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The Three Biggest Reasons for Marketing Change

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Maarten Albarda

US insurance company Farmers Insurance’s campaign tag line, perfectly delivered by Oscar winning actor J. K. Simmons, is: “We know a thing or two, because we’ve seen a thing or two”. I love this line, as it suggests Farmers policies constantly evolve because of their consumer’s experiences. We all know a thing or two, and as we get older and gather more experience, we might even know a thing or three.

One such area where I now know a thing or three is marketers’ biggest reasons for wanting to change. And as the marketing world descends onto Cologne, Germany for dmexco, I thought it would be helpful to frame the issues we should be talking about by revealing the typical questions we get asked as we work with some of the world’s biggest brands.

1. Our Agency Sucks

This is a fairly common refrain, where the definition of “suck” can be manifold. They can suck at delivering powerful creative (however measured), or suck at being transparent, or suck because they are
considered super pricey, or just because the marketer doesn’t like the people they work with anymore.

Funny thing is, when we start digging into the reasons for why a marketer has reached the conclusion that their agency sucks, it is often because they themselves display suckiness as well. They might always brief late, or measure all media buys by a low-cost yard stick, or they change direction every week and therefore require enormous amounts of rework or last-minute changes, and so on.

Don’t get me wrong: when the relationship is truly broken, it is probably time for a change. But a measure of change needs to happen within the marketing organization at the same time. Otherwise, 12 months after appointing a shiny new agency, the marketer will conclude they suck, too.

2. We Are Thinking of Taking it All in House

This is a common refrain, which is often delivered as part of the “agency sucks” reasoning. Many marketers are asking if there is an argument to bring certain functions, activities or technologies in house.

However, as simple and perhaps idealistic as it sounds to bring stuff in house that you used to pay an agency a ton of money for, it isn’t usually as straight forward as that. We have written about the pitfalls and challenges for marketers to take stuff in house frequently. It requires a lot of dedicated time and resources to run programmatic in house, or to produce content in house. A puppy isn’t just for Christmas, as they say. Once you bring it into your home, owning it comes a lot of responsibility.

3. The Budget Black Hole

Here we get questions like “Our marketing budget isn’t increasing, but the number of activities/brands/line extensions are”, or “Our market share/profit/volume/sales is down and so are our budgets (says Marketing Procurement)”. This is a very real reason for wanting change, but the danger is that the change becomes a cost cutting exercise instead of using it as an opportunity to create a better version of yourself. The funny thing is that building a leaner and more agile marketing function will almost always generate a ton of savings.

Now go and listen to Marc Pritchard and Sir Martin Sorrell at dmexco, and see if any of these themes come up.

If they strike a chord with issues you yourself are trying to solve, feel free to connect with us.

[Maarten is a featured contributor to MediaPost, this article was originally published here]

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