Kieron Matthews

Is the answer to the race to the bottom for agencies to become more consultative ? Excellent provocation as always from Omar Oakes who makes some great points about the lack of challenging behaviour in agency/client relationships today and the lack of growth in revenue leading to decline in agency fees. There’s a lot going on here. My tuppence worth from the purview of running a media agency group then setting up and growing a marketing consultancy for the last 4 years: * Holdco agencies lost their way when they 1) started to take a principle not agency approach to media buying 2) started to compromise the craft of planning * Creative thinking and innovation has suffered as a result - too much sameness in strategy and reliance on performance marketing * It’s not about brand/the big idea OR data driven activation, it’s about AND i.e finding the right balance and impact from both but most agencies are so siloed they can’t join this up * There’s a big difference between being “consultative” and being a consultant. The latter is focused on business outcomes and the levers that deliver revenue growth not all the noisy media and advertising metrics. This is as much about process and capabilities as it is about platforms and spend.. * Agencies in general commoditise their service and struggle to get paid fairly for the strategic and transformative work - this is largely client and not agency driven and marketers need to be prepared to pay accordingly for genuinely differentiating analytics, strategy and innovation.. * Consultancies scope precisely and instil a robust project management, gated approach to projects minimising scope creep and enabling value based pricing discussions Agencies are full of incredible talent who want to help their clients grow but too often the commercial constraints in the agency business get in the way of good work and partnership. When we consult we see great thinking and talent but it’s often the contractual constraints and the siloes that get in the way.. The major gap we see at CvE - Marketing Consultancy is between the high-level operating model and transformational thinking of the management consultants and the often narrow advertising/media/campaign thinking of most agencies. Brands need expert marketing and media practitioners to bridge this gap or else the promised revenue growth never materialises. This is an opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem but mostly those that lean in to client-led, business outcome focused thinking. Bravo Brian Jacobs & Nick Manning for continuing to bang this important drum and Omar for focusing on journalism focused on the issues that really matter..

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I had the honour of judging the IPA Effectiveness Awards last week, 3 surprising things I learnt: 1. Distinctively Dull Some of the best cases proved that dull but distinctive creative can be highly effective. Previous analysis of IPA winning papers has shown campaigns that get talked about, so called fame campaigns, do significantly better. But this isn't the only way. Being distinctively dull can clearly work. Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute should be proud, distinctive assets really do matter. It's hard not to be swayed by more interesting creative work but as Simon Broadbent who founded the awards once wrote "these are effectiveness awards not creative awards". 2. Hidden Performance You could read a lot of the papers and think performance marketing didn't exist. In a few papers it seemed to be omitted from the paper to make the story about the brand investment appear stronger. In reality, this meant that the judges were left wondering what was missing, which undermined the impact of the papers. To misquote Simon Broadbent these are effectiveness awards not brand awards. Some papers, however, were based purely on performance marketing and a few of them were brilliant in proving its potential effectiveness. 3. Learning Learning Most MMM analysis was not backed up with experimentation. Regional hold-outs and incrementality testing were rare. A surprise given this is a cross section of the most effective work. Often the measurement in the papers appeared to be used for validating impact rather than illuminating learning. Simon Broadbent said papers should use evaluation to help dictate future actions. The rare papers that did so really stood out. It was an absolute honour to read about some seriously effective work, thanks to my fellow judges for some great debate, Charlie Ebdy and Jo Arden for the invite and Alexandra Green for hosting! Also, big shout out to Sarah Newman from the APG for recently posting the 1982 guide by Simon Broadbent on how to win an IPA Effectiveness award, it's amazing how relevant and helpful it was for judging today. My favourite tip from Simon: "Successful advertising is not easy to make and the papers should not make it seem as such". Bravo!

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