What Clients want - Post 6

Posted by: Ross Sleight

This insight might seem like a trip down memory lane, but is probably even more pertinent to today’s Agency and Client structures than it was back in the old days…

Insight 6 - Clients need Agency leaders

Back in the late 80’s and even the early 90’s, the Agency world was quite a simple beast. A client tended to have an Advertising Agency, probably a PR Agency, maybe a DM Agency and if they were an FMCG company probably a Sales Promotion Agency. The Ad Agency was pretty integrated and through the development of planning, tended to be the Agency leader for the Client in strategy and budget for communications. An integrated idea flowed throughout the Agency (and agencies) and all seemed to work well.

Then Agencies started to self destruct. The biggest loss was in house media departments, who, frankly frustrated at playing second fiddle to “what the message was” in an Ad Agency love in decided that they were better taking their “how do we get the message to the audience” philosophy and doing it solo with Clients. Other disciplines - strategy, design etc also began to split. The atomisation of Agency, and the specialisation that came from this had begun.

Fast forward 15 years or so and Digital has merely increased the speed of this atomisation. Quickly looking at the landscape of digital agencies shows that we have specialists in web design build, advertising, usability, SEO, PPC, media planning, media buying, strategy, branded content, sponsorship etc etc. Its a bewildering array of different disciplines (which often shamefully cry after any dollar even if it isn’t their specialism) and one that brings tears to a Client’s eyes. Because instead of a handful of agencies, they have to now manage tens.

I’ve said before that Clients are busy, and don’t have time to manage agencies here. With this wealth of agencies to choose from, all trying to pinch a piece of budget, it is simply a nightmare for Clients. Now what I am not advocating is a movement towards integration (although this is one of the opportunities, and may work for many agencies) as I personally like the focus of specialism. What I want though is a lead agency who can help to co-ordinate these other agencies. And guess what? The Agency that gets it is the one that owns and develops the strategy (see this post for more).

But there’s a bigger prize here than leading a Digital strategy. Digital is now so crucially hardwired into business, that in fact the strategy that exploits Digital is probably the strategy that exploits all channels (in rich idea style). The opportunity is for Digital Agencies to take their place at the top of the table and lead all comms, strategies and business solutions. But currently, I don’t see this happening as it seems that Digital Agencies are prepared to scrap against each other for morsels than take a leap to eat the total budget. If Digital Agencies are not careful, they will be sidelined by resurgent traditional Agencies who after 10 years or so are starting to wake up to digital and starting to bear their strategic teeth.

I’m not being the prophet of doom here, just trying to show you from a Client perspective how important it is to look at the bigger picture of the impact of digital. Richard Huntingdon a phenomenally clever planner by trade from “Traditional Agency” background said in a recent presentation