Tomorrow I am participating in a panel discussion on the future agency model as part of the Advertising Marketing & Media Summit in Melbourne.

On the panel there are three agency heads, a media agency head and me, but no advertisers, making this a relatively introspective discussion on the future structure of advertising.

The fact is that all most advertisers want is the same thing thay have always wanted, which is someone who can solve their business problems with creative, strategic communications solutions. In the past the main tool at their disposal was mass marketing media solutions and direct marketing.

Today the options have exploded through technology and most advertisers are questioning if their one agency has the skills and expertise to completely leverage all of the options available to their benefit. A fair question and one that is answered by the increased number of advertisers appointing a range of providers. This could be by core competency - media, creative advertising, direct marketing, digtal and the like or by perceieved strengths - such as strategy, creativity, production, speed to market etc.

Either way two problems arise with multiple provider:

1. Increased total cost of service with duplication of support resources within each provider being recovered in each overhead


2. The time and effort managing the various providers to eliminate canabilism and extract maximum value from the various resources.

Author: Darren Woolley

I recently facilitated a session with an agency and advertiser where the discussion about "Who owns the brand" came up.

The advertiser was saying they wanted the agency to take custody of the brand expression as the marketing department was decentralised and highly fragmented, therefore there was a need to have someone responsible for making sure all brand expressions (in this context marketing communications such as direct mail and advertising) were consistent to the brand.

I asked "Who owns the brand?"

Most people said the client / company owned the brand because they owned the copyright/trademark. Some said the company owned the brand because they valued the brand as an asset. An agency person said "we all own the brand". When I probed further, they meant that the marketers and the agency owned the brand.

I challenged them with Al Ries definition of a brand in his book "The 22 Immutable laws of branding". A brand is pronoun associated with a word in the mind of the consumer.

If you accpet this definition, and I have not seen one that reasonates any more clear, then suddenly the person that owns the brand is the consumer, because the brand only lives in their mind.

On this basis the role of the Brand Manager and the various communication specialist they engage becomes so much clearer.

Author: Darren Woolley

An article today in AdAge tells of how Miller Beer in South Africa used a local storytelling tradition to turn high brand awareness into trial amongst the non-users.

The power of storytelling is extensively reported for both change management and knowledge management as a powerful technique for capturing and transmitting information in an effective way.
Increasingly these techniques are being used in consumer research and now as this Miller brewing example shows, advertising itself.

An Australian company, Anecdote, are experts in these techniques. I noticed they are running a series of seminars that are really worth attending to develop expertise in this emerging marketing and advertising discipline.

Author: Darren Woolley

One of the big issues for advertisers is the cost of talent fees. While Australia does not have the "residual" payment system used in the USA, the increasingly divergent media options is causing a cost multiplier effect in regards to the use of the "Three screen".

Under the current MEAA Award for talent fees, the fee is charged on the basis of the media, duration and geography, with guidelines for a multiplier effect as additional media and geographies are added.This means that if an advertiser wants to create a TVC and then use this on commercial free to air, subscription and cinema, plus stadium screen, in-flight, MMS mobile and the internet, then the base fee is multiplied by the number of media.

If the audience base is $20 million people (Australia's population) then why should there be multiple effect based on the different types of screens? Instead, what about a single talent fee negotiation for "screens"? That way you know up front that for a particular duration and geography a single talent fee, negotiated up front.

And before anyone says "but the Internet is not limited to a particular geography" then the advertiser can limit the exposure of the commercial based on IP addresses. But what actor would not like global exposure to expand their career?

Author: Darren Woolley

Business consultants are increasingly focusing on the marketing and advertising category both here and in the US. A recent discussion in AdAge highlighted the increasing use of business consultants like IBM, Accenture and McKinsey in the advertising space.

Locally, Booz Allen Hamilton released a white discussion paper that maintained that many marketing departments are out of sync with the business objectives.

The problem is that most of these consultants have little or no understanding of the advertising process. While many business consultants have marketing degrees and qualifications, few have practical experience in the advertising space.

In selecting a consultant in the advertising space you should look for:
1. Consultants that have practical, current experience in the area of interest
2. Consultants that are remunerated on delivery of results, not savings
3. Consultants that are totally independent and do not get remunerated by suppliers

Author: Darren Woolley