|
Surrey Garland interviews David Wethey,
Chairman of Agency Assessments International on the company’s 15th anniversary
|
SG
In July 1988 you abandoned a career as an agency head for an even more uncertain future in an untried area of consultancy. Why?
DW As an agency boss you can see the need for greater
accountability and professionalism in the client/agency relationship
first hand. And I felt I could make a more significant contribution
by setting up a new kind of business to help achieve it.
AAI became an instant reality through our two founder clients:
Kellock, part of the Bank of Scotland, and Interbrand. Working
with those first two clients I developed a methodology which
is essentially the same we use today. And I learnt how agency
relationships look from the client’s standpoint –
different from the agency view.
SG How are they different?
|
|
DW
Well, my contacts on the boards of mighty client companies tell
me advertising is almost never discussed. At that level they
see advertising as a cost, not an investment. But when it comes
to the serious marketers in companies and their opposite numbers
in agencies, there’s far more symmetry – and relationships
tend to be positive.
SG Do they really see agencies as ‘partners’
? Or just rather more colourful suppliers?
|
‘my
spies who sit as non execs on the boards of mighty client companies
tell me advertising is almost never discussed…’
|
DW
Agencies are undeniably suppliers. If you’re the one sending
the invoices, that’s what you are. But good clients do
try to partner with their agencies, and I am hopeful that more
will come to see their agencies as stakeholders in the company’s
success.
SG How have agency/client relationships changed over
the past fifteen years?
DW Vastly. Here are some ways: agencies are much less
arrogant; relationships are much shorter lived, 3 or 4 years
on average, against 5-7; ditto Marketing Directors - they used
to get 2-3 years to prove themselves. Now it’s little more
than a year. With serious implications for the agencies they
hire.
Also, remuneration is a markedly more contentious issue - with
hassle and haggle on every renegotiation. Then there’s
the fact that ad agencies - now called creative agencies - are
losing share of market to media and DM shops; that clients have
less time to spend with their agencies – and agencies miss
the oxygen; and that agencies have been forced by financial
pressures to spread their better people more thinly across each
account, and are deploying them more intensively on new business.
SG: To me that sounds like a couple of challenges too
many. Is there any hope for agencies to make a real contribution
in conditions like these?
DW Yes it does - but yes there is! I think that a mutual
commitment to measurability and evaluation will be key.
Measurement is always going to be a client responsibility, but
it’s in the agency’s interest to do a terrific job,
campaign for a long term role, and to buy in to whatever metrics
are mutually agreed to make sense.
SG More and more pitches are being run by AAI and those
who came after you. Can you explain the growth in your business?
DW Bluntly, a DIY job is looking increasingly hazardous.
It’s a mixture of the high stakes everyone is playing for
nowadays, in terms of both marketplace success and personal
careers, and the growing recognition of the complexity of the
task: of mastering different agency offerings, resolving conflicts,
and so on. International reviews require even more specialised
on the ground knowledge - which AAI is unique in providing.
SG Where do you think you’ll be in fifteen years?
|
‘…good
clients do try to partner with their agencies, and I am hopeful
that more will come to see their agencies as stakeholders in
the company’s success..’.
|
Twelve years ago our experience took us into relationship management;
ten years ago, into training. Now, half our business is helping
clients and agencies to achieve more productive relationships,
rather than to change them.
As to the future, we’re developing two new services; the
first is a diagnostic technique – for pitches and relationship
work – to try and predict which creative recommendations
are more likely to be successful long term. The second is a
reinvention of several key aspects of the client’s relationship
with their creative agency.
SG Is that the Sea Changes programme?
Yes - it’s a new model for the way clients buy their marketing
communications. It retains a starring role for the creative
agency in the “new integration”, where creative meets
media and brand entertainment; it proposes more equitable rules
for pitching and remuneration, more dynamic contractual arrangements
and a faster, leaner process.
I believe Sea Changes will be the most exciting thing we’ve
done; and the time is right for it.’
SG What was the worst pitch you’ve ever seen?
DW: We won’t go there.
SG: OK OK, the best?
DW: We’ve witnessed some amazing scenes over 15
years.
Let’s just leave it that the agencies who screwed up never
won the business, and the clients who broke the rules ended
up with the agencies they deserved.
As for the best, it’s invidious to pick one – so I’ll
give you three: HHCL when they won Britvic’s Tango; Saatchi
& Saatchi Cape Town and London when they won Guinness Africa;
and Leo Burnett Chicago and London winning Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
SG: Thank you.
|
‘now,
half our business is helping clients and agencies to achieve
more productive relationships rather than changing them…’
|
| |
|
|
|
