Too often today, project briefs start with prescribing a solution. ’Mobile application to connect with youth’, ‘in-store graphics and POP display appropriate for high-traffic retail outlets’….the list goes on and on.
So, we can’t help but ask ourselves who has their eye on solving the Business Problem? In the old days, clients would sign up with an agency they trust and give them a bit of money to think about achieving their business objectives. The agency would go off and spend the time their clients’ funds allowed figuring out how to achieve the business objectives while spending as little as possible (keeping the remaining funds for themselves as profit). The model certainly had its flaws. But, it allowed agencies to think and kept them aligned toward achieving business objectives.
Now, with so many more channels (and cheaper!) available to us as marketers in order to achieve clients’ business objectives, one would think it would be easier to use this same ‘glory days’ model of old. But, instead, with budget cuts and reduced head counts, leadership within corporations are too often suggesting that their internal marketing teams do the thinking and only rope-in agencies to do the execution. Client-side marketers are most often very bright and extremely knowledgable about their firms. But, they’re time poor. They move from inbox to meeting with little time to think. And while in theory having client-side marketers do the thinking holds, in reality, client-side marketers are most often too time poor to do the thinking and research which agency-side planners and anthropologists did in days past. The thinking is too often falling by the wayside. As budgets won’t allow agencies to do the thinking for their clients, and time poor client-side marketers are forced to rush to solutions. Thereafter, marketing agencies then oblige with itemised hour counts and rate card calculations based on how long it will take to deliver the solution dictated by the client–all the time trying to push budgets and revenues higher and higher. And subsequently, the client-side marketing director is sacked when the campaigns don’t achieve the results and the agency who produced the work have a black mark by their names for burning client money and demotivating their staff.
So, is it not time for a new model? Wouldn’t everyone be happier and more successful if we turned back to an updated version of the glory days ad model where clients give a bit of money to an agency they trust to objectively think about achieving their business objectives rather than just delivering the next campaign?
*Disclaimer: Yes, of course, some brands are getting it right.
