• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 27, 2022

It’s time for agencies to get back to the real job of advertising: connecting people to shared values. That was the big takeaway from the recent Global Summit convened by Worldwide Partners, a network of owner-led, independent marketing agencies.

The summit, held in Amsterdam this year, featured guest speakers and industry veterans Cindy Gallop and Cairo Marsh.

Focus on connection and contribution, and the commerce will take care of itself, said Gallop, a founder and former chair of the U.S. arm of ad agency BBH who now runs consulting firm IfWeRanTheWorld.  Agencies can use their power to change people’s attitudes and behavior to a more profitable use. 

“You can, you should, and you must, change the world through advertising – by reflecting the world as it really is,” said Gallop. “When we inspire and help people to lead the best lives they can, we create connection and brand loyalty. And we have the opportunity to sell a ton more of our clients’ brands and products off the back of that.” 

An essential step to connection is humanizing data collection, Gallop said. When brands need more information on consumers than ever before, agencies need to show clients how to earn authentic relationships by sharing first and inviting response. 

“Too much of commerce is, ‘give me your money,’” said Cairo Marsh, managing partner at Tokyo-based customer experience agency relativ*. “To create value, we need to align what brands do with what consumers want to do and feel.” 

Marsh asserts that his quantitative research involving more than 100,000 customers over seven years (and a proprietary data-crunching process he calls “Kinectivity”) proves that connection can be a measurable framework for advancing business. It shows that as brands deepen their relationships with consumers, they increase revenue, profit, and value significantly more than their category competitors.

For one fast-moving consumer goods brand, Kinectivity revealed four consumer segments based on the values each sought from products in the category and showed where the brand’s perception led or lagged competitors on each. Then it quantified the best media opportunities based on where audiences had weaker connections to competing brands. For example, the brand had far greater connection upside in consumer blogs and reports than on social media platforms.

“Advertising people put ourselves down saying we’re not doctors,” said Marsh. “Medicine is 9% of the global economy. Everything else is what we do. So, the world runs on commerce, not medicine. We do much more than sell people things they don’t want – a common knock on our profession – and we have an important role to play to make the world better.” 

Connected interest creates higher value internally, too, said Marsh. He helped found relativ* after realizing that lack of connection was the cause of widespread malaise at his former shop, which he said put profit over people. 

“Great ideas, talent, and hard work aren’t the point,” said Marsh. “You can only succeed sustainably if everyone works together. Real value is the outcome of connected human interest.” 

The upshot, he added: Agencies’ ability to understand and connect can make them premier workplaces and priority strategic partners for clients in a new commerce age. 

“Our industry has colluded in its own devaluation,” said Gallop. “We all know we’re a far better bet than McKinsey. People respond to the value we put on ourselves. It’s time to project the clear, full value of our larger contribution to business and society.” 

It’s appropriate that these insights came at a conference of independent partners whose agencies consistently collaborate for clients. As Worldwide Partners CEO John Harris sees it, brands’ commercial fortunes increasingly depend on restoring a level of interconnection the advertising business has largely abandoned in the specialist era. 

“Brands need to establish, honor and nurture reciprocal relationships with consumers,” said Harris. “To do it, they need the same reciprocity in their business relationships – both with and among their agencies. When everyone is working toward a measurable return on connection, brands become indispensable, and agencies demonstrate their real magic.”