It seems that with the welcoming of the new year, businesses of every stature are working toward a bigger and better fiscal year.  With that comes evaluating current agency partnerships.

While New Year’s resolutions are sworn upon until the laziness of mid-February catches the public with a case of amnesia, clients are determined to either find new agencies or improve the relationship and success of their current agencies.  We see this happen every year. Calls from CMO’s on the first day back from the New Year holiday are like clockwork. We even get calls from clients at the end of the year with the hope of getting new work completed by the end of the first quarter.  

Conducting an agency review isn’t the only way to be sure you meet those goals.  Implementing an agency performance evaluation is also important.  New agency or old, getting the agency’s goals in place and a way to evaluate them throughout the year is a great resolution for all marketers.

Here’s to 2012 and may we all have success with our resolutions.

In the world of new business, this has been a question and a frustration for years.  It has always been obvious that if an agency has a competitor in the office that is pitching the business, they can’t pitch unless they say they will resign their current account.  But how far do you take it beyond the pitching office?

Clients and agencies weigh-in in an Adage article this week, "Tightened Policies on Conflicts Box in Agencies, Clients". The debate is around how far conflicts extend beyond the pitching office.  For years, agencies with multiple offices have promised building a firewall to keep competitive clients apart.  And, if there are multiple full-service offices, the competitive clients can reside in different offices.  But now, many clients are demanding that there can be no conflict within all agencies’ offices or anywhere within a holding company’s network.

I think this is going too far.  Agencies are not going to share confidential information between offices, particularly when there are NDA's in place. Clients need to trust their agencies.  An agency that is stupid enough to leak confidential information will find themselves without any clients soon enough.

Bottom line: it hurts both clients and agencies.  Clients limit the number of agencies they can work with, some being the best in the country.  And in turn, agencies are quickly conflicted out of many categories.

It is time these restrictions are lightened.

There was an article in AdAge on October 11th that posed hypotheses about CMO’s and their ability to keep up with our industry’s changing landscape.  There were two key areas that are causing this question:

1.   Technology/Data:  new devices, social media, media channels and the requirement to measure and validate all expenditures.
2.   CMO’s true ownership of four key marketing areas:  promotion, products, place and price.

Pile and Company is involved with CMO’s in every industry, so we get a first-hand look at how they are fairing.  

Keeping up with technology and data is surely a challenge.  CMO’s depend on their agencies to be ahead of the curve and educate them on the current and future trends and implications on their marketing efforts.  Beyond that they are only learning from personal experience or what they read.  Their biggest road block is time.  They don’t have time to write blogs, track blogs, get involved with social media or keep up with how their target is using all of the above.  

But beyond just their personal knowledge, CMO’s are dealing with the rest of their organization.  If they are responsible for educating and implementing programs company-wide, they are faced with even more time-starved challenges.

We haven’t even talked about data yet.  The complexities of determining the ROI of different programs can be monumental.  How do they stay on top of that?

Then there is the question of whether CMO’s are really in charge of the four P’s.  Again, our experience shows that it ranges significantly.  But more often than not, the answer is no.  

There is not enough time or room on this blog to dissect this topic further.  I don’t have the answer, do you?

The In-House Agency Forum (IHAF), which is a division of Pile and Company, recently had its annual conference.  IHAF is the leading professional association for in-house advertising agencies and creative services organizations.  Members’ benefits include benchmarking data and best practices, conferences and events, as well as online and in-person networking.

What many who are not involved in the workings of an in-house agency might not know is that the dynamics, issues and opportunities are similar to what external agencies face.  Two that came up in various conversations I had at the conference were:

• The ability to meet timelines is directly tied to the accuracy of the input.  If the input or brief provided to the agency isn’t clear and doesn’t represent the thinking from the top, the output will not be right.  This will impact the due dates and ability to meet the already tight timelines.  Doesn’t that sound like something you might hear external agencies complaining about?

• How can the agency structure support working from an integrated perspective?  Similar to what external agencies faced a few years ago, integration and thinking across channels is the future of communications.  Many internal agencies don’t know how to integrate well.  They want to change but are met with resistance from those who want to work the way the agency has always worked.
  

Where is the opportunity here?  Internal agencies can learn not only from IHAF, but also from its external agency partners.  But an even better opportunity is when the internal team realizes from firsthand experience what it needs to do to make the external agency effective.

I do find it amazing that the advertising industry has enough going on to warrant an “Advertising Week” in New York City.  Fashion Week I get, but Advertising Week?

With that said, the heavy hitters in the industry are there and there seems to be good attendance and interesting topics such as:  “What is the Future of the Business?”, “The CMO Desk of the Future” and “Procurement, the Debate Continues” to name just a few.

I spoke on a panel yesterday presented by the Montreal Ad Club.  Two of my fellow consultants from the U.S. and one from Canada talked about the world of agency review consultants.  What are the misperceptions of what we do?  Is including spec creative in the review process right? How do agencies keep in touch with consultants?  And lastly, what are the most outrageous tactics agencies have used to make themselves known to us?

Review consultants are a relatively new thing in Canada.  There were a few areas where we may differ on the approach, but we all agree on most things.

You might think that as competitors there would be animosity between us.  But there wasn’t.  I actually had fun.