• by January 27, 2004

STORMY WEATHER THREATENS AGENCY RELATIONS -- The Riff always knew the relationships between marketers and their ad agencies were growing stormy, but now the Association of National Advertisers has canceled its annual Agency Relations Forum due to stormy conditions - the weather kind. The ANA has just alerted the Riff that, due to severe winter storm warnings in the New York metropolitan area, it is postponing the forum, which was scheduled for Wednesday in New York City. Meanwhile, advanced word on the conference doesn't exactly suggest there will be a thawing of the frigid marketer/agency relations any time soon. About a third of the members polled recently by the ANA said they believe their ad agencies are full of "creative arrogance" that distorts the quality of the work they do.

Personally, we suspect that what marketers infer as arrogance is really just a defensive wall that creative teams put up because of their own insecurities about their work. They put up a blustery front to make it seem like their artfully crafted pearls should not be questioned or toyed with, but the reality is they often simply do not know how to defend their strategies. Thank goodness the same can't be said for the strategies of media service agencies. Not only have they grown increasingly accessible, open and forthcoming about their thinking and executions, but they bend over backwards trying to involve clients into the process. Gee, that's a novel idea? Elicit an early buy-in from your client. Let them have ownership in shaping ideas and executions, and course-correct where necessary. But the Riff was especially intrigued by another of the ANA's findings, the fact that some 22 percent of marketers believe their ad shops lack "leadership" and fail to employ "best practices." Interestingly, the Riff's colleagues at MEDIA Magazine are poised to release a major new study on best practices in media planning and buying that suggest some of those marketers may be on the right track. As for a new date for the ANA's Agency Relations Forum, well, it's not final, but the Riff hears it will be in mid-April, when the weather and the mood may be a bit warmer and more conducive.

BUT DON'T EXPECT THE UPFRONT TO HEAT UP - Something else that should be warming up this spring, but maybe not nearly as much as the major broadcast networks would like, will be prospects for the 2004-05 upfront advertising marketplace. A new report from the equities research team at Merrill Lynch projects this year's upfront will be relatively lukewarm and with only modest growth compared to the past two runaway-freight-train upfronts. "Our early 'gut feel' is that the upfront market will increase in the mid single- digit range (e.g. 5%)," writes Merrill media diva Jessica Reif Cohen. Nonetheless, she predicts some "disproportionate beneficiaries" will more than beat that market average, including MTV Networks, as well as CBS, which she says has gone from being in traction to having some real prime-time ratings traction, especially on the all-important Thursday night schedule. "Alternatively, NBC is likely to suffer year over year declines given the loss of two key Thursday night franchises, Friends and Frasier," she predicts. Despite her relatively dour overall upfront prediction, Cohen noted that "several underlying economic factors, along with certain non-economic factors are aligned to support stronger advertising growth environment in calendar year 2004 and beyond."