Campaign letter of the week
My group CEO, Marco Scognamiglio, recently wrote a letter to Campaign (’Letter of the Week’, Jan 12, 200 
about how agencies are reacting to a changing environment.
Here is his letter:
Claire Beale
Editor
Campaign
174 Hammersmith Road
London
W6 7JP
Dear Claire,
So we have new start up Adam & Eve structuring itself to think “in an unbiased way”. And Grey choosing a multi-experienced new creative director to “revolutionise” the way it operates. And both say it’s all about “giving the clients what they want.”
As your Perspective piece points out, there’s clearly a theme emerging here. Both are reacting to a changing environment, an environment in which what the client wants has changed markedly. The key question is, why?
The simple answer is that the change is being driven by the consumer and changing consumer behaviour. Media fragmentation and the growth of digital and social media means consumers are now interacting with brands in a multitude of different ways. Consumers don’t think in silos and increasingly it won’t be good enough for brands to choose the channels they want and hope the consumer responds.
The future is all about understanding and tracking consumer behaviour, gaining obsessive insight that then dictates both creative solutions and channel selection.
And that’s where companies which are, and always have been, devoted to understanding consumers are now - more than ever - uniquely placed to help brands manage customer relationships.
Those who can truly understand and track the customer journey – particularly understand how on and offline assets interact – are going to be at a massive advantage. It’s no longer going to be about advertising, or DM, or digital. It’s going to be about the consumer. Ultimately, what clients really want is someone who can acknowledge and deliver against this most challenging of scenarios and can deliver them measurable, creative business solutions – solutions based on an obsessive understanding of their customers.
Yours sincerely,
Marco Scognamiglio
Group CEO
Feel free to comment. Personally I’m convinced he’s spot on about the impetus lying with agencies who understand the consumer. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I…
I also agree with the impetus lying with the consumer savvy agencies.
The question for the future, for me, is to what extent this consumer-focus clashes with “giving the clients what they want” as articulated by Grey and A&E.
The last marketing aeon seemed to come from brave, creative people giving clients what they ‘need’ rather than what they want. (There is the famous story of George Lois threatening to leap from a Madison Avenue window if his ad was not bought, for instance.) The client simply wanted to improve their bottom line. The agencies had to fight to show them how to do it. The agencies knew better. They were expert. And they knew it.
Is such an aeon upon us today?
There will be some business who are genuinely motivated by giving to their consumers - the ‘pull’ marketeers whose messages we seek willingly. This lot will be a pleasure to work with.
But there will, inevitably, be other businesses who are motivated purely by making more money and ‘pushing’ to meet their targets. For whom the customer is but a cash cow to be milked and milked and milked again (or should that read ‘mailed’).
Their marketing deparments are calibrated to fit the ancien régime.
I would suggest it is the agencies with the biggest balls that will enjoy the most success here. The ones who represent the consumer in meetings. People who will say “your customers do not want this….it’s YOU who wants this…this is a bad idea. No.“.
I imagine it will take salespeople…risk takers… mavericks. The next generation of Bernnbachs, Saatchis and Wundermans.
I don’t think it’s too cynical to suspect what a lot of clients ‘want’ is the status quo.
Sounds like it’s going to be fun.
Stomach ulcer anyone?
I believe Greys and A&E are correct in their thinking, “given the client what they want”. I do not believe this is any different from Mr Scognamiglio central point about knowing the consumer and understanding how they interact, communicate and create conversations about a brand across all touch-points
I actually think the biggest challenge today is being in the right place at the right time, and knowing what positive course of action to take when these conversations / interaction are taking place with your product / brand / company.
Examples of brands not getting this and acting foolishly are numerous. My personal fav is:
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/08/68492
Aha. Adventures in Digital Marketing in their biography of Priya Prakash have said what I was trying to say but in a much more succinct manner.
“Priya is a proponent of user centered design and believes that it will play a key role in the future of marketing. Agencies are limited by their briefs to some degree, in what they receive as instruction from the client, and the client’s own vision of what they think the future of marketing is going to be. Agencies need to be able to separate themselves from this to help stretch the true boundaries of future marketing.”
http://digitalmarketing.typepad.com/adventures/2008/03/chinwag-live-to.html