Is the current media agency model our very own House of Cards?
This week has seen the Mediacom EY audit and revelations around it dominate national and trade press headlines. Slingshot CEO Simon Rutherford takes a step back and asks how sustainable is the current media agency dynamic?
Whilst the lovers of the hit TV series House of Cards have been enjoying series three of the Netflix drama that focuses on the murky world of Washington politics for a few weeks now, the media industry patiently awaited for the Mediacom EY audit to see where the transparency in media agencies debate would take us in 2015.
Now that it’s out there are many subtexts to the story, which I’ll leave for others to continue to speculate on. However, now that “the toothpaste is out of the tube”, the “lollies are out of the jar” and “the lid is off of the can of worms”, I’d like to focus the conversation on the sustainability of our industry, value banks, and hopefully offer some sage advice.
Whilst you would hope that it has, I’m not quite sure the magnitude of what has just happened has fully sunk in for a few people.
Absolutely correct, Simon. “Price” has had it’s day. Value over price was always going to win. It’s a pity many clients still get blindsided by price in media agency reviews at the hands of people who should, but clearly don’t, understand the media business.
Re-connecting creative to the media might also help to re-introduce the long-lost concept of value and more importantly, advertising effectiveness.
Fee for service is the only logical way forward.
Sounds great in theory, until the client says “can you match the GroupM value bank?”
For how long has the industry winghed that clients do not value their service, however did nothing to correct this…the truth is the industry, in their haste to secure business,and the bottom line dollar, clearly did not value their own product.
And the fallout from that was they did not, in turn, place true value on their staff.
If the media was a product it would have been taken off the shelf by now.
There is an opportunity to move forward here and stop the undervalue of something that truly adds value to clients products and results in the outcome they want, incremental sales and true value of their product.
there is a terrace just a couple of street from which i’m sitting. The owner has ben painting the street front for more than two months now. He’s seen the holes and cracks but was hoping the paint would cover them over. I didnt.
He has, as of the weekend, started to fill the holes, do a proper job and repaint.
Its a metaphor for the media industry, only he’s done the right thing and wasted less time in doing so. Further, it will be right in a couple of days and he’ll blame no one. He’ll put in the work that should have been done in the first place.
It may have taken him a month to learn but he’ll have a cup of tea and know the job was done properly.