Work with great agencies who love you, and kill average agencies, argues CMO
The best way for marketers to get the most out of their agencies is to make them love their client so they think about them in the shower, IAG’s chief marketing officer Brent Smart has suggested.
Speaking at a Sydney panel debate on the state of brand marketing in Australia, Smart also argued that “average” agencies deserve to die. Meanwhile, fellow panellist Prof Mark Ritson decried the “wank” of brand purpose.
Last night’s event, organised by communications agency The Contenders and research house The Lab, discussed the relationship between client and agency.
Smart has been CMO of insurance giant IAG since February 2017 after a 20-year agency career spanning Australia, New Zealand and the USA. He moved his creative account to The Monkeys in September last year.
He drew applause as he told the room: “I want to be my agency’s favourite client. And that’s not vanity, that’s a commercial decision – because I know, from my years working in agencies, that if you’re an average client you pay them a fee and you get that number of hours. But if you can inspire an agency, if that agency knows you’re up for doing great work and they love you, then when they’re walking the dog, when they’re in the shower, when they’re on the train, when they’re meant to be on a romantic dinner with their partner, they’re thinking about your brand and your brief. And all those hours, you know how much all those extra hours cost you? Nothing. It’s the smartest thing you can do in terms of an agency relationship.”
Smart also argued that marketers in less glamorous sectors should recognise that agency partnerships are one way to access talent who would not be interest in working for them directly.
He said: “I work for an insurance company. I’m never going to be able to hire the kind of creative talent that The Monkeys can. That creative talent, if briefed the right way and given the right strategy, they can do things I’ll never be able to do and ultimately that’s what I’m paying for. I’m paying for creativity and ideas.
“I have not come across another partner or organisation that can do it like an agency. The consultants sure as hell can’t.”
However, Smart acknowledged that many agencies do not deliver enough value to their clients.
“It’s about getting back to the basics – a lot of agencies have forgotten that. As an agency you’re about the work and the ideas and then the agency model isn’t as dead as a lot of people want to make you think it is.
“The problem is a lot of average agencies doing average work that deserve to be dead.”
Fellow panellist Joe Rogers, CEO of The Contenders, interjected: ‘What you’re describing is the holding company model?”
Smart, who spent nearly six years in New York as worldwide managing director, then CEO, of Saatchi & Saatchi, which is owned by holding company Publicis Group, replied: “I worked at Publicis for the six saddest years of my career.”
The same event also heard from marketing professor Mark Ritson, who argued that most Australian brands are investing too little in long term brand growth compared to short term aims.
He said: “The problem is that the vast majority of Australian brands don’t have any brand strategy. Your brand is a tree – you need to water the tree and pick the fruit. But what’s been happening in Australia like everywhere else – and it’s more pronounced here than in most other places – the amount of watering is decreasing dramatically and the amount of fruit picking is increasing exponentially.
“I don’t know that many brands that even pass 50% on long term multi-year brand building investments in Australia.
“Most of them have been convinced to move their money to short term activation. Too much of that fruit picking is going to become sub-optimal.”
And Ritson was also disdainful of the trend towards purpose-driven marketing, where everyday brands attempt to claim to be making a bigger contribution to the world than their product.
“This is the horseshit we call brand purpose. A load of wank from marketers who don’t want to be fucking marketers. Who think their brand is a big thing, rather than a little, little thing. We’ve lost the fucking plot because we’re embarrassed about good old fashioned customer-based benefits.
“Your brand is a little, little thing. Just because you work on it every day, it’s still pointless to most people.
“We have to come back to the point of marketing. If you don’t deliver on the promise, it’s shit positioning, whatever you call it.
“It’s driven by marketers who fundamentally are ashamed to make a profit, ashamed to take pride in making a good product or service.
“I work for money. I’m not ashamed of that. I do other things in my private life, but when I go to work I make fuckloads of money and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with great products and really cool brands.”
you led the article with Brent’s thought (which is a good point very well made) but Mark Ritson’s perspective deserves it’s own article or series
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Tim, whilst you want to get your content out fast, there are tools like Grammarly to help you proofread. Some of the spelling and grammar in the recent mumbrella articles is like reading the posts of a drunk teenager.
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Absolutely agree with Brent’s point. Average agencies deserve to die – and so do average clients. My recent experience has left me wondering why some clients bother hiring an agency when they’ve got no interest in using the agency’s skills. Why hire an adviser if you don’t want to listen to them?
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“then when they’re walking the dog, when they’re in the shower, when they’re on the train, when they’re meant to be on a romantic dinner with their partner, they’re thinking about your brand and your brief.”
Please p*ss off with this.
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When I’m cheating on my wife I’m thinking about your brief.
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Hi Spannin’.
Point taken. (On this occasion I had to take the conscious decision to publish this unproofed – and in the knowledge that I had already glimpsed typos – or miss catching today’s news email which was on its way out of the door. if it’s any consolation, I was already tidying it up by the time you wrote this note.)
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Did these two people talk to each other? Sounds like that would have been interesting. Mark’s comments seem particularly pertinent to NRMA’s new ‘brand purpose’.
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I’m glad you mentioned that Nick…
https://mumbrella.com.au/what-ails-marketing-tactification-communification-and-digitisation-549710
We’re here to please…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Jon,
In this case, the panel preceded Mark’s preso. However, you will be delighted to know that they talked to each other in the bar afterwards.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
If both Mark and Brent were able to look at marketing through a bigger strategic lens, which is enabling the sustainable commercial success of the client businesses that keep them both employed, they’d have actually been able to join the dots. Brand purpose doesn’t work if there isn’t a truly beneficial organizational, product or service purpose that serves society in some way. Businesses that are not recalibrating their strategies to ensure that their products and services actually do serve a tangible purpose are simply selling shit that people don’t need. The agencies engaged to sell that crap will fail to craft outstanding communication because the public isn’t stupid and they can spot a polished turd better than any other time in history (because, internet). So coming full circle, the agencies that will win are those that take on the work of brands that actually have something meaningful to offer consumers – selectivity and competing for the truly worthwhile clients that are making a real difference through real purpose is the actual answer to both their challenges. The mediocre will disappear, and agencies won’t be forced to pretend to be proud of making a profit on something they know nobody wants or needs.
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Could you please let your readers know how many other awards the NRMA Christmas TVC has won besides Mumbrella Ad Of The Year. Thank you.
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Hi For The Record,
I’m sure it’s won lots of others too. But I happen to remember that one because it was our event, and I was in the room that night.
I have a sneaking suspicion you already know the answer yourself. Feel free to share that here.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
None.
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Hhmmm,
All IAG has to do now is come up with some decent work.
Surely they are not counting that NRMA tripe as great, compelling work?
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If a commercial wins ‘Ad Of The Year’ in one competition, is it not reasonable to expect it to do at least ‘well’ in other awards? ‘Dumb Ways To Die,” is an (extreme) example. Perhaps we need to look through an alternative lens to discover who the real ‘average’ agencies are and what constitutes ‘award worthy work’.
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Tim Hi, There’s something not quite right here. Is it good for the industry to have an events company handing out an award, best in show no less, to a piece of work that goes totally unnoticed by every other competition on the planet? And then have the Chief Marketing Officer responsible for approving the work that won the award, occupy the high ground at an event hosted by the company that created the award? Brent Smart pontificated, “The problem is a lot of average agencies, doing average work that deserve to be dead.” To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us”.
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Hi For The Record,
Thanks for the question.
You may be a tad confused. Mumbrella didn’t have anything to do with organising the event where Brent made those comments.
Also, the ad didn’t win best in show at the Mumbrella Awards – it won in the category of TV ad of the year.
To misquote For The Record “We have met the conspiracy theorist, and the conspiracy theorist is in the comment thread”.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella