Wow. Just wow. Sending a brief to media owners doesn’t make you a strategist
This week Sydney-based strategy agency Naked Communications was fired by Labor after details of negotiations with media outlets over a Kevin Rudd interview were published by Fairfax Media. The potential deal apparently involved free advertising for Labor on the sites involved. In this guest post, Rachel Lonergan argues that the furore demonstrates that too many agencies simply rush out a brief for media owners instead of creating a strategy.
On Wednesday Jonathan Swan’s piece appeared in my Twitter feed with the headline ‘Ad agency that offered ‘exclusive’ deals for access to Kevin Rudd has been sacked’. On reading I retweeted it to my followers with my comment – “Wow. Just…wow”.
That reaction accurately describes the feedback I received from various people over the day. PR people, government comms people, and other strategy people like myself.
There are a number of flaws with the approach to the brief as was depicted in the article (read the written brief here although Fairfax alleges some of the discussions took place via email) . Now I choose my words carefully because I wasn’t there, and I’m going on what has been reported. And I’m not really interested in the ‘who’, but the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.
The first thing that struck me was the naivete in offering a website publisher, also known as one of Australia’s largest newspaper publishers (Fairfax), ten conditional minutes with the Prime Minister. Now this may come as a surprise to some advertising agencies, but large news publishers don’t need your help to score a sit down with the PM.
As to the ‘I’m doing you a favour’ negotiation tactic as reported, let me be blunt. Offering the media owner the chance to take a big bite of a shit sandwich is no favour.
Imagine the blowback had a Fairfax owned site accepted the conditions, generated the content required in the brief and essentially delivered a significant chunk of pro-Labor ‘propaganda’ in order to help Naked deliver the brief? Media Watch would need an hour special to keep up with the outrage. And on the off chance they were prepared to throw their integrity aside, there doesn’t sound like any margin to be made by accepting this grand ‘favour’. People, please.
Leaving that aside, managing the brand of the Prime Minister, is a fundamentally different exercise than managing some reality starlet’s handbag collection or a new type of yoghurt endorsed by a fitness guru. But this significant nuance appeared to be completely absent from the brief. In fact, take away the Labor branding and the references to Rudd and the brief could be for either of those things. It’s not ‘special’ and neither is it specific enough. The target audience feels murky (Vine and Vice? Really?) and the communication objectives are vague. Frankly, it smacks of “We’re out of ideas so we want you to come up with them”.
Strategists and media agency folk are far too quick to brief out their problems in the hope that media owners will provide the solutions. In this case, creation, context and extension of the content were all placed in the hands of the publishers. I know that’s often the quickest, cheapest way to get a (superficially thought through) campaign to market. But doing that doesn’t make you a strategist, it makes you a brief writer. It’s no coincidence that most media owners have stepped up their strategy credentials and are becoming more insistent on dealing directly with advertisers.
People who’ve been into my office in the past may remember the prominent placement of a triangle with a word at each angle – ’fast’, ‘good’, ‘cheap’. Only two points of a triangle ever touch. You cannot have three. I fear this brief fell into the trap of trying to deliver to ‘fast’ and ‘cheap’ without stopping to consider if it was ‘good’. This brief feels rushed out the door. Thinking time is of course, money, but in my opinion, a wise investment, especially when your product is the social media loving and loved PM.
It’s unfortunate for Naked (an otherwise excellent agency with some excellent people) that this has driven some bad publicity for them. At the same time however, our industry, and specifically the discipline I operate within takes a credibility hit every time something like this goes public. In a year from now, most people out in the real world, won’t remember the details of this issue, but they’ll remember how it made them feel.
And the best articulation of how it made me feel was ‘Wow. Just…wow.’
- Lonergan is an experienced freelance communications strategist based in Sydney whose previous roles have included Ikon, bellamyhayden, MPG, Three Drunk Monkeys and The Newspaper Works.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Fast, good and cheap? Zara. Twitter. Google. ASOS. Ikea. Crust Pizza. etc….
I think you may need a new diagram (one that doesn’t come out of marketing text books circa. 1970.)
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Very Silly….The ‘fast, good cheap’ triangle relates to the quality of thinking. I think that’s made pretty clear. And in order to deliver the services and brands you mention above, they would need to make sure the quality of thinking is very high indeed.
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To Very Silly – you’re looking at how cheap it is for the consumer. Making something fast that’s high quality costs money – it’s only cheap to the consumer because the company makes only a tiny margin, but sells large amounts.
Google staff have some of the best benefits/salary packages in the world. Would you say Ikea furniture is as high quality as other, more expensive furniture? Is pizza from a Fast Food outlet really comparable to restaurant quality food?
The trick is to pick two of the three corners of the triangle to focus on, and ensure that the third corner does not detract. Naked Communications chose Fast and Cheap, but failed to make the campaign ‘good’ enough to pass muster.
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To #1 Very Silly, your examples don’t stand up. Twitter and Google are not products or services that the user pays for, so the analogy does not apply. Ikea, ASOS and Zara are not ‘good’ quality, just appropriate quality for the cheap price. Never had a Crust pizza so I can’t comment on that one…
The ‘Fast, good and cheap’ triangle applies to every consumer product and service, but in balance. You want it very fast and very good? It won’t be very cheap, and that is guaranteed.
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I’m yet to be convinced by the point behind, and the argument within, this op-ed article. Actually, the article’s content is fine – it’s the headline and subsequent copy that don’t sit together well, so I’m confused.
The headline purports that Naked outsourced their strategy to various publishers. They didn’t – they only outsourced execution. Their strategy was to target youth publishers by dangling the carrot of a PM interview plus “how about throwing in some favourable editorial, please”. It was a bad strategy, but a strategy nevertheless, so not really in line with the headline.
Secondly the argument is made that media owners are increasing their strategy base in order to bypass “quick & fast” agency-land. So is the author saying that the situation would be any different if a publisher (perhaps under commercial pressure to increase their monthly figures) went direct to Rudd’s team and proposed filming an interview and also they would run some ALP-friendly articles? Which isn’t beyond the realm of believability.
As I said, the article is fine, I just don’t see it moving on the discussion in a positive manner for an op-ed piece.
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“Leaving that aside, managing the brand of the Prime Minister is a fundamentally different exercise than managing some reality starlet’s handbag collection or a new type of yoghurt endorsed by a fitness guru.”
Many would disagree given the current PM. Every passing Rudd day in office makes Julia Gillard’s political behavior look more dignified in hindsight.
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Well said Rachael. On this topic, I’m disillusioned at the lack of genuine strategic brand thinking or planning that some agencies and their key personnel get away with – despite the slick sales pitches to clients and employees alike.
I’ve witnessed senior media agency colleagues essentially just forward briefs from clients to their favourite media reps to come up with a solution, and in many instances get their media rep to present to the client.
I’ve also worked at large, traditional creative agencies with senior personnel who express their view behind the scenes that the notion of strategy or time spent defining a problem and crafting a solution is a waste of time – then wax lyrical to clients and trade media about its importance, and their superior abilities in its craft or application.
In reading about this Naked debacle – whilst they (like most major shops) have clearly got some switched on people in part, I fear that this kind of lazy or misguided behaviour is more common in the industry than most would dare admit.
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Often briefing the media is at the behest of the client…who doesn’t want to pay a creative agency. It’s at the cost of the work, and the brand, however it comes down to wanting to save $$.
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