Hamlet was Uncertain

Three Client Hot Buttons

After forty-one years in advertising (two-thirds at agencies, one-third at research and consulting firms), in general management, media, research and account work, the author has concluded that clients are looking for three simple things. The agency people who service their business can usually satisfy all three, enjoy their work and be proud of it along the way.

Clients don’t panic. They sometimes get concerned about their agencies and the “work.” When they do, it is usually one of three buttons they push. Once that happens, the agency is in for a ride they normally would not like to take. Understanding the nature and relationship oft these three hot buttons, how they are wired and how to avoid ignition goes to the root of fostering a sound relationship between client and agency. Everyone in the media service business at the agency- management, planners, buyers and researchers are empowered to manage ignition avoidance.

Clients are essentially looking for three things from a Media Agency. They want maximum value for the money they are paying for your services. They want media buys that are executed in a way that insures they are getting the most for their money and certainly doing at least as well as their competitors. They want media strategies that will increase sales. The first two are about saving money. That money is so easy to count and keep track of, that increasingly, client sourcing people have joined marketing in this movement to save marketing money. The last way (the third button if you will) is about making money through better strategies that increase sales and that is more difficult to count. It is mostly the province of marketing people at the client. All three ways are important and people in a media group play a key role in the relationship with a client in all three respects to make sure the relationship is solid.

The fulcrum

In terms of actual savings or money earned, a marketer can reap the least in terms of real dollars by lowering an agency’s fee, but it is a critical element in the mix- the big ignition button. If they feel they are getting real value for their money, they are much less likely to go looking here, unless there is some compelling outside economic reason to do so. The math is simple and worth keeping in mind. If a marketer’s sales are worth $100 a year and their advertising to sales ratio is about average (5%), then their media spend is $5. If their media agency fee is (2 1/2% on media, that’s .12 ½ cents. So sales are about 800 times larger that the agency fee (.12 1/2 cents : $100) and media spend is roughly forty times greater (.12 1/2 cents : $5). So while considerably more money is at stake when it comes to strategy resulting in sales or first-class negotiating resulting in a more efficient media buy, all that great strategic thinking and negotiating prowess comes from the highly valued hard working agency. The media group is essentially the fulcrum on which media money is leveraged and in turn sales are generated. So if the client and agency have a clear understanding, this area is usually not an issue. Management at the agency can foster a clear understanding by outlining the scope of work and rework , demonstrating that staffing is proportionate to that scope and that compensation and expenses are commensurate with norms, the work and rework process is smooth and personalities fit. If management accomplishes that, the client is usually getting real value, because the agency is worth one bit to the $100 I sales.

An investment of more than $5

Post evaluations of media buys (the $5 button) are certainly nothing new. However, they are just a bit more sophisticated these days and are called media audits. This name implies a more thorough investigation into the media buy and now there are several firms that focus primary on doing these audits. To do this the right way you need an independent investigator, who has the resources first-hand (not through the media) to get ratings from the rating service and financial data professionally scrutinized. They also need the technical capability to retrieve the buy from its original source and then re-input it and the ratings independent of one another and have them merged and then output in several different useful forms for the report. The report should grade not just the quantitative metrics of the buy, but the qualitative aspects as well. Given the size of media budgets today, the top 67 advertisers spend over $100 million a year, the top 200 spend more than $50 million and the top 500 spend more than $25 million, even a small percentage savings on a buy can reap huge amounts of real money to be saved or reinvested.

By exercising complete transparency from the outset, media buying and stewardship groups can circumvent the audit in many cases thus saving a grateful client the audit fee and engendering much needed trust for the future. So it’s not just about making a good buy, it’s about agreeing on a clear set of specifications beforehand and then reporting the buy with full disclosure and then using the results of that report to positively affect future buys. In other words spend the $5 wisely and tell them how you spent it and you get to keep the .12 1/2 cents with less hassle.

The “Bill” of Sales

Finally we come to the $100 questions, sales. This is the area where a marketer has the most to gain. However, traditionally though we understood the process qualitatively, there was little way to quantitatively prove that the media research and planning that went into the strategic thinking was actually linked to sales. Not so today. Many sophisticated marketers have found ways to correlate their marketing activities (including media thinking) with sales. With the sophisticated tools available today through tracking and modeling, many agency plans are now predicated on and subjected to a thorough accountability process. No longer is the plan something rather intuitive, with little relation to consequences other than making an efficient buy when the plan is executed. Just as copy testing served as a diagnostic for writers and art directors and account planners introduced them to research that helped to guide the creative before the fact, rather than after the fact, so does tracking and modeling guide media planners. The media group’s affect on the $100 is now apparent.

By actively encouraging a client to use these return on investment tools and devising some of your own, the media strategists (planners and researchers) are in a position to more directly affect sales return and to prove their worth. This is the future of our business and media professionals who don’t engage this process are going to be left behind.

Summing up

To sum this all up, there are three hot buttons clients reach out to push and ignite a series of events that can throw the client/agency relationship into turmoil. Each button is either related to saving money or making money. A media group can have a positive effect on the outcome of what happens before or once the buttons are pushed. Media management can re-channel a client’s need to review and reduce agency fees by carefully managing the way work gets done. Media buyers can assuage a client’s apprehension by acting in a completely transparent manner when negotiating on their behalf and then later monitoring the buy. This helps to avoid audits. And media researchers and planners can generate more revenue for clients by constructing plans that are based on and succeed in positively relating to the marketer’s tracking and modeling research, thereby positively affecting sales.