Live webinar: September 18, 2013 / 1:00 – 2:00 Eastern
Presented by Michael Farmer , Farmer & Company
It’s a fact of ad agency life – traditional advertising workloads are growing, and digital advertising workloads are growing even faster. Clients and technology have joined forces to experiment in real time, seeking the right mix of volume, media and messaging to optimize brand performance.
This would be great if it were not for one other fact of agency life: fee retainers are under pressure, and if they are not declining then they’re flat. In either case, fees are not keeping up with workload.
This means that more work is being done by fewer agency people every year. Is this a good or bad thing for clients? For agencies? It all depends on the relationship between workload and resources. Beyond a certain point, it is unhealthy for everyone, affecting creative quality and likely brand performance.
The measurement of workloads has never been a priority for agencies or their clients. Agencies have always been proud of their ability to “do whatever the client needs, whenever it needs to be done.” When agencies were paid by media commissions, remuneration was high enough to cover any and all service requirements. Unlimited service was affordable. Media choice was relatively simple in those days: TV, radio or print. The entry ticket for the all-you-could-eat buffet was high enough to cover the costs of the most voracious eaters.
Simplicity has given way to complexity. Procurement has driven remuneration downwards. Media choices have grown exponentially. Feedback from the marketplace has speeded up. Experimentation is the new modus operandi. Workloads have inevitably grown.
The growth of workloads poses a challenge to the “service-at-any-cost” paradigm.
Join us on September 18, 2013 as agency management expert Michael Farmer shares key insights, tips and tools for how agencies can effectively respond to growing workloads Among other things, Mike will explore four management priorities for agency leaders and managers:
Documentation and tracking. Workloads need to be documented and tracked by ad agencies in ways that will be described during the webinar. Workload documentation and tracking is not a standard procedure across clients in a typical agency office today. Agency-wide policies and procedures need to be established to ensure that workloads are documented and tracked in a uniform way.
Accountability. Client heads need to be increasingly accountable for workloads, fees and resources. This is a substantial increase in client head accountabilities. New types of data and information will have to be developed and collected to measure the success of individual client heads in carrying out their responsibilities.
Management reviews. Client heads need to be reviewed at periodic intervals by office heads, CFOs and office top management teams for the alignment of workloads, fees and resources. Corrective actions need to be established and implemented.
Discussion and negotiation with clients. Clients need to be sensitized to the size and growth of workloads relative to fees and resources. This process may take some time, and it will certainly require high-quality workload information and metrics. Agencies need to commit to a long-term process of introducing this subject into annual negotiations so that fees can become better aligned to workloads.
Join us for this deep dive into workload management and learn how to get out of the “service-at-any-cost” trap and construct agency-client relationships that are mutually-beneficial for both parties.
About the presenter
Michael Farmer is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Farmer & Company LLC., a strategy consulting firm for advertising agencies and their clients. Farmer & Company provides data, consulting services, metrics and software to make sense out of agency and media fees, agency resources and Scopes of Work.
Prior to founding Farmer & Company in 1992, Farmer was a strategy consultant with The Boston Consulting Group and a Director of Bain & Company. Farmer is an honors graduate of Princeton University and of Harvard Business School.
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via How Agencies Can Effectively Respond to Growing Workloads :: Thought Legion.
