Kellogg’s moves to joint agency briefing
Breaking with a long held tradition, Kellogg’s has changed the way it briefs its agencies, opting to hold joint briefing sessions in Australia and New Zealand for the first time.
The company, which makes Special K, Corn Flakes and Coco Pops, wants to diversify its marketing activity beyond traditional media. Until recently, 80% of Kellogg’s marketing budget has been spent on TV.
To date, Kellogg’s creative agency JWT was the first to be briefed. Now all agencies will be briefed at the same time.
Kellogg’s uses MindShare for media and Tongue for digital. Liquid Ideas was appointed as Kellogg’s first retained PR agency in July.
“Until now, we have been developing communications in a traditional, linear way,” said Ian Blackhall, media and marketing operations manager, Kellogg’s Australia and New Zealand. “JWT would develop the creative idea first. Media would come next. We would look at other opportunities third. We found that we would nearly always come up with a TV solution. We needed a fresh approach to keep up with a media landscape that has completely changed.”
But ensuring agencies get a fair share of voice is tricky, he noted.
“It may sound heavy handed, but any agency that acts in a self-interested way in our briefing sessions will be off the business. It’s as simple as that. And a whip needs to be cracked to avoid agencies populating meetings with lots of people to ensure their voice is heard. We demand collaboration.”
The lead agency is determined by the campaign at hand which, for a campaign to engage blogging mums recently, was a PR agency. Now 25-30% of Kellogg’s projects are led by non-traditional agencies. The company’s TV spend has shifted from 80% to 70%.
Picking the best team from the agency mix is another challenge.
“In most cases, the lead agency is, frankly, still JWT. The next discussion is about selecting the best people to work on the campaign, be they account people or planners or whoever,” he said.
“What we’re looking for is a spirit of collaboration. JWT sees the benefit of getting the right people on the assignment, and coming up with the best idea for the brand. If there was any nervousness when we first introduced the concept, I didn’t feel it.”
The revamped briefing system is about efficiency as much as integration, he added.
“We are now having fewer conversations about rates and fees, leaving more time to focus on producing better, bigger creative ideas,” said Blackhall. “Our biggest issue is efficiency. We don’t want to be spluring on agency fees to solve problems. That’s the risk we need to manage and avoid.”
Another challenge is the brief itself.
“Often I read a brief, and I can tell a brand manager wants to write a TV ad,” said Blackhall. “We have had to change our brief writing culture, and stop writing briefs that are layered with the history of old media. The old adage has applied: ‘I wrote you this long letter, because I didn’t have the time to write you a short one.’ We need to be writing crisp, pithy, inspiring briefs to encourage great ideas.”
Blackhall, who’s been in various marketing roles at the company for 11 years, confirmed that he has was happy with Kellogg’s current agency relationships.
Welcome to 2004 Kelloggs.
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seriously, who doesn’t already do this??
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Also sounds expensive and a waste of time and money. If it’s likely to be a pr idea why have all the agencies there.
The above comment feels right. This was the model in 2004 clients now moving away from it.
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Recipe for disaster. Let’s put all the cereal manufacturer’s in one room and demand them to collaborate and not show any self interest. Lazy marketing. Client should decide on brief and brief agencies – agencies shouldn’t have to work out together which idea to get behind – that should be the client’s role.
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From personal experience, having 1 agency accross AU and NZ works wonders. Not sure how all these different agencies will work though… hope they don’t end up working against each other. I would suggest it will work best if media comes up with the strategy, the client gets behind it, and then the other agencies can work on the creative.
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Is this what we used to call a gang bang?
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Love it @ Groucho. Wish I had through of that one myself 8)
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Employ better, more broadly skilled marketers and better agencies. Everybody knows that this rarely works.
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wow…kelloggs this has been happening in most agencies for years.
have seen it work really well whilst working at DDB and also seen it be a disaster at another big agency in sydney. key is who has the ownership of the IDEA…trying to get agencies to collaborate on the ‘big idea’ is a waste of time, we all have our own agenda and all the egos mean we all try to ‘crack it’.
this article is pretty embarassing, the blackhall comment about the need for ‘short pithy briefs’..no shit sherlock
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Wow, a campaign that doesn’t start with a TVC? That’s a totally inspiring idea. I wish I’d thought of that.
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it’s just a pity that TV still works best
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This is so old school its almost retro!
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Kellogg’s is a big ship, harder to turn, so good on them for getting to this stage. Blackhall is a legend, hopefully he can help them start letting some ground breaking work through too.
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All good comments – & I’d agree this isn’t groundbreaking, we’ve all been there before. The recognition is that the best talent doesn’t all live in one agency, so the skill is to try and find the best talent available, break down agency self interest & inspire those great minds to do brilliant things (without having 20 people at the table). The news is we believe we’ve found a way to make it work. But of course, our consumers will be the judge of that.
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Go for it Ian. I know what you’re trying to get at. I’ve worked in big and small agencies – and once on Kellogg’s. There’s a thing that happens in many big agencies where they start believing their own PR. And they create an internal hierarchy of heroes and self interest. A sort of mass develops in the core which pulls everyone’s attention inwards – when in fact, great creative comes from looking out into the world. As an agency creative, I can tell you nothing makes me work harder than having to compete against a PR or media agency for the big idea. Don’t be surprised that in trying to move away from TV, your TV commercials themselves become far more engaging.
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so given the evolution of the media landscape, shouldn’t the media agency be the lead?
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goodone – not really…the lead agency should be the one that develops the key customer insight and has the numbers / research to back it up. From there will flow all communication touchpoints and with a strong insight the creative agency should be able to develop fantastic creative (without the need for focus groups)
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Paul – completely agree. In recent times havn’t we seen the shift of consumer insight development move toward the media agencies? and we definately have seen the numbers and research being owned by the media guys, with almost all of the large media agencies improving their data and analytics credentials. The creative and messaging is now so dependant on the medium used, and large creative agencies don’t seem to have stayed in touch with the media fragmentation…thoughts?
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Data and analytics credentials at media agencies have gone from non-existent to appalling.
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