|
Richard
Hartell, Board Account Director, MediaVest UK
There is
trouble at the Adam Smith pin factory. Division of labour has gone mad.
The factory owner can understand separating his head bashing from his
shaft stretching but can't understand it when the man who does his posters
starts doing it as well. In the good old days he used to get a good idea,
a fine drawing, a well-posted poster, letters to his best pin customers
and a write up in the local rag - all through one smart man in a smart
suit. Now, it's apparently better if 5 people do this for him.
This is
a cause for concern for Mr Pin Man. At some point there has been a bit
of a disconnect between his business interests and the business interests
of his agency suppliers.
Why can't
it be like it was before?Today Mr Pin Man (our client) is likely to be
the Marketing Director of a large company commanding a marketing budget
in excess of £10m. One of his key roles is to understand the relative
strengths and weaknesses of every single element of his marketing mix.
He wants to understand the synergies and costs of each element and develop
communication plans that fully exploit the ideal combination of all available
marketing disciplines giving him the best return on his investment. In
short, he wants media-neutral communications planning. In a simplified
world of a limited number of communication channels and a single full
service supplier our client had the time, ability and budget to carry
out this role. And, as brand guardian he absolutely should. However, in
the context of media fragmentation and agency specialisation he increasingly
finds himself having to find himself a trusted, and crucially, impartial
partner to guide him through this quagmire. How does the pin maker return
to the good old days in a completely different communications environment?
How does he arrive at a fully integrated communications strategy using
different specialists in each marketing discipline? Well, it would appear
he has two routes to achieve his aim - either via autocracy or democracy.
He can either appoint an impartial lead agency to develop and direct his
strategy or he can harness the collective expertise of his suppliers to
achieve neutrality by committee.
"Love
is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing; a confusion of the real with
the ideal never goes unpunished" (Goethe).
On first
impressions forming a virtual team of best of breed agency specialists
seems to be the ideal route. It has the potential to mimic a looser more
modern full service agency - a sort of agency 'Super Group'. However,
like prog-rock Super Groups of the 1970's they have a habit of taking
ages to get to the end of the job, fall out a lot getting there and bore
everyone to death with the end product. More often than not cross agency
teams at the strategic planning stage are characterised by conflict. Practical
problems such as turf wars and perceived hierarchies result in a disconnect
between individual agency interest and the common interest of the team
(ultimately the client's interest). In addition, this process requires
significant resource from each supplier. Unless each agency is equally
remunerated for this process over and above anything they receive for
implementation they may not be able to put experienced people into the
team. This can clearly have an impact on the quality of the communication
plan produced. The biggest issue with the committee approach is that the
committee still needs a chairman. This route requires someone to co-ordinate
the process, set clear parameters for collaboration and define agency
remits. This is clearly the role of the client but in doing so he has
sucked himself back into the quagmire. This leads us back to the need
to appoint a lead agency to hold his hand.
"You
gets what you pay for" (anon).
Simplistically, when developing a media-neutral communications plan 3
key questions need to be answered - 'who are we talking to', 'how should
we talk to them' and 'what should we say'? Answering 'what' the brand
should stand for at any contact point for should remain the responsibility
of the client. But which agency should assist the client in answering
the questions of 'who' and 'how'?
Since the
split of full service agencies, media agencies have invested in the quantitative
research tools and increasingly qualitative techniques required to identify
and understand the lifestyles, attitudes and motivations of consumers.
In addition, from their historical core offering of ATL media buying,
media agencies have already extended their expertise into DM, Interactive,
and PR via sponsorship and editorial integration.
Through
their consumer centric knowledge and buying experience media agencies
have the potential to understand the relative values (both efficiency
and effectiveness) of different contact points - whether that contact
point be a TV spot, a newspaper article, packaging, a letter, a shop window
or an event. Also, via increasing investment in econometric modelling
capabilities and other measurement tools, they are in a position to demonstrate
the effectiveness of communication strategies versus a client's business
objectives. This furthers their ability to powerfully inform a circular
planning process.
Media agencies
are best placed to answer the key questions required to develop media-neutral
communications plans: to (alongside the client) effectively apportion
budgets and define roles for each individual channel. However, the facilitation
of this step change again lies in the hands of the client, Mr Pin Man.
For a media agency to take up the mantle as, essentially, a communications
consultant to a marketeer requires investment. For agencies to make such
an investment they have to have assurance they will be remunerated accordingly.
Firstly, the last vestiges of payment by commission for anything over
and above implementation should be removed to ensure true neutrality.
Then more accountable means of remuneration need to be put in place with
effective communications being rewarded by fees based on results.
Once this investment is made Mr Pin Man will have his, now even smarter,
man back again.
(c) Account
Planning Group 1995-2002
|
