Marketing consultancy TrinityP3 launches new online benchmarking service
Strategic marketing consultancy TrinityP3 has launched an online benchmarking service which it says is designed to give agencies, clients and their procurement departments better clarity about the acceptable hours rates for marketing services.
The service Ad Cost Checker, which formally launched this week, is an online advertising cost benchmarking calculator that allows business to benchmark their hour rates and fees for creative, media, digital, social, design and advertising production.
Managing director of TrinityP3 Darren Woolley told Mumbrella that at present there was no consistency in how agencies were being benchmarked and that the situation was “all over the place”.
“Everyone talks about benchmarks but the actual rates are all over the place. One agency could have one person on a salary of $100,000 being charged out to different clients at very different rates, of say $109 and $162. Now that’s not wrong but how does ‘the benchmark” fit into that when its a $130?”
Woolley said their new service, which costs $195 for one report or discounted for multiple reports, would help address the problem of agencies and clients not knowing if they were charging or paying a competitive rate for work.
“TrinityP3 gets agencies all the time asking us can you look at our rates and tell us if we’re high or low to market. Now we haven’t done that in the past but this allows them to actually see where they sit for a particular type of client and vice versa,” said Woolley.
“The MFA and AFA used to do their salary benchmarks and all this focus on how much people were getting paid and of course procurement loves benchmarking and there is always talk about agencies being ‘much higher than the benchmark’ or ‘much lower than the benchmark’. The trouble is that when we started looking through the data that we have the salary benchmarks are wrong.
“What we have done is that our benchmarking system takes that into consideration and created a benchmark for each of those different combination of client agency relationships.”
The TrinityP3 has a large database, according to Woolley, of hundreds of data points for each position and will be regularly updated. “We have got hundreds of data points for every role and covers everything from strategy and creative to media and digital and will be updated as we work with more and more clients the system will be updated and will analyse how the benchmarks are changing,” he said.
Woolley denied that the reports would be used by clients to try and drive agencies down on price and said he believed that Ad Cost Checker could help agencies achieve a better rate.
Asked if Ad Cost Checker would be used by clients to drive down agency rates he said: “I think it will have the opposite effect. What is happening now is that often people are benchmarking at the lower rate, say $109 an hour, because they get information from friends, colleagues, whoever.
“That method doesn’t take into consideration how big the client is, their spend etc. and this is the problem at the moment benchmarking is driving prices down because it doesn’t take that into consideration and so it becomes a very blunt instrument. Our service is more sophisticated.”
TrinityP3 is the only Australian service to offer benchmarking online but the product is likely to compete with the benchmarking services offered by other consultancies such as Faulkners Media Management, Enth Degree, Portland Group and Ebiquity.
Nic Christensen
I reckon they should stick to benchmarking results.
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The problem is that procurement cannot quantify skill or quality in most agencies product.
Sure, a Mac monkey may be $x at one agency and $y at another, but the output of their work are likely different.
Unless you’re talking about measurable tasks such as ad despatches then benchmarks confuse as much as they clarify.
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I think the smaller agencies will find this the most value, but at the end of the day the hourly rate is fictional in most budgets as it is about the number of hours certain operators need to deliver the result and the quality of the work, or the package that the budget and client can handle. So, helpful to some degrees but it shouldn’t stop the real value in the work being able to be sold at any reasonable price.
The really interesting thing that this doesn’t measure is the value in multi-talented people who can do several tasks within the one role. So, there is a need to redefine these rates/benchmarks for this new trend I feel. Currently the roles are charged twice, or that person is pigeon-holed into one role only and the value of their multi-talents not captured.
(For those that argue that multi-talented means watering down skillset that’s a fairly outmoded thought for a lot of the work out there. Of course for certain tasks this isn’t a workable idea – that’s an irrelevant argument here really, as this is about fees).
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(Trying again)
I agree with the concept in principle because as Darren said the market ranges far to broadly in price regardless of high or low quality.
With that said such a tool can hinder creativity and stifle raw awesomeness because an idea of an individual may not even be able to become anything because a client will kill any thought of pursuing because they believe there is a set range in the market which is in fact somewhat subjective.
Perhaps agencies and clients should instead engage in up front discovery and discuss expectations, set cost parameters that both sides are comfortable with, alongside expectations of document format and reporting and similar tasks that are repeated. Use the platform as an initial guide and talking point then create a bespoke set of rules of engagement that allow for that seemingly missing element of transparency between agency and advertiser.
As my fellow countryman once said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
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Darren, what percentage of your clients have started paying their agencies more after they “benchmark” with P3?
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Hi ‘Not Again’, you would be surprised, especially in pitches, where we have regularly requested agencies not heavily discount to try and buy the business. It is about sustainable value for money and not cost cutting. Perhaps if we were paid, like some consultants, on how much we reduce the agency fee, then this would be different. If our fee was a percentage of savings then obviously we would have an incentive to cut costs for our own profit. But we are not and have never been paid on this basis. This means we are able to provide independent and informed advice to achieve sustainable value. Also it is TrinityP3, has been since 2008. Perhaps you should try and keep up.
Darren, if you’re not remunerated on savings, what are the metrics and how do you measure them?
If it’s on sustainable value, does that mean you don’t get paid until x amount of time has passed and “sustainable value” has been achieved? And at that stage, what metrics do you use to measure “sustainable value”?
Not having a crack, just interested to know how TP3 is different from other benchmarking services.
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