mediaPro's Clien/Agency Debate summarised by IPA's Director General

The recent Adstream seminar at mediaPro 2009 was notable for its lack of controversy – there was only one vociferous person in the audience who saw the introduction of proper process and business discipline into agencies as a bad thing and antipathetic to creativity.

The seminar panel was also interesting in that, while it was comprised largely of agencies (namely Leo Burnett, DDB, Omnicom Group subsidiary Hub+ and Publicis’ Mundocom), it also included Adstream, a leading third party supplier, and senior marketers from client companies Nokia and Sky. Thus the seminar delegates were able to hear from representatives of companies offering (and considering) the two main production options facing the major clients today, namely ‘agency central service’ and ‘third party’.

This session on the relationship between technology and creativity was inspired by the concept of ‘Magic and Logic’ (first proposed by Charles Kirchner in an article in the Marketing Society's Market Leader journal) and overall it does seem that David Pattison’s IPA presidential agenda of “putting the business back into the advertising business” has had a big impact on Adland. It was in 2006, during Pattison’s tenure, that Magic and Logic, the white paper authored by Marilyn Baxter and published as a result of collaboration between the IPA, CIPS and ISBA, was launched.

The contention of Magic and Logic was that there was a better way for marketing, procurement and agencies to work to produce a win-win for all, and the ultimate goal was to deliver “profitable ideas that produce a profit”. Agencies, in particular, were advised to be more business-minded, and to have more formal processes and ways of working. They were asked to be proactive in seeking ways in which they could improve their value to clients and to be more results-focused. Clearly, new production technologies, digital asset management and web-based collaborative working systems have had a big enabling impact on delivering this.

Magic and Logic clearly struck a chord in the marketplace because its echoes continue to be heard and the findings resonate still with practitioners in all three areas of the tripartite relationship – agencies, marketing and procurement – not forgetting all the other companies involved in the process of producing advertising and marketing communications. Evidence of its enduring relevance was the follow-up publication Magic and Logic Successes. This report contained case histories from IPA agencies 23red, BBH, RMG Connect and DDB London demonstrating how they have brought the tenets of Magic and Logic to bear on their businesses, with real commercial successes.

The exciting thing is that these agencies have realised that process can actually be an adjunct to creativity rather than being an inhibitor of it. In this sense they reinforce the rightness of Janet Hull’s decision to focus Marilyn Baxter’s attention on excellent role models, as opposed to the average, when doing her research for Magic and Logic – it’s so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of what’s wrong rather than the big picture of what’s right.

It’s in this context that the rapid evolution in production and distribution technologies should be seen. There are two main trends in the market, both enabled by these advances. Firstly the third-party production service providers are going pan-European, and indeed global, following in the path paved by the UK-inspired decoupling of media, which is now embedded internationally. These IT-driven production companies have developed the outsourced studio sector, which was pioneered by Saatchi & Saatchi’s Facilities Group, launched around the same time as Zenith Media was applying the same approach to centralised media buying. These businesses now have the scale to re-invest continuously in the latest technology and to have evolved sophisticated client account management functions such, that they can make a credible service offer to multi-national brand marketers, their procurement professionals and of course the agencies they work with in a symbiotic relationship.

Secondly agencies, especially the multi-site networked ones which have the scale to offer the same cost-effective 24/7 service, are making a big comeback into the market. They’re doing this with centres of excellence or shared service operations in which they have invested heavily to secure the latest technologies and systems, and they have the added benefit of closer operational and emotional links to the creative content agencies whose group ownership they share. Of course this was the core rationale for the original in-house agency studio which was only undermined by the client discovery of excess profitability and the lack of scale to cover illness, holidays, and unexpected surges in demand. So the wheel is turning full-circle and the client now has two good options to choose from: namely ‘agency central service’ and ‘third party’.

As a post-script it’s interesting to note that the IPA has just reported on its Diagonal Thinking Self-Assessment’s first anniversary in the market as a free online service, available from the IPA website. ‘Diagonal thinking’ has been proven to be correlated with top-level success in agencies, and it’s been shown that only 10% of the UK population has this special thinking skill. The relevance of this is that diagonal thinkers are people who excel in both lateral (‘magic’) and linear thought (‘logic’). So it does seem that clients should be seeking out individuals who can think diagonally to the benefit of their brands, whether employed by Leo Burnett or Adstream.


For more, see www.diagonalthinking.co.uk.