Jaguar and Levi’s: experiments in new-model agencies

Clients are more interested than ever before in having a single, easily identifiable agency throat to choke if it all goes wrong, says Dominic Mills – and it’s throwing up questions over the way agencies are structured.

Levi’s and Jaguar have more in common than you might think. The price tags may be wildly different, as does the consumer purchase process. But both are category icons (even if they lack the lustre of previous eras) and singular enough to stand for a universal proposition across the globe – i.e. less prone to cultural cross-winds.

More to the point, both have chosen new-model agency structures that raise questions about more traditional network-based agency models and the arrangements multi-national brands enter into.

Although their respective agency arrangements sit quite far apart on the spectrum, Jaguar and Levi’s have one thing in common: there’s a single, easily identifiable, agency point of responsibility.

As one wise adman put it to me: “Clients want a single throat to choke if it all goes wrong.”

So what do we have? Earlier this month Levi’s appointed a pair of agencies, Draftfcb and The House Worldwide.

And for the last three years Jaguar has been working with Spark44 which, while not precisely an in-house agency, looks to all intents and purposes like one. Adland, because it is inherently paranoid, doesn’t like in-house agencies, so Spark44 has often been snootily dismissed.

There may be some logic in this. With the exception of Specsavers, whose work I enjoy, single-client or in-house agencies don’t have a great track record. Those who remember KMM, which handled Rover in the 90s, is a case in point. And nobody laments the loss of Lintas (now subsumed, many times over, into different parts of the IPG empire), which used to be Unilever’s in-house agency.

For its part, Spark44 has kept its head down and got on with, well, doing the doing. This month’s SuperBowl bonanza for Jaguar has somewhat raised its profile and will put it in the spotlight.

It may be dancing on the head of a pin, but Spark44 is in fact a 50:50 joint venture between a group of senior admen (all with serious car experience) and Jag’s parent, Jaguar Land-Rover (JLR). Technically, this means Spark44 is a single-client agency, not an in-house one.

All that may be about to change anyway, because JLR has indicated to Spark44 that it is now free to go after other clients. Whether they will be interested in an agency dominated by one client is another matter, but you can see it might appeal to a small, select, bunch.

These are most likely to be high-end, luxury brands targeting high net-worth individuals; the kind of people who are defined less by geography than by money and attitude – a bit like Jag customers.

The Levi’s arrangement is different. To the outsider, it looks as though Draftfcb is there to do the grunt work (i.e. retail stuff, distribution and so on) while The House, launched last year by former Publicis Worldwide’s chief operating officer Richard Pinder, would do the sexy stuff – strategy and creative.

This reading would be wrong. The appointment has been sold to Levi’s as a genuine working partnership, allowing it to cherry-pick talent from Draftfcb and The House’s proposition of ‘built-for-the-client’ teams assembled from around the world.

Were it not for the fact that both Pinder and Draftfcb’s boss Carter Murray know each other well from their times at Publicis and Leo Burnett, I’d be disinclined to take the link-up seriously.

But clearly they have huge personal investments in making this work. For Draftfcb it looks like a ‘saved-by-the-bell’ win, while The House gets credibility and profile.

Of course there will be those who say all these holding company-driven arrangements – WPP’s Team Blue Hive (or whatever the Ford unit is called), Team 171 for mobile phone manufacturer HTC, and many others – are also designed to give the client access to a dedicated team of top talent and a clear line of responsibility.

In theory, yes. In practice, not necessarily.

The talent isn’t always as top-notch as it’s made out to be, it’s not necessarily that dedicated, and responsibility is often diffused to the point of invisibility. Oh, and if Team Blah Blah has to outsource something outside the holding company… no chance.

I’m told Jaguar got fed up with a constantly-revolving door of so-called senior agency personnel who’d turn up, pretend to solve the problem (in fact, make it worse) and disappear again. When it came to strangling a single throat, none could be found.

Of course, an agency jv with the client doesn’t come without its issues. Staff might get bored without client variety; the CMO might feel disempowered; and firing the agency is, well, problematic.

On the plus side, there’s a greater sense of partnership; the agency is freer to speak its mind without fear of reprisal; there’s no ‘enemy’ – not even procurement; the agency’s ability to go upstream, dealing with wider strategic and business issues, is enhanced; and network agency talent, fed up with the endless pursuit of margin by the holding companies, might find a different structure appealing.

Of late, Spark44 seems to be getting its act together creatively. The F-type campaign is eye-catching and based on an original thought; this Lana del Ray video, a piece of branded entertainment, sizzles; and this spoof of Mercedes shows agility and a sense of humour.

So where might Spark44 go next? JLR is owned by Tata, so other brands in the group are obvious targets. Taj Hotels might be one. Tata brand agencies will no doubt be looking anxiously over their shoulders. That probably explains why Land Rover is on a creative high at the moment.