What your client might not be telling you
Take the hypothetical chief marketing officer of an even more hypothetical major brand. What does he or she really think of the agencies and people they work with? What are their challenges and frustrations? And what don’t those agencies know? Based on in-depth, off-the-record conversations with a string of senior marketers, Nic Christensen puts himself in the client’s shoes.
I’m going to begin with a confession: there’s a lot that I don’t tell my agencies. Indeed, there’s a lot we can’t tell them, but if I was to sum up the problem in most agency/client relationships it’s that we don’t actually trust each other.
And if there’s one thing that irritates me, more than any other as a marketing boss, it’s when our agencies come in and tell us how they want to be “partners” in our business.
I’m the newly installed CMO of a major FMCG company and let’s get one thing clear from the outset. Our agencies will never be partners in my business. Never. No matter how good they are. No matter how outstanding their work, their people or agency.
Fantastic perspective and great writing. Time for things to be done differently I think!
A great read, rich in sobering insights.
Brilliant piece!
As a Marketing Director at a global I live this every day. I love that you were so close to it. Partners…. I smirk every time I hear it
The part that really resonates is the Aha moment – PLEASE STOP Mr award winnning creative…. (They are mostly Misters as god forbid you can get a female creative!)
When the inevitatble happens & we (the client who is paying the bills) “don’t get it” its because we feel ambushed not because our clean shaven, corporate selves are not smart enough. The amount of times an award winning creative has put the strop on or become patronising when you question the Aha moment – who do you think you are?
1 last thing…. if it pisses brand managers off that you go above thier heads imagine just how frustrating it is when you take up with the CEO & sell a dumb, off brand ideas to them…. Pitch coming…..
Interesting, much needed, realistic narrative. The primary role of an agency I believe is in creating measurable value and business advantages for it’s client – sadly it’s lacking these days.
Some very good points here and definitely needs agencies to step up to the plate to address these issues.
However, it does make it difficult to deliver measurable value when you’re not given the full picture. Ideas won’t be excellent if you’re not given the full set of information relating to the business issue which you are trying to solve. So much time is spent re-inventing the wheel because clients won’t provide previous research / reports on past campaigns and their effectiveness.
Hypothetically:
Move to a different remuneration model where there is shared risk and the agency does feel your pain, but gets a bigger reward if successful. Oh, yeah – sorry you’re not ‘set-up’ to do that are you?
Unless you’re buying another company that effects the success of the agency’s campaign, they’re really not bothered about it. Keep your focus where it needs to be.
You’re not supposed to find a new C suite job ‘easy’ – that’s one of the reasons you’re paid the big bucks. Toughen up and prioritise. Do / Delegate / Dump and if necessary, fail, but recognise it early (through good analytics) and change quickly. Agencies don’t hate tissue sessions.
Pitching should be the last resort (think of all the IP loss and the opportunity costs in running a good pitch process).
If you’re only ever hearing from your staff when your agency has done wrong, they need to get a more balanced perspective.
Thank God you understand the damage that procurement can do when they judge purely on cost and not on business value. Help them to be more sophisticated. (Creative) Agencies are not providing nuts and bolts – they are helping you build a long-term brand.
Don’t be a turncoat – get your trust back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXhh4rJ6xJk
PS – your apparent dismissive tone of the agency having to ‘…lose a couple of staff’ is unsettling. I hope you don’t have that much disregard for your own teams.
Dear CMO,
How about next time you walk past all the junior burgers/dish washers in your team to remember their name, maybe they’ll consider staying longer.
Thanks,
Junior Burgers
“……it’s often the juniors who are in the room with my (often equally junior staff) the result is that we often have 25 year old media agency people advising a 25 year old brand manager……..”
So true!
The industry takes such great pride in offering youthful insights. In the race to the bottom to save money, BOTH marketers and agency people with any real experience to solve problems (rather than create them) are all too quickly deleted. Those that are left are then on steep learning curves at the expense and detriment of both marketers and agencies. Their careers end far too quickly and the cycle begins again with a fresh new crop of juniors ready to wreak havoc on both sides.
I am literally gob smacked by this article. When it suits ‘him’ it’s procurement’s fault and when it doesn’t it’s the agency’s. When it suits ‘him’ it’s the budget, when it doesn’t it’s ‘his’ money. As for partner vs trusted advisors – it’s just semantics.
Hypothetical is an understatement and, therefore, not really worth getting too bothered about the pure arrogance of this character, I guess…
“Today agencies are increasingly moving towards beings specialists but oddly they are doing this across a gamut of additional services. So much so, I can’t help but wonder are they simply a way to make up the profit on the unsustainable margin they are being paid on the main account?”
duhhhhhh… you think??
Really, clients have no right to complain as they are the ones causing this. If clients stopped pitching everytime there is a new CMO or Head of Procurement appointed, and stopped demanding agency fee reductions just so they can show their CEO they are “in charge now”, we’d have agencies properly remunerated instead of the pitiful 2 or 3 percent that passes for a service fee these days.
Agencies cant live off the core fees on the account, and have long been in the game of upselling other services.
There”s no shame in this, we all have to make money, but its quite surprising that you as a client are surprised that agencies upselling other services is because , maybe, perhaps, the core fees aren’t high enough
Creatives shouldn’t fear tissue sessions. A smart client uses these tissue sessions to clarify a stronger case to upsell within his company or get buy-in from peers.
The one statement that got me nodding is that there’s a drought of adults in the room.
The truth is, there IS enough margin on the table. The trouble is that agencies are over paying their prima Donna creatives, funding scams and entering awards instead of investing in the experienced middle levels who do the actual work.
Throwing inexperienced kids (because they are cheaper) into the mix is sucidal and a sure fire way to a pitch.
#4 is correct when he says:
” The amount of times an award winning creative has put the strop on or become patronising when you question the Aha moment – who do you think you are?”
What he doesn’t realise is that the creatives control most agencies and they seem to be run to make the creatives happy and the job of the suits is to sell the creatives work as the creatives must be appeased.
Flogging the client’s products seems to be secondary
this guy has clearly lost the power dynamic within his business. He’s in service to the CFO and CEO rather than owning and driving outcomes for the marketing department, the first sign of a weak CMO. A CMO who feels constantly under attack like this guy will always be chasing his tail, he’s clearly too junior for the role.
He also sounds creatively bankrupt. If he’s managing his commercial business properly it should afford him the freedom to create brilliant work and momentum instead of having to justify it to the CFO who’s got him bent over by the sounds of it.
I’ll never work for a CMO with this attitude.
“my agency constantly trying to load me up with mobile, video, data, content marketing, social, experiential, you-name-it-we’ve got products that frankly I never understand – nor can I explain their value to the sales department, CFO, CEO, or heaven forbid, the board.”
Well Mr CMO, how about you start doing your fucking job.
While it’s revealing how this CMO has his/her CFO to keep in check, I think don’t think its that different in any other industry.
No agency head or creative director has the luxury to do whatever they like without the CFOs approval.
It’s just a business reality.
Although my experience is that agency CFOs are from the shallow end of the pool.
They don’t handle Treasury, foreign exchange, risk management, analsyt relations, debt financing and their scale of cash flow management is definately a fraction of most clients. #15 should work with some of these smart & tougher ones.
Great read. Yes, really, couldn’t care less about winning awards for agencies.
Some good stuff here. But LOTS of nonsense.
You complain the agency fronts lots of 25 year olds, then admit that you’re fronting them too.
You complain the agency wants to be a partner, but actually doesn’t have skin in the game. Well, nor do you. You’re not the business owner, are you? No, you’re salaried too. The risk is the same. Bad work = get fired.
You complain about the ‘a-ha’ moment, implying you want to be taken on the journey. But then you say you don’t want to be taken on the journey, you want us to take your team on the journey and only go to you later.
There are so many inconsistencies here this can’t be the thoughts of one individual, can it? Pretty worrying if it is.
Oh, and “Australian agencies don’t need more Drapers – they need more Pete Campbells, the character who worked in account management and spent most of his time managing the expectations of clients.” Really? You want more people to manage your expectations of what the work is going to be like, rather than actually do the work?
And as for the commenter who said agencies are run by creatives… try switching on your TV. Do you see a stream of over-indulgent, highly creative mini works of art? Or do you see dull, safe, repetitious, non-boundary-pushing moving packshots? We both know it’s the latter.
Hi all,
Just thought I’d jump in to clarify that the “person” in this hypothetical is an amalgam of some of the worst marketer stories and insights told to me. Much like we did last year with “What your media agency isn’t telling you” the purpose isn’t to say that one marketer could be this horrible or this arrogant (at least I hope no one is working with someone this bad) but rather to highlight many of the worst client and agency practices that are negatively impacting the industry.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
Sloppily written, obnoxious tone of voice. Reads like a bad Gordon Gekko monologue. Do us all a favour and try a job you don’t hate.
We can all whinge about this hypothetical CMO bugger, but what’s written is eerily accurate in many ways.
You pay peanuts to the agency = you get Dishwashers
A fascinating read. All too close to reality.
None of my current clients display this sort of bad attitude – unless they are being very convincing to the contrary
Not all clients behave like this but there are a number of these stories which ring true.
Late to this discussion but the point that jumped out at me was the one about 25 year olds talking to 25 year olds.
Ever tried to get a job in an agency if you’re over 50? Doesn’t matter if you’ve more runs on the board than Bradman, more gongs than a Christmas tree or
more wisdom than Solomon, you don’t get a response, never mind an interview.
Oh, and we’ve decoded the recruitment language: “Must have at least eight years experience…” means “must be no older than 30”.
The people who could re-establish trust and respect between agency and client because they have the experience and empathy to do so are out on the pavements with their begging bowls, fighting over a few crumbs of freelance work.
The solution seems obvious, but then what would I know? I’m only a grown-up with decades of experience in this business.