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CMOs Mull Skipping Agencies, Going Directly To Media

Chief marketing officers of Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab openly discussed the attractiveness of bypassing agencies to work directly with media companies. They and other executives vented their dissatisfaction with agency models during the ANA conference last weekend.

"I don't think any [of our agency] relationships are satisfactory enough. What's lacking is speed to market," said Gary Elliott, HP marketing VP. As a result, HP is "going to pilot relationships where we deal directly with media companies." He pointed to Meredith and Time Warner as candidates.

"If I were an agency, I would be really worried about being dis-intermediated," said Becky Saeger, CMO of Charles Schwab. "Agencies are almost in the way sometimes. We have started to do strategic briefings for media companies so we get higher quality input and not have to rely on our media agency to be in the middle all the time."

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