Conventional Agencies: Pros & Cons
February 21, 2018
By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc./ LMMiami.com
Welcome to the second installment of a trilogy -or maybe a tetralogy- that will attempt a detailed SWOT analysis of the various paths a marketer can choose when hiring talent to roll out its communication campaigns. The first installment last week addressed the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats of using in-house agencies* for such purposes. Today: conventional agencies (conventional as in Madison Avenue-style shops, if you catch my drift).
- In-house agencies are notoriously toothless but they are, are least in appearance, thrifty, focused and efficient.
- In comparison, retaining an external autonomous shop can be plenty onerous.
- Painfully so.
- Particularly if we’re talking about one of the majors: Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and their assorted underlings.
- 7 figures for a ten slide-long PowerPoint deck?!?!
- Yup.
- You are paying a premium though because retaining an agency with a marquee brand name also comes with an unwritten insurance policy: it gives you the peace of mind to protect your rear end if your campaigns do not deliver.
- “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m only the CMO here! I hired the legendary Bentom Bontom & Bintom. It ain’t my fault if nobodys’ buying our new & improved glow-in-the-dark toothpaste…”
- The other good thing about a conventional agency is, possibly, candor.
- You are not their only client, their livelihood is not solely dependent on you, they should be more willing to tell you the truth, sans sugarcoating, warts and all.
- Particularly if you are not their largest account.
- Disadvantages: they might be slow to return your calls and emails.
- Service will tend to suck over time.
- Sooner rather than later you will be attended to by junior staffers who will roll their eyes at you like they are doing you a favor.
- Or might use you shamelessly to win awards.
- The senior execs will show up to the first couple meetings and then your business will be kicked down the tentpole to entry-levelers, interns and trainees.
- If the agency in question is a multinational one, they will tell you that there’s a global network servicing your business.
- Yeah right.
- I’ve worked for most of them and, let me tell you, the network litany is utterly untrue.
- They are silos.
- More so, they compete with one another.
- Fiercely.
- They have different P&Ls.
- It is a zero-sum game.
- Some clients believe that they obtain collaboration and consistency from Madison Avenue-style agencies when they need to run global or regional campaigns.
- Unbeknownst to them, what this logic actually creates is an open season climate of internecine competition.
- Like every hunter knows, on open season you eat what you kill.
- If BBDO Paris wins, BBDO Madrid loses.
- It’s that simple.
- They will stab each other in the back fiercely.
- They might pretend they are working together to appease but behind closed doors it will be all out war.
- Believe me, been there, done that: international networks are anything but.
- More so, the client might end up paying fees to a handful of agencies to end up with just one campaign.
- Then again, the insurance policy analogy kicks in: hey, don’t blame me if we are losing market share in Europe, I had BBB Madrid, BBB Paris, BBB Amsterdam, BBB Milan, BBB London and BBB Berlin work on our campaign.
* In-House Agencies: Pros & Cons
https://hispanicad.com/agency/business/house-agencies-pros-cons