Agency Seminar: Where The Power Lies In Agency World

The relative merits of creative, media and digital agencies was debated at this morning’s ‘Future of the Media Agency’ Seminar and how important each area is to a client.

The panel of Nick Manning (Ebiquity), Mark Read (WPP), Paul Phillips (AAR), Greg Grimmer (Hurrell Dawson Moseley and Grimmer) and Nigel Morris (Isobar) agreed that it was important for agencies to understand the consumer but also to understand how best to grow businesses and how to produce strong commercial results.

Nigel Morris spoke about how not enough agency personnel have experience of working in non-media businesses and are therefore unable to speak in business terms to their clients, which often means they are bypassed in favour of consulting companies such as McKinsey who are also able to charge higher fees for their service.

Paul Phillips, in his role between clients and agencies, referred to the structure of agency payments, stating that almost all media agencies were willing to adopt a performance related pay mechanic but clients were less willing, choosing instead to rely on the traditional payment structure.

In terms of gaining greater importance with clients, Nick Manning felt that media agencies have missed out on dominating the ROI agenda, feeling that they could have played a more dominant role in this area.

Referring to a survey conducted by the Four A’s in the US amongst CMO’s regarding what clients want, Nigel Morris outlined that clients felt that creative agencies have the best ideas but are then unable to execute them whereas media agencies have missed the boat. By this, Morris meant being unable to move quickly and grasp a number of potential opportunities to grow their scope and proximity to the client’s decision making process, allowing other disciplines to benefit.

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