Which job in advertising gives the most ROI?

Lord Lever/Henry Ford said that half his advertising was wasted but he didn’t know which half.

An Interesting piece. Interesting because you could possibly be the only person qualified to make comment. The man that knows why we lose and why we win from a consultancy that handles the industries biggest battles.

Come on. It wasn’t a planner or a media person who wrote “Just do it.” How much is that worth to Nike?

@ Guy fair point….but of course the best known campaigns and lines owe a lot to the weight of media that got them out there in the first place (and often the doggedness of the clients that consistently kept them out there rather than chopping and changing).

IMHO Darren’s value assessment reflects the way clients think these days – follow the money, and most of it is in media. Much easier for clients to hold up media spreadsheets next to all their other spreadsheets than it is to objectively judge creative merit and therefore value.

And the ROI of a pitch doctor is what?

Hmmm, wonder if anyone might use this piece to argue their case in their next tea and biscuits/request a raise meeting.

I don’t think anyone is attempting to make heroes of any position here.
The truth of the matter is that cost is never a measure of value.
Regardless of task, seniority or position, clients assign their own sense of worth or value of having certain individuals on their business.
Silo-ed mono-skilled individuals are the second least valued.
Award chasing scamming creatives are the least. And will always be so.
The most valuable talents are those rare all-rounders: Creatives who think like planners and understand media. Or any other cocktail of the three: Media folks who think like a creative strategist. Suits who can think strategically, plan media and crack creative briefs.
Many would like to regard themselves as such.
Here’s a simple test to see whether you actually are.
Tell the client that you can’t attend a meeting they have called.
If they rather reschedule to another day to accommodate your attendance, congrats, you’ve made it.
If they continue without you, it just means you are superfluous to the business.

What about the Production staff? You know, the ones that actually create the final deliverables, wrangle suppliers, squeeze extra days into immutable timelines, keep costs within budgets and pull rabbits out of hats regularly. Do we even get a look-in in this ROI world, or are we just another expense that’s there to be cut back?

Chip on my solder? Maybe a little.

Oh this is silly!

Nearly got me -was about to obviously say creativity – but then when I thought about it and looked at all the best successful creative work that has delivered an amazing ROI for brands – I noticed it comes down to all those areas of expertise -as an example; no point in having a great idea from an amazing insight but from a tech stand point of view can’t deliever – you see my point – BTW – creative and digital -separated out? -one of the same in my book -it’s a bit like saying: ‘Creative and TV’ / digital is a medium not a discipline// @kevinferry

So… producers are what – invisible? Free? Valueless to the client?

And is digital really still a seperate department? Really guys? You seriously go to all the effort (and expense) of planning and concepting a campaign only to shoehorn digital in further down the line?

If you really think banners are mini print ads, and that your 15 sec spot is fine to shove into preroll than your ROI is leaking. And I don’t think you’ll fix it with your current rating system above.

I read the first paragraph and felt the need to comment that this article is RIDICULOUS! WTF???

@ DC

There would be a point in almost all human occupations, where one could step back, take a brief look at the whole concept, and say the same thing.

Is this a parody or satire because it’s pretty funny haha.

and Media is no longer an advertising agency department – it’s now called a Media Agency. Hello!!!

Amateur hour Darren !

I’d like to know how Darren arrived at these scores? Is there a value equation? Did you pluck numbers out of thin air? Do you have “value norms” to lean on?

Not to mention, use of the most hackneyed term known to humankind …namely ROI !

I really hope this is a joke. This logic is incredibly basic.

Darren let me enlighten you with this quote from Aristotle:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Darren, please send some of these 9/10 media people to the agency which does my planning and buying. Because my lot are uniformly rubbish.

Pretty much a worthless article based entirely on opinion. Granted, I agree with many of the assessment but, really? If you’re going to dig into this, and it certainly appears you are in a position to do so, then you should at least lend a modicum of scientific scrutiny to the topic.

Please tell me where the media planners / buyers who add 9/10 ROI are.

Because the majority I’ve worked with add very little value to a campaign at all.

To give an example, most people in the market for a new phone plan would look:

a) At a 7 by 10 press ad?
b) On a piece of street furniture, preferably an AdShel so I have the time to read the plan?
c) On a bus side?
d) On a taxi back?
e) On the TV while I’m trying to watch my favourite show?
f) At a banner ad, particularly a leaderboard or… Oooooh, a page takeover?
g) At a billboard?
h) On my coffee cup?
i) At a YouTube Pre-Roll. Digital… It’s like TV, but more annoying.
j) At a cinema ad, because that’s precisely what I look for in a cinema experience.

Or…

k) a mixture of PR-driven peer review sites, blogs and forums I’ve done some proper research on, which I was driven to through viral content from my Facebook newsfeed because, oh I dunno, that’s where most people in the market for a good phone plan are probably spending the majority of their time.

Now, I’m not saying that A to J are useless – they do help in building a brand and a story so you can go ‘hey, I like these people, they look after the little guy’ or whatever that message is.

But show me a single media company that has ever recommended a strategy they can not profit from, notably K, as their core expenditure and I will award them 4 million dollars worth of business tomorrow.

Darren, I normally respect you, but I think you’ve spent a little too long outside of the industry or might be pushing an agenda here.

We all know what media companies contribute, and it’s very, very little return on a massive investment.

If you’re still struggling, a few case studies: Doug Pitt, McDonald’s becomes Macca’s, V-Line Guilt Trips, Dumb Ways To Die and Best Job In The World.

The Data & Analytics team delivers the highest ROI.

That’s incredibly short-sighted thinking Darren if you think that the production dept only returns value to the agency.

The ones who craft the assets that the public sees, the ones who turn creative ideas and scamps into something tangible, the ones who add the touches that elevate a good piece of communication into a great one. Things like typography, colour management, press approvals, quality assurance, proofreading, turning around the client’s work in impossible timeframes, delivering the best service from 3rd party suppliers at the lowest cost in the shortest time… etc etc. Aren’t all of those things of value to a client?

Seems that your viewpoint is symptomatic of so many consultants (and agency managers) that I’ve known who believe that production is a cost to be controlled, not a skills in its own right that adds value to the work that agencies produce.

Darren, I’m afraid this article makes you come across as a rank amateur.

In an attempt to garner more publicity for your business, this article doesn’t do you any favours.

Hi Darren. I’m surprised and more than a little worried that you’ve got this so wrong.

I’ve now spent 20 years in some of the world’s leading agencies, on three continents.

Here’s my perspective.

Media buying adds almost no value. The job is so straightforward it could be done by a computer. Increasingly, it is. Of course it is essential that media is bought. But that doesn’t mean that value is added in this step. Similarly, a hospital porter is essential – patients have to be moved from the ward to the operating theatre and back again. But the porter is performing a routine, mechanical task. Not adding value. Real score: 0/10

Media strategy adds very little value. Nearly every media plan I have ever seen, is basically the same. Why clients have not rumbled this, I don’t know. The media strategists are arranging a pot of money between about five different boxes (TV, online, print, outdoor, radio). It’s really very simple. A competent high school student could do it. I can think of only 2 or 3 examples in my 20 year career in advertising where an innovative media strategy has added value. Real score: 1/10

Strategy Planner. This is a tricky one. Obviously, a great advertising strategy adds a lot of value. No question about that. Examples: Johnnie Walker strategy (“JW inspires personal progress”) has had great longevity, and added billions of dollars of sales for the brand over the last ten to twelve years. Lynx/Axe strategy (“With Lynx you get the girl”) has done the same. But who actually came up with those strategies? Well, it wasn’t the planner. I know the story in both cases. Won’t bore you with it. But it wasn’t the planner. I would estimate that the planner actually comes up with the strategy in about 1 in 3 cases. Usually it’s the creatives, sometimes the suits, sometimes the client. The rest of the time, the planner is creating decks, running research groups, post-rationalising other people’s ideas, etc. That doesn’t add much value. My score: 4/10

Account handlers. They run the process. They’re like the oil in an engine. How much value would you assign to that? I don’t know. The oil doesn’t really do anything. The engine does most of the work, the steering wheel is quite important too. They slightly fall into the ‘essential but not value-adding’ category. They’re really only there because creatives are disorganised and unprofessional, and clients prefer not to deal with them. Score: 5/10

Creatives. Almost all the value is created by the creatives. Everyone within an agency knows this. It’s an uncomfortable truth, because the creatives are the least professional and least businesslike people in an agency. Often arrogant, badly dressed, etc. But it’s their product that is being sold. It’s their product that determines whether a brand will grow, or shrink. Often the creatives come up with bad or average ideas that add no value, for sure. But whenever value IS created, it’s the creatives that have created it. It’s the creative work that has built the Lynx brand. Not the media buying. It’s the creative idea of Keep Walking, and the great executions created for it, that have built the JW brand. Score: 10/10

Atrocious and an example of the convoluted industry we are apart of. Clients take note.

Very true.

If planners actually did their job. Not sure if you’ve read any briefs from any agency lately, but good luck finding one that’s single-minded or one that makes sense / isn’t trying to say something without really saying it because the client doesn’t really want to say anything.

My scale: Good planners: 10/10. Good suits: 10/10. Good creatives: 9/10 – only because most of them piss off for half a day on Fridays. Good media people: 5/10. Their job could be done by anyone, really their job is to not fuck it up.

If I could count the times I’ve seen an ad aimed at mums during ice road truckers or WWE / MMA cage-fighting shows, I’d work in finance.