Work with great agencies who love you, and kill average agencies, argues CMO

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

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.

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?

“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.

When I’m cheating on my wife I’m thinking about your brief.

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’.

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.

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.

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?

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’.

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”.