Commentary
Agile Marketing Equates To A Successful AOR Model
- by Charles Daigle , February 5, 2020
Some people embrace change while others avoid it. The same can be said for companies. You may work for, or with, a company that’s set in its ways and unwilling to bend and on the flip side you might encounter one that’s willing to take a chance or step out of its comfort zone.
If avoiding change doesn’t work in your personal life, how do you think your business will
fare? The instant gratification we get from social media and our handheld devices is trickling down to business life.
Fernando Machado, global CMO for Burger King told Deloitte Insights that the brand’s marketing
success can be credited to a “desire to be constantly engaging with our fans and our guests. And we know that we can only accomplish that if we move fast.”
In my last
MediaPost piece I wrote about redefining the agency of record model to
include digital and social media, platforms that are 24/7, not 9-5.
Agile marketing is a key to succeed. The concept is no longer a buzzword, but a path to a favorable business
outcome.
With numerous agencies at their disposal, brands like Nestle, Frito-Lay and Johnson & Johnson are leaning toward an on-demand or real-time model which means agencies must
demonstrate agility and flexibility to be successful. Brands hire a series of roster agencies to work on different mediums that emphasize their strengths.
This begins inside the
organization. Independent agencies are built to be nimble and quick to deliver a fast turnaround.
In an agile marketing construct, an agency expands and an agency contracts based on
client needs. Overhead is significantly lower. The agile agency will have a core number of everyday employees and, when needed, can call upon trusted outside resources to help with varying projects.
Holding companies can’t execute this the way a standalone agency can; in addition, holding companies have many more layers and hoops to pass before a project comes to fruition.
The
successful, agile agency for this new decade and beyond will be adept at both completing projects but also challenging their clients.
It’s expected for a task to be completed well
and in a timely manner, but what about the things that aren’t necessarily verbalized, like new ideas and strategies? What about offering a new strategy to a long-running but stationary campaign?
What about a creating a campaign concept that’s out of the client’s comfort zone?
No matter the size, risks are still risks. Successful or not, client and agency will know
immediately and be able to move forward in a short period of time.
How do you feel about the less is more agency mantra? What agile attributes do you bring to your clients?
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Charles, just curious. From your experience how many times, out of 10, do clients reject creative strategies outside their comfort zone? What are some of the pre-pitch questions you use to determine "comfort zone?" With the notion being, no use in pitching a fresh concept that has an extremely high probablity of rejection.
James, as a rule, the client has made it's ideas and concerns about how its brands are to be positioned very clear to the agencies so they have a pretty good fix on what may or may not pass muster. This is less true in new business pitches but even here, the angency team soliciting the account has been briefed and can look at the advertiser's past actions --over, say, ten years---to see how many times it has tried anything that might be deemed radical or really new. The same goes for all of the brands in a given product category. Based on past performance, how often do they march together in unison versus opting for daring new approaches? Invariably, albeit with exceptions ---like the hiring of a new CMO----the advertisers will listen, politely, but not risk everything on an "unproven" approach.