Advertising and media agencies want to be more involved with development of clients’ business strategy. That is one of the key findings in this year’s survey of North American Effie Awards Final Round judges, conducted in partnership with the Forbes CMO Network. The survey, now in its fifth year, gauges advertising executives’ overall take on the most pressing industry issues, including metrics management, media investment, and marketing priorities in 2015.
Judging for this year’s competition was held at the Sofitel in New York on February 25 and 26; during that time 157 judges from the advertiser and agency side—including
As CMOs and agencies alike seek to retain relevance in a swiftly changing marketing and advertising landscape—CMOs within their organizations and agencies with their clients—their mutual priority is on finding ways to drive business. Core to that, of course, is having a wealth of critical business data and information at their disposal, in order to develop the most effective advertising and marketing strategies and campaigns that align directly with growth directives.
The survey found that currently clients look to their agencies for creative direction; more than half responded so, and that’s no surprise. More than 70% of agencies, meanwhile, put creative direction, along with consumer insight, on the top of the list of services they provide to their clients. But when asked what they will be looking for from agencies moving forward, a majority of client respondents—more than half, and the largest percentage of responses—said help with business strategy and consumer insight. Meanwhile, 35% of agencies—also the largest percentage—responded that they would like increased involvement with clients’ business strategy in the future.
However, the survey also revealed that despite those goals, agencies and clients have a ways to go in terms of information-sharing to make that kind of relationship possible. Nearly 44% of clients responded, “We are completely transparent; it's an open two-way street,” regarding data-sharing with agencies, and 42% of them said that while they share a good amount, they could do a better job. Meanwhile, about 30% of agencies said they do a great job of sharing information, and more than half of them said they do a good job but could do better.
There’s opportunity for agencies and clients to become more aligned around business, not just creative, strategy, and some would argue that, with data-sharing at the core, it is an optimal arrangement. Others, however, such as Chipotle Chief Creative and Development Officer Mark Crumpacker, speaking today at the 4A’s Transformation conference, will continue to believe that the most effective advertising comes from agencies that are solely creative partners, aligned to deliver upon a creative vision set forth by the CMO. Crumpacker doesn’t share sales data with the company’s agencies, for example.
But Michael Fanuele, chief creative officer, General Mills, had this to say about agencies’ involvement with business strategy: “It’s the first obligation of a great agency to show their clients how their brand can kill it in the world. And too many agencies wait for convoluted briefs to execute, as opposed to creating a vision for what a brand can be and the work that helps a brand become that,” he said. “I want agencies to lead us, not serve us,” and that requires clients to be open with all sorts of business information.
“For the most part we should be sharing much more rather than much less with our partners if we want them to be our partners,” he continued. “An agency needs to understand how a company succeeds and fails. There’s a tendency among agencies to think that the role of communications is to get people to like your brand more than they did before seeing that communications, but that’s naïve,” he added. “It’s to figure out an inventive way to grow a business. We limit an agency’s ability to bring the full power of its creative resources if we limit the information they have about our brands and business. Otherwise there are too many times agencies meet with clients and it feels like an exam—the agency is trying to get the right answer. The more we share information insights, data and results with our partners, the more likely we are to have conversations that aren’t adversarial.”
Lynn Power, President, J. Walter Thompson New York, agreed. “The more we understand clients’ pain points, the more we can help. Clients think they don’t need to burden us with a lot of unnecessary information,” she said. “But from an agency perspective it will save you time in a long run because we’ll be more aligned,” she said.
Other survey findings included the fact that 50% of client respondents said they are seeking to add more data analytics talent this year, while only a third of agency respondents said the same. Another third of agency respondents said they are focused on hiring creative talent in the coming year.
“At the end of the day, business strategy, data and analytics are all inputs to get to the outputs. They help inform. But at the end of the day what people see out in the market is the work. And I think we [agencies] obviously feel like we own creativity,” Power said. “Clients recognize that agencies get it better than they do. It’s the creativity and the imagination that we bring to our work that sets us apart. I like to see that clients value that because they should. Clients already think they’re getting that—maybe that’s why they’re saying they don’t need it more because they are already getting it.”
Added Fanuele, “Clients can’t do creative. Our halls are jam-packed with the steely brains of MBAs,” he said. “They aren’t jam-packed with people bumping and grinding to the tunes of creativity. There’s a limitation to MBA brain, and there should be. But it puts an extra obligation on the shoulders of our creative partners to think big.”
The survey also found that agencies and clients see organizational structure as the biggest impediment to true omnichannel marketing campaigns.
“I don’t buy it,” said Fanuele. “I buy that it’s the lack of great omnichannel ideas. But that’s too glib. I think it’s the lack of measuring omnichannel effectiveness. There are so many measures in place that let us measure if our TV ads are working,” he said. “That doesn’t exist for what is still the Wild West of a true omnichannel world. And we all, clients and agencies, we do what’s measured.”
Power had a different take. “A lot of clients’ organizations are matrixed organizations,” she said. “It’s sometimes difficult to activate the omnichannel idea when you’ve got really different points of view at a client, and sometimes there are just different agendas and it’s difficult to get alignment. That’s sometimes what agencies refer to whey they say structure is a barrier to getting things done. Most agencies are trying to tear down the hierarchy that’s been built up over years. Clients are trying to do that too,” she said. “It’s difficult because structure is so ingrained in the way a company works—it’s a mindset—it’s getting people to actually take accountability. That’s hard. From an agency perspective, I do think the layers get in the way of cutting to the chase. [We need to] get away from the command-and-control system that’s been in place for a long time and make it much more about ownership and empowerment for the people on the front line. It’s a mental shift, more than it is an actual shift.”
