Just a quick thought but, I suspect that agencies will have to start
becoming more 'marketing' focused again in future as the ROIs
calculated across the industry by
Deloitte Consulting for the Grocery
Manufacturers of America (according to AdAge) - found in-store
marketing ranked highest in
perceived return on investment by
respondents, followed by trade
promotions/displays, TV advertising
and interactive/web advertising.
Not good news for the ad agencies potentially - although thinking back
I can remember when lots of the big agencies had guys working in a
sales promotion department in the
agency creating trade and in-store
elements fueled by an inhouse
research department too. In fact I loved
the sales promo guys - they always had fantastically colorful cardboard
cutouts and free samples dotted around their offices. Handy if it was either
a choccie or booze client obviously. Perhaps they still do but they are not
clearly demarcated and its probably only 1 or 2 teams stuck in a corner
somewhere.
Most of this is now 'out of house' and being controlled by the clients
themselves, and I was wondering how we let this actually
happen.
I think the traditional sales promotion agencies found the late
90s and
early noughties really hard and many disappeared or got
subsumed and as an
industry I think it largely lost its punch. Now I know
there are a few good ones left - but let's be honest - outside of their own
big award shows (the ISP springs to mind) - they are not very visible are
they? In fact I can't recall them attending any of the ludicrous 'loop team'
meetings that the big grocers used to hold in those awful business parks
off the M4 once a week. Don't miss those!
And then I wondered where they sit on a clients budget line - not quite an
ad agency - although probably capable of producing an ad or two, and not
quite a design company - although they usually have a great eye for
typography and design, but they definitely were marketing led companies -
with all
the language and knowledge of how categories and margins and
logistics and case values and volume discounts and pricing strategies and
proper category management theory in each of the markets worked -
something that there seems to be a paucity of in many ad agencies today.
I miss
all of that and the guys who knew all of that - the sales promo guys
had some of the brightest people in the industry working
for them.
Where are they all now?
And now there is this increase in focus on the 'point of impact' on shelf and
instore and consumer and trade advertising budgets being merged, and you
have to wonder whether the ad agencies will seize the opportunity to again
advise clients not only on brand and creative strategy but their
marketing
strategy too. Proper Value Based Marketing as Peter Doyle
once wrote -
rather than the reliance on superficial creative impacts
loosely linked at
best to shareholder value and digital guys measuring the dwindling effects
of CTRs.
I for one certainly hope they do - the alternative is pretty daunting and the
opportunity seems there for the taking.
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