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What CEOs want from their Agencies but are not getting

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CEOs and Measurement

In a recent article posted on WARC (for article click here), with research data sourced from The Fournaise Marketing Group, it appears CEOs believe advertising and media agencies are too focused on creativity and not enough on business results, nor on proving the return on investment.

It found that 78% of CEOs thought agencies were not performance-driven enough and did not focus enough on helping to generate the business results they expected their marketing departments to deliver.

In addition, 76% felt agencies talked too much about “creativity as the saviour” while not being able to prove or quantify it. Indeed, they believed that agencies were frequently opportunistic in claiming credit for results that could be attributed to other factors such as the product, sales force, channel or pricing.

Trust was further eroded by the realisation by 72% of CEOs that agencies were not as data- and science-driven as they had expected. There was too much reliance on gut-feelings, hearsay, wrong methodologies and questionable information.

Money was another issue, as 70% of chief executives thought agencies claimed inadequate budgets or slow payment times as excuses for an inability to deliver expected business results.

At Flock we believe that an independent resource is best placed to put in measures across the whole ecosystem, help clients improve marketing effectiveness, set budgets across markets, brands, and channels effectively, and prove the effectiveness of each element, and the whole of the marketing expenditure.

Clients recognise that they need impartial, neutral, and objective advice. Agencies are strong partners for clients but are not impartial when it comes to evaluating their own performance, or assessing their own fees, or whether they, or another agency is best placed to handle a piece of work.

Advertisers also understand that there are agency “Pitch Consultants” that prosper through changing agency resources rather than maintaining vibrant healthy relationships between advertisers and agencies, and often they lack knowledge of specialist agency sectors.

They also know that the strategy consultant firms do not have deep and broad knowledge in their marketing advisory practices.

Advertisers have expressed a desire for an advisor, which is independent, neutral, that has the breadth and depth of experience of:

  • Having recently built world class integrated campaigns and resource systems
  • All agency types, in many markets, and sectors
  • And, techniques and technologies that bind teams and campaigns together to deliver improved effectiveness, and to prove the outcomes

They know that if a new type of advisor – an integration and effectiveness advisor – existed, they would improve efficiency, effectiveness and save time. In a Flock study of 46 Global Marketers 84% said that they believed such an advisor would benefit their business.

It was for these reasons, that Flock Associates was designed and built; to help clients integrate their resources to build great integrated marketing campaigns, and gain greater returns from their marketing budgets.

For more information about how Flock could help your business, or about our own research, contact us here.


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