‘Marketers must help agencies, not dilute them’ says industry author
The author of a controversial book, predicting the death of the agency of record business model, has warned it is up to marketers to help them solve their financial challenges.
“You can continue the assault on agency fees and they will probably take it,” Madison Avenue Manslaughter author Michael Farmer. “They are scared to lose you.”
“But the combination of growing workloads, declining fees and the downsizing of offices has had the effect of reducing capabilities at a time when (marketer) problems have never been greater or more complex.
The most important and powerful innovation in the advertising industry was the radical new ad agency planning role, Advertisers loved it, they had been waiting decades for it to finally arrive. What then happened? Too many ad agency chiefs failed to really understand the new role and how it worked. Too many agency chiefs pretended to have planning on board OR hired impostors for the vital [strategic] role. Over the decades until the present the planning role became the most complex role in the agency, mainly due to quality multi-skilling qualifications. It also became the most hideously misunderstood role in the agency. One of the reasons quality planning was so successful was that advertisers experienced less of agency people ‘taliking the talk’ but failing to ‘walk the walk’. Unfortunately, some so-called planners also learned to ‘talked the talk’ because they did not have the full range of necessary skills and experience. Quality planning is the most pivotal role in the agency. If the agency doesn’t have the genuine role it will create real problems and loss of confidence by advertisers.