Court papers show client blamed Ikon for $500,000 sales shortfall as details emerge of legal scrap
Sales from a marketing campaign drawn up for a hair loss brand by Ikon Communications fell half-a-million dollars short of expectations, with TV ads poorly executed and targeted at the wrong demographic, it has been alleged.
In documents filed with the Supreme Court, Advangen also claims the reach of the ads had not been achieved while other elements of the campaign, including social executions, were not ready by the time the TV spots ran.
That prevented Advangen from running an integrated campaign across various channels “maximising product awareness” and driving sales, the brand said.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I would have thought that with a $1m campaign spend with the agency, the client would surely be signing off both final creative and media schedule? I’m all for accountability in this industry, and perhaps this is a small light on the (in)effectiveness of new-age media scheduling, but at the end of the day, there is NO WAY Ikon would have pushed any of this to market without final client sign-off. Curious to see how this will unfold, and if anything, may bring a bigger spotlight to agency processes and the contracts that exist between client and agency before executing work.
One has to ask: “Did the client not sign off on the plans, scripts and review the work before it went to air?”. Coming from the client side, this is all usually discussed in great detail and agreed to before any work is done. The comments about key messages missing from the campaign also begs the same question. As a client you have a large amount of responsibility for a campaign’s execution and this begins and ends with you.
I’d be suing the pack design agency first…
Hilare. Nods’ head in agreement.
What? How does the client complain about the contents of the TV ad – did they not sign off a brief, a storyboard, copy deck and then final edit?!
The outsider’s impression is that of a completely inexperienced client, working with an agency that struggled on the creative side.
This is an absolute disgrace, and good on Ikon for suing them. I hope as an industry when Advangen comes knocking on our doors we all tell them to piss off.
Social execution is all wrong as well no engagement all yell and sell, Insta is same content as facebook?, facebook reviews however are all glowing 5 star rating?
80% posted in August, mostly same word count, same tone…suss!
Now go to the website and most product say “out of stock” what a mess!
A hefty budget and I’ve never heard of the brand name. Enough said.
So a client selling a product that doesn’t do anything is not paying for their campaign because it didn’t work. Right.
We obviously dont know the details here, but the only valid argument the client has (possibly) is that the wrong audience was targeted – as in different to what they signed off on.
But if Ikon presented a media plan, with all the details of what was to be bought, and the client signed off on it, and then Ikon delivered as per the signed-off plan – then I dont think the client has any recourse to complain or and justification not to pay for what they approved.
If Ikon did as above, I look forward to the court ruling in Ikon’s favour and a bad client being exposed.
If Ikon did not do as above, then they are just being plain silly suing the client and will lose.