier cut its revenue forecast saw its share price decline by 10.9% in London, with Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group falling 7% and 6.3% respectively in the U.S. and media stocks are generally lower as a sector.

Interestingly, advertisers have made a conscious decision not to fuel marketing spend to counter slowing sales, but to cut spending to protect margins, which is particularly concerning to the ad agency community.

With increased competition from non-traditional players (i.e. management consulting and technology firms) and the continued fall-out from an industry transparency crisis, the lack of confidence on the part of marketers regarding advertising’s ability to drive profitable revenue growth is certainly a worry.

Whether or not this slowdown in organic growth on the part of ad agencies portends a slump, remains to be seen, but at the very least the macro-economic uncertainty will serve to increase industry volatility. Perhaps the industry can find some solace in the words of Yogi Berra the hall of fame catcher and manager of the New York Yankees: “Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.”

 

 

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Is the Agency Holding Company Model Viable Going Forward?

19 Oct

dreamstime_m_35343815“The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.” 

 ~ David Ogilvy

It is not our intent to suggest that scale does not have its advantages. There are multiple instances, within the professional services sector in general and specifically within the ad agency community, where size translates into meaningful benefits for clients.

That said, since Papert, Koenig, Lois went public in 1962 and other advertising agencies soon followed suit, the ad industry has undergone dramatic change. Ad agency IPO’s begot an uptick in agencies acquiring other agencies, which Marion Harper, CEO of McCann Erickson pioneered with the formation of The Interpublic Group of Companies in the early ‘60’s. This was then followed by the “unbundling” phenomenon of the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s.

Fast forward to 2016, where the top five agency holding companies; WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group and Dentsu account for over 70% of the world’s estimated 2016 ad spend of $542 Billion (source: eMarketer, April, 2016). Further, each of these holding companies have broadened their acquisition strategies to further penetrate the larger $1.0 Trillion global media and marketing services category.

As a result, the portfolios for the top five agency holding companies contain between dozens and several hundred firms covering a myriad of marketing disciplines including, but not limited to:

  • Creative agencies
  • Media agencies
  • Digital agencies
  • Social Media agencies
  • Brand activation firms
  • PR firms
  • Relationship management firms
  • Programmatic trading desk operations
  • Research and audience measurement firms
  • Media properties

It is clear that the agency holding companies have successfully pursued and achieved “bigness.” The question is; “Has the holding company model achieved “excellence?” The answer may well depend on which stakeholder group one belongs to. Shareowners will likely have one viewpoint, suppliers and employees another and clients perhaps yet another perspective.

In the early days, the primary role of the holding company was to pursue efficiencies across their agency portfolios, while leveraging cross-agency synergies and driving strategy across their portfolio firms. Four decades later, this has evolved into holding company “agency” solutions consisting of cross-firm, multi-disciplinary client service teams served up to the holding companies top global clients.

Yet, the holding companies are struggling to define and evolve cultures, eliminate inefficiencies and break down silos across the numerous agency brands and marketing services firms that they have acquired. All while wrestling with issues and opportunities tied to the rate and rapidity of technological change and its impact on the business of creating and placing ads and not least of all… technology’s impact on consumer media consumption and purchasing behavior.

Today, the agency community is facing challenges related to attracting and retaining talent, evolving remuneration systems and regaining advertiser trust, all while being mired in a very public dispute with advertisers, publishers and ad tech providers regarding the issue of transparency.

Simultaneously, serious competitors have emerged, threatening the ad agencies stranglehold on advertising, media and marketing services. Consulting organizations such as Accenture, IBM Interactive, Deloitte Digital and PwC Digital now offer comprehensive, end-to-end consumer solutions, which include branding, graphic design, creative and media services to complement their analytical, strategy consulting, enterprise digital solutions and customer experience design skills.

This new breed of competition has monolithic brands, established cultures and highly trained, intelligent, flexible global workforces. Also looming on the competitive horizon are firms such as Adobe, Oracle, SalesForce, Facebook and Google that continue to focus on serving up marketing services and support to advertisers on a direct basis.  

Perhaps most importantly, the ad agency holding companies may not control their own destiny. At least not to the extent that they once did, when serving as valued, trusted advisors to their clients providing high-level strategic support and maintaining solid C-suite level relationships. Further, advertisers today have shown an openness to evaluating alternatives to the traditional client/ agency model, which has favored the aforementioned consultancies, technology and media firms along with in-house solutions.

It is certainly too soon to count the holding companies out, as they remain a formidable force in the industry. The question is can holding company leadership successfully chart a new course for leveraging their scale and talents to boost their relevancy in the years to come. What advice might one of the industry’s most iconic leaders offer to his holding company contemporaries?

“Leaders grasp nettles.” ~ David Ogilvy

 

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Publicis & Omnicom Call Off Merger Talks

9 May

publicis omnicom dealOne year after announcing their plans to merge, Publicis and Omnicom have ended talks and called off the event.  According to an article in Deal Book by David Gelles, relations between the two giants were chilled and the firms had simply not progressed through the most basic phases of the due diligence phase of the deal, failing to even get to the stage where they shared copies of client contracts with one another.  Thus ends what would have been one of the industry’s largest deals and probably its most complex … Read More

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Agencies as Media Owners

17 Mar

agencies as media owners

Over the course of the last several decades media owners and media agencies pursued aggressive growth strategies largely fueled by merger and acquisition activity to consolidate their power and achieve a “leg up” in their respective negotiating positions.  So it comes as no surprise to anyone in the industry when you step back and assess the size and leverage of today’s top three agency networks; Publicis/ Ominicom, WPP and Interpublic Group.   

What complicates matters for advertisers is the emergence of the agency as “media owner” model ushered in by the rapid growth of programmatic buying and digital media arbitrage.  The essential question is clear:

“Doesn’t a media agency have a conflict of interest when it has a fiduciary obligation to secure the best available inventory at the most advantageous rates for an advertiser if they also resell media (as part of their recommended inventory) which they have purchased directly from publishers to achieve a financial gain?”

This is a dilemma complicated by the lack of transparency inherent with programmatic buying, which already limits advertiser transparency into the caliber of the inventory secured on their behalf and or the CPMs paid for those exposures.  

There are a number of dimensions that need to be addressed in the context of a traditional client-agency relationship in the wake of this phenomenon:

  1. How will an advertiser shape its media agency network and assign roles and responsibilities to protect its self-interests of objectivity, competitive pricing and an optimal return on its media investment?
  2. What media components might an advertiser bring in-house?
  3. In the ongoing dialog regarding “Big Data,” can advertisers realistically view their media agencies that are also media owners, as impartial partners, to be entrusted with sensitive, highly confidential data?
  4. How should media agency remuneration systems evolve to reign in the percentage of their gross media investment which is currently ending up in an agency’s pocket (i.e. fees, commissions, rebates, margin spreads, etc…)?

There is no standard, there are no guidelines… this is a “new chapter” in client-agency relations which is unfolding before our very eyes. 

So it was with great interest that I read a recent article on the More About Advertising website entitled; “Five ways for clients to find out what’s really going on as media agencies become media owners.”  The author, Andy Pearch, Director of MediaSense suggests that “the old media audit to pitch model has been broken by these developments” and that advertisers “legacy supplier management techniques need to evolve.”  The primary reason for this, in the author’s eyes, is that media agencies have become “market makers” where they, not the traditional media owner, sets the price of the media. 

In light of the growing leverage which agencies are able to exert on the media process, Mr. Pearch suggests that advertisers will have to learn how to “negotiate with their own agencies for a better market position.”  On the topic of transparency Pearch feels that “it is naïve to hope that the most dominant agencies will cede competitive advantage and margin by becoming sufficiently transparent.”

Two of his more intriguing recommendations include the need for advertisers to “take a tougher line on cases of non-transparent practice” and failure to comply with contract terms.  Additionally, Pearch suggests that advertisers both re-think their dependency on a single-supplier media agency model and, for larger organizations with the appropriate depth of resources, “consider setting up their own trading desks.”

We live in an interesting and dynamic time for the advertising industry with technology ushering in an era of rapid change that will continue to impact both consumer media consumption patterns and an advertiser’s ability to deliver their message in an appropriate, targeted manner.  It is our belief that during this time of sea change, advertiser transparency and control should not be sacrificed in the ongoing pursuit of cheaper CPMs.  The challenges identified here are not likely to be limited to digital media as the trading desks potentially expand their media coverage and agencies seek to extend media arbitrage opportunities.  In the words of Hippocrates:

“Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.”

 

 

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Does Agency Size Benefit Advertisers?

6 Aug

ad agency sizeIn the wake of the announced “merger of equals” between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom much has been made of the clout which the combined organizations will yield in the advertising marketplace.  The question to be asked is; “Who benefits from that clout?” 

The merged entity will generate revenue of $23 billion and will yield efficiencies ranging from the elimination of redundant resources, real estate commitments and headcount.  To this end, management has already indicated that their union would generate “$500 million in efficiencies.”  Certainly the investors in both companies stand to gain from any post-merger enterprise expense reduction initiative.  And while it is anticipated that there will be some client fall-out due to account conflicts, revenues will still be significant.

Conceptually, in a blending of agency holding companies clients could benefit from having expanded access to a range of resources and competencies spanning multiple geographies and marketing disciplines.  However, blending the cultures, systems and processes of the various agency brands which will comprise the merged entity will require a significant investment of time and money and realistically could be years in the making.  

On the financial front, it is conceivable that clients could see a reduction in overhead rates and potentially a reduction in agency labor expense as the two firms balance salary levels across the organization… conceivable, not probable.  Further, some in the industry would like to believe that the combined media spending clout represented by the merged companies will yield media rate efficiencies for their clients.  Beyond this, it would appear as though there is little in the way of direct financial benefit to the client.  

Further, on the media rate front there is little in the way of hard evidence to support the notion that as media agencies have grown in size that they have leveraged their combined clout to drive savings for their clients.  A quick comparison of media inflation rates to the Producer Price Index would indicate that there are forces at work beyond media agency clout (i.e. supply and demand) which are driving media costs: 

       Year                PPI*               Media Inflation*              Variance 

       2012                 1.3%                       3.9%                             2.6%

       2011                 4.7%                      10.5%                             5.8%

       2010                 3.8%                       6.5%                              2.7%

*Source: Annual Producers Price Index for Finished Goods and Media Inflation Watch (MIW) 

As with previous agency holding company mergers and acquisitions, the near-term impact of the Publicis Groupe merger with Omnicom is not likely to benefit their clients in a material way.  Rather, clients will be asked to be patient and supportive through what will be a confusing and potentially frustrating transition period as the firms integrate systems, processes, personnel and cultures.   

Experience would suggest that agency size and certainly the size of an agency holding company to the extent that it impacts their ability to amass the requisite resources and attract talent may have some impact on advertiser success.  However, it is important to note that there are numerous examples of advertiser/ small agency collaborations that have resulted in demonstrable benefits to the advertiser which reminds us that size in and of itself is not a precursor to success.   

 

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