Manhattan Marketing Maven

Five Personalities Populating Ad Agencies

Everyone thinks that working in advertising is like being in a fun factory. The reality is that its much more factory than fun, these days. The outsized personalities and outsized profits of my early days in the business have been homogenized, sanitized, processed and  downsized over the years and even more so by the current recession. 

The day-to-day practice of advertising involves two under-staffed and under siege bureaucracies slamming into each other as they create and produce mountains of marketing communications materials in a myriad of formats to satisfy the needs of regional, national or global brands Agencies and clients are risk averse organizations focused on running high volume production processes that are fast, cheap and efficient. Young, eager, smart talent fuels this game where 85 percent of the time and effort is dedicated to cranking out stuff and just 15 percent is spent on strategic, thinking, big ideas and occasionally snappy, memorable or effective ads.

Driving the ad game are a set of personality types that vaguely resemble those on Mad Men; characters who can be counted to think, act and talk in predictable ways under almost any situation. Agencies have traditionally attracted people with broad interests, short attention spans and little ability or tolerance for corporate life. Iconoclasts, wise guys, alternative thinkers, smart alecks, frat boys, hippies, geeks, neurotics and hot women have traditionally populated agencies. The cast remains mostly the same though the intensity, texture and range of behaviors have changed dramatically over the years. 

Here are 5 ad types you are sure to encounter whether you are working in an agency or hiring one. 

The Rainmaker

Rainmakers drive the ad business. They have or make the contacts, instantly understand the clients’ business and are master salespeople. Frequently their names are on the agency door. In the old days they were white-shoe WASPs who hobnobbed with corporate titans at exclusive clubs. They were members of a social class united by religion, education, fraternities and often neighborhoods. 

The democratization of the business changed a lot of that but didn’t change the need for high-energy hustlers who were smart enough and presentable enough to interact with and sell both squirrelly and conservative corporate executives. Rainmakers innately understand that people buy people first; then goods or services get transacted. They have big personalities and know how to deftly wield them in almost any circumstance. 

They have keen instincts and can carefully read and dissect client personalities and organizational politics. Even in complex agency searches, where intermediary consultants try their best to mask the decision-making process, Rainmakers know who matters and whose vote counts most and they know how to romance those individuals. Often this skill set comes with experience, but sometimes it’s comes naturally to a younger entrepreneur.   

As a type, Rainmakers are extroverts interested in a wide range of things. They know a little something about everything, listen closely but not too closely and have the ability to zero in on the key variable quickly. They focus just enough to grasp the winning idea or the winning angle and then cue their players accordingly. They are usually great at creating a name, a theme, a catchy phrase or a slogan to concretize an idea. Many can wickedly nickname somebody in ways that capture them precisely and stick. Some appear to be distracted, aloof or merely glad-handers, but the best use that stereotype to mask their wiles. 

You know a Rainmaker because you sense that they know you instantly and you trust them instantly. You can’t choose to become one; they just are who they are. And they come in all stripes usually motivated by the intense desire not to work for others or the equally intense desire to express a unique point of view and demonstrate success on their own terms. 

The Empty Suit

The Empty Suit is a rainmaker wannabe with moxie, flash and presence but no substance. These guys fill out the ranks of agencies warming chairs, attending endless meetings, wining and dining clients and generally taking up time and space. Frequently relatives, frat brothers or long time friends of agency leaders or client executives, these guys used to dominate the ranks of Account departments but now can be found throughout the agency. 

Empty Suits live in fantasyland. They imagine that they are glamorous and effective executives when in fact they are filler; the hamburger helper of agency life taking up time and space to meet client expectations or adding a measure of style, grooming and/or good looks to round out the agency’s offerings. Empty suits are usually the best looking people in agency. Well coiffed, better dressed and much more presentable than the folks who actually know something or do something. 

Some Empty Suits are conscious of their posture and kind of go through life shrugging their shoulders. Others (think of Pete Campbell on Mad Men) are malevolent weasels. As a type, they are affable, polite to a fault, up on the latest gossip, news, trivia or sports and eager to engage almost anyone in meaningless chit-chat. 

They can make terrific recommendations for dining, entertainment, leisure and personal services and will frequently make the arrangements or accompany a client to a restaurant, a golf outing, a ball game or a salon. They look great in clothes and never refuse an opportunity to fill out the agency or the client tables at charity affairs. 

As co-workers, Empty Suits carefully guard their perceived prerogatives and hoard their perks. They are prissy about their space. Many have a sense of noblesse oblige; that they contribute to the agency’s image and positioning by contributing good looks, breeding, legacies or a sense of decorum. They can be counted on to dump their work off on others, ignore deadlines and timetables, never know any important details or data, but they often claim credit for others’ work. They rarely stay late or put themselves out and never praise colleagues in front of bosses or clients. They are the co-workers you love to hate. 

The Magician 

Magicians are the idea people who make the magic that agencies sell. While over-represented among the ranks of art directors or copywriters, Magicians work in every department often distinguishing themselves as strategic planners, media negotiators or digital wonks. They provide the spark behind every idea and campaign. 

Some have native intuition. Others grind it out. But all Magicians have an inherent and mysterious understanding of people and the uncanny ability to find the right connection between goods, services or concepts and their natural audiences. They understand the psychology, the levers and the channels of communication and can magically marry them together in ways mere mortals can’t. They don’t need speeches, threats or chemicals to stimulate or accelerate productivity. They express themselves naturally in creative concepts, in media plans, in web designs or UI schematics or even in dense data tables. 

Like crude oil, diamonds or truffles, Magicians have to be found. They cannot be made. The trick, for agencies, is to find and keep enough of them to achieve critical mass necessary to power or sustain critical departments and then have the management legerdemain to leave them alone and nurture their gifts. Many are good at rallying co-workers to the cause because frequently everyone instantly gets their brilliant ideas and naturally grasps why they are so brilliant.   

Motivating and managing Magicians is especially difficult since the majority of their great insights and ideas are shot down or modified beyond recognition by clods or cowards. Theirs is a world of highest highs and lowest lows often presented or obscured by oversized or persnickety personality traits. Some are famously insecure or shy. Others never quite get the credit they deserve. And a notable few are over-the-top prima donnas and divas. Many agencies, formally or informally, assign senior account people to be their advocates or protectors because they are the critical resource for agency success. 

The Expert 

Experts are the tortoise to the Magician’s hare. Experts have intense and deep knowledge of functional areas linked to carefully crafted tool sets and processes to help them do their jobs. In many instances, they are their tools. They assign the highest value and esteem to those who know what they know and those who can manifest expertise on-demand. 

Experts exist in media, direct, relationship, CRM and database marketing, interactive, project management, traffic, production and support departments. Experts demand that you follow their lead and follow their process to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They jealously defend their turf and under stress or tight timelines frequently require colleagues to kow-tow to them.  

Nerdy and temperamental by nature, Experts are defined by what they know and what they’ve done. Few are bashful. An Expert will gladly tell you his or her greatest hits and will regale you with tales of how they saved the day. They take themselves very seriously and genuinely believe that no one else can do what they do. 

They seek and hoard access to information and parse it out gingerly to those around them. They keep score. They remember every slight. And they hold grudges. They are all about the details but can get distracted by nuances or spun off course by their intrinsic interest in data and new information. 

Intense and sometimes anti-social, they require careful handling and frequent stroking. Quick to find fault with others and quick to bemoan their lack of credit, they see themselves as prophets without honor in their own land. Many have specialized degrees and are wannabe or has been consultants. It’s a conceit that sets them apart and, in a weird way, motivates them. They live to be underestimated.    

Too often overlooked or undervalued as “below-the-line” functionaries, experts usually understand much more about the client’s business, organization, structure, procedures, IT architecture, digital landscape, data channels and internal politics than the clients themselves. They are natural spies and always develop expert allies buried deep in client organizations. 

They usually know what’s really going on before anyone else. This enables them to develop useful intelligence and practical work-arounds to satisfy demanding clients or impossible schedules. Experts insure that an agency can get smart fast, trouble shoot problems on-demand, find critical inflection points to add value to client relationships, smooth over ruffled feathers or gain competitive advantage. 

The Pleaser 

Pleasers reflect the pre-feminist culturally-conditioned behavior of women, who make up the vast majority of professionals in every advertising agency. Nobody really knows why they have an insatiable need to be “good” girls by earning the praise and approval of any nearby authority figure. But they do. By manically internalizing the notion of customer satisfaction, Pleasers provide the daily energy, attitude and lubrication that make ad agencies work. 

Everyone loves pleasers. They are always friendly, polite and on-call. They will drop everything and fly across the country in the middle of the night to attend a frivolous meeting. They will put aside their own plans to listen to a client talk endlessly about every real or imagined relationship in their life. They will re-do copy or art nine times and make their team mates nuts to satisfy a client’s whim. They will write decks, formulate reports, format spreadsheets, predict internal politics and tell clients what to think as they laugh at your jokes. They have your back. And they never say “no.” Pleasers are the imaginary best friend you dreamt about and hoped for brought to life. 

Pleasers live to please. The take orders easily. They rarely push back. They believe in the system; no questions asked. They find security and validation in the routine of agency life and with every moment of pleasing delivered. 

Many also live to complain. The “ying” of their never-say-die attitude is offset by the “yang” of their whining. It’s a unique pathology with its own origins, history and psychological benefits. Pleasers inherited the mantle of Sisyphus. And yet without Pleasers, there is only chaos and conflict. 

Pleasers provide the “give” in client-agency relationships. They deliver on the fiction that clients know their own business and have clearly defined marketing needs that can be distinctly communicated to agency partners. Pleasers finesse prickly personalities, tense situations, business crises and tactical conundrums with the hope that a friendly face and sweet temperament can sort it all it. Ironically much of the day-to-day ad business rests on this sexist premise.   

Improving Client Service: 5 Client Archtypes

Personality determines client behavior which is then magnified or minimized at any given moment by the individual’s status in the food chain, political clout, savvy, management air cover, P&L responsibility, intelligence, coping behaviors, industry insight, competitive pressures and stress from any number of sources. Baseline personality is to client behavior what gravity is to earth – a fundamental organizing principle. 

A smart, strong and confident client will treat an agency similarly. An anxious, scared, weak or worried client will drive an agency crazy. An ambivalent, chair-warming bureaucratic lifer will stall, misdirect and baffle an agency. A flighty, tentative, ADHD client will spin an agency in circles.

In working effectively with clients it’s critical to identify and to understand each individual’s personality. And while its fun to play amateur psychiatrist and speculate about how and why they are they way they are; its much more important to zero-in on how they operate. Focus your powers of observation and your energy on interacting with them in productive and mutually beneficial ways. The myth of the “client from Hell” arises because agencies don’t identify and respond to the personality factors, which drive the agency-client relationship.

Across industries and functional verticals several species of clients occur time and again. They might represent the dominant evolutionary mutations of personality types in organizational settings. They might also be standard behavioral pathways acted out over time and geography. In any case there is a very high probability that agencies will encounter these archetypical client types; each of which has unique operating and handling characteristics.

 

The Mandarin. A senior client, usually a CMO or someone at or near the top of the food chain earning big bucks and big esteem. Mandarins can be fundamentally malevolent or benign based primarily on their sense of job security. In an environment where the average CMO lasts 23 months, there’s much less grace and much less psycho-demographic homogeneity at the top than there used to be. 

Mandarins manage upward. Their primary audience is C-level players who generally undervalue their contribution to both the organization and the bottom line. They live and die by serving the CEO, even though most are the designated fall guys for CEO-initiatives that fall flat or implode. And they frequently battle with the CFO and the head of sales, technically a counterpart, but frequently a rival.

These clients focus on big stuff -- big ideas, big concepts, big scale and big rewards. They frequently operate in lavish environs and casually mention their perks, the number of corporate jet flights they’ve taken, their hectic luxury travel schedule, the tedium of gourmet dining with corporate leaders and their interaction with big names or boldface individuals. They rarely talk about marketing stuff and almost never discuss their own campaigns or plans choosing instead to sprinkle their conversation with stock price quotes, PE ratios and other financial slang, which they often barely understand. In many cases they are trying to convince themselves that they are bigger than marketing and play a broader role on a bigger stage, one more integral to the overall functioning of the organization, even if they just joined the organization last week. 

They depend on the senior agency people to know everything that’s going on within their organization and within the agency’s world. Many will ask for details about people in their organizations and programs in their pipelines with the expectation of complete candor. In the same breath, they’ll inquire about IPG’s balance sheet, John Wren’s latest acquisition tactics or Sir Martin’s personal foibles and expect their agency counterpart to dish on-demand. 

Mandarins rarely rock the boat. That’s both the reason they stay and the reason they go. But, they frequently want to know about and talk about best practices, big ideas, trends and campaigns garnering broad-based buzz. They see themselves as messengers and advocates of big ideas and they react viscerally and negatively when they get blind-sided or upstaged in this arena. They know and have the big ideas. You support them, feed them and remain unseen and unheard by the people they seek to impress. Agencies load the rabbits into the hat. Mandarins make the magic.

 

The Know-it-All. Usually a mid-level executive, know-it-alls come in friendly and hostile flavors. Both demand massive amounts of attention and acknowledgment. A know-it-all without an audience is a potential serial killer.

Agency people understand that like Wikipedia, what a know-it-all knows isn’t necessarily accurate, true or current. But that’s much less important than understanding this client’s need to control the conversation, surface critical data points and remain on top of everything going on. Validation, security and productivity are a direct function of knowing (and frequently reciting) for this personality type. You cannot win a KIA competition with a KIA. Agencies with KIA clients give them the forum and the attention they need and find ways to direct their energy productively. 

Friendly KIAs want to share what they know and bring you into their circle. They see themselves as feeding the strategic and creative process. They figure if they didn’t bring a fountain of knowledge to the table the campaign, the program, maybe even the company would be lost and rudder-less. But they are eager to teach you and invite you to be in-the-know. 

Nasty KIAs get off on busting agencies. They find errors and mistakes, expose exaggerations and overblown claims and seek out opportunities to embarrass and humiliate the people who are supposed to be helping them. They see themselves as fastidious keepers of the truth; mullahs charged with defending the faith and punishing infidels. These guys turn tidbits of data into “critical” variables whether they really are or not. These KIAs are angry, often loners, who can’t get out of their own way or let go of their own pathology. Agency people know to cut a wide swath around them and to work overtime to avoid their harassing behavior.

 

The Up-and-Comer. Ambitious, energized, focused on the prize, these clients are out to win the corporate game by climbing the ladder of success and reaping the riches at the top of the tree. Many have MBAs and all kinds of experience that they see as investments toward obtaining a goal they intend to achieve either with your help or over your dead body. 

Contemporary literature and business magazines are filled with these personality types from Horatio Alger to Bill Gates or from Michael Dell to Sammy Glick all convinced that they can realize the American dream. U&Cers can be divided by sensibilities and  the ethical lines they’ll cross to get what they want. Most are cautious and appropriately respectful of laws, ethics, customers and SOPs. Some are willing to do whatever it takes, cut corners and/or undertake a scorched earth policy of death and destruction to reach the top.

Understanding what an U&Cer genuinely wants, their risk appetite and how they define success is key to working with them successfully. Some are playing the short game. They want to survive the next re-org and get the next level promotion. Others have found a tribe or a rabbi and are looking to game the system or to jump multiple steps in one move. And still others are looking for greatness and global domination; seeking to be plucked from the middle of the pack, their success rewarded with much greater authority, responsibility and hard cold cash. Working with these clients requires assessing what they want and their likelihood of getting it and then calibrating agency behavior accordingly. 

In many cases, one hand washes the other. The agency helps them and they return the favor. In some cases the agency provides the insights, the intelligence or the springboard for these guys to succeed. In other cases, the agency is a threat since agency performance can retard their trajectory or risky agency recommendations can potentially backfire to their detriment. Up and comers spend a lot of time reading the board, identifying likely allies or antagonists, calculating their moves and evaluating scenario 

Agency partners need to be in this head game and do the same, usually with a 90-degree difference in perspective. This type of client can cement an agency relationship and drive endless new business opportunities throughout a long career across business units or geographies. Or with equal ease, a U&Cer client will throw an agency fatally under the bus without warning or apology. If someone’s got to take a bullet – it will always be the agency.

 

The Lifer. The polar opposite of the Up-and-Comer is the lifer; once a robust and healthy species now smaller in the age of outsourcing and downsizing. The Lifer lives outside of work and warms a chair in an organization to fund his or her real life. They are entirely focused on staying around. Completely risk adverse, they do as little as possible, hide, avoid any situation that could draw either attention or blame and are generally happy for an agency to do their job completely. It’s all about the paycheck, the benefits and a pension. Nothing else matters to them. They will torpedo anything that threatens this holy trinity.

Lifers are the human and corporate equivalent of those small creatures living in coral reefs that have amazing camouflage and who spend their whole lives hiding from predators. They have no expectations for creativity or productivity, though they know that self-preservation is often a function of meeting timetables and budgets. They will default to process compliance in every situation. They have zero interest in innovation, in new tactics or in making any perceptible noise. 

Lifers can be great clients because they are genial and are masters at not giving offense to anyone over anything. They don’t want to be too bored and are more than happy to work with you, have countless meetings and work sessions, dine out frequently and give you access to others so long as you (and they) leave no traceable tracks in the sand. They are masters at creating motion, which gives the illusion of forward movement. 

Agencies can’t be faked out by the form and must focus on the function. Lifers will get you whatever you need but cannot be counted on as allies. They are generally nice people who are used to pleasing those around them. They are pleasant companions, good traveling partners and really try to connect with individuals on a personal basis. They will happily cue you about internal personalities and politics as long as you don’t disclose the source. Just don’t ask them to stick their necks out or put them in any posture where they can be exposed or judged.

 

The Nerd. This client is buried deep in the details. Rather than get something done, they want to dissect and understand all the working parts. Entirely focused on process at the expense of creativity or productivity, Nerds want to go to school on your time and on your dime. Grasping every detail is their ultimate pleasure. They will slow you down, tie you up and make you crazy, if you let them. 

Nerds have a need to know. The impact or import of knowing doesn’t matter to them. They want to master the process and will insist you tell them and show them everything on their terms and on their timetable. Unlike the KIA who might question the answer, for Nerds the answer itself is enough. They are the company fact-checkers, the last line of defense against randomness and chaos.

They live in an ethereal world of sketchy concepts and half-baked ideas secretly thinking of themselves as philosophers and prescient observers of the human condition who have unique perspectives and deep mystical understandings of the fundamental forces in the universe. More likely they are nudniks and outcasts who use their leverage as clients to monopolize your time and attention and to focus on things that don’t, won’t or can’t matter. They never got over the brutalization they endured in high school and are just as likely to be locked into the same dated behavior, aesthetics and vocabulary.  

Nerds won’t help you until you pay the information toll. Working with them requires that you acknowledge their needs and feed their appetitive for trivial details, the inner workings of each campaign asset or data set and as much gossip as you can serve up. Successful agencies pair a Nerd with a Nerd to run interference and to establish relationships, which can be surprisingly productive.

Working with advertising clients means being in a co-dependent relationship where goods, services, ideas, insights, and emotions are exchanged. A client relationship is different from a customer who purchases a discrete product or service because a client has to participate directly in shaping the outcome or the deliverables.

Being a client means taking on a role representing, protecting and advocating a brand. Individuals taking on client responsibility infuse the role with their personalities, which are shaped by rank, experience, skills, beliefs and stimuli. These environmental and attitudinal factors are often subject to and affected by timing, stress, competition, resources and corporate politics. So personalities operating in corporate contexts determine how clients engage, interact, direct and treat agency partners. 

These archetypes are gently exaggerated for emphasis but they illustrate actual personalities frequently encountered in agency life. They are the clients that you will have to work with and through to achieve your personal or agency objectives. Understanding the underlying personality type and making agile adjustments will help you be more productive and have more fun.

 

 

3 Ways for Agencies to Cope with Recessionary Pressures

Ad agencies have always been at the mercy of client anxieties. Now that it's 2010 planning season, agencies are getting hammered on process, productivity and price. Agencies have always been the whipping boys for all manner of brand or product performance issues. Everyone understands that agencies exist so they can be fired. Everyone also realizes that the core agency value proposition is either “we know or can do something you cannot” or “we have arms and legs to get things done faster, better and/or cheaper than you can do it yourself.” 

But during this recession agencies have had even more tenuous relationships with their clients. The list of clients that broom agencies quickly seems to be growing. The research indicates that clients change agencies, on average, every 2.5 years, twice as frequently as before. There are all kinds of reasons but the bottom line is that few clients believe that agencies are long-term partners.

You can’t be a partner if they don’t know you well. Rarely are agency chieftains, part of a client’s inner circle. It is unusual for agency heads to be considered the CEO’s or even the VP Marketing’s consigliore or to even have a voice in crafting client strategy. Instead agencies and their leaders have become receivers of strategic output and implementers of tactical plans. 

Very few clients believe that their agencies actually know the fundamentals of their business, their category or the critical processes within their enterprise. Agency expertise is understood as generic, plain vanilla project management and content creation. Agency outputs are commodities that can be priced and negotiated by purchasing agents.

And even that role, too, has a built-in trap. Aggressive cost controls and benchmarking have given savvy clients unusual leverage. Many specify upfront the time, cost and staff to produce a postcard, a website, an e-mail campaign or a #10 mail package. Few are willing to pay for anything but minimal staffing. Even fewer are willing to pay for senior people who allegedly bring added value, insight or experience to their accounts.

Yet agencies, from the 2-person shops to the global conglomerates, seem to be impotent to affect the size, timing or sequence of client spending. Agencies are output. It is a sobering thought, which fundamentally changes the game. Yet changing these circumstances requires changing the way agencies do business.

Consider three areas to creative an opening for agencies to have a greater impact on their own fate.

Leadership. Clients hire agencies that have a point of view. If you don’t have a POV you are just another vendor cranking out pretty pictures or punchy copy. Unfortunately too many agencies either haven’t developed or articulated a distinguishing POV or are unwilling to expose their POVs for fear of rejection. In a corporate and financial environment that risk averse, having a POV is a point of distinction, which must be leveraged to an agency’s benefit 

Agencies often have practical knowledge not only about a client’s strategy but generally understand the distribution channels, the media, contact centers, customer service, fulfillment, retail traffic patterns and nuts and bolts operational reality. Agencies are often in a position to traffic information, data and ideas among and between different business units and to infuse grand schemes with a healthy dose of reality. 

Leadership requires agencies to get out ahead of their clients by thinking through and anticipating events, sketching out likely competitive scenarios and contingency plans, understanding the personalities and power dynamics within client organizations and presenting “crazy” ideas or trial balloons for client consideration.

Doing this requires proactive thinking and investment spending. It also requires that use senior, seasoned people to get top-level access and to put this stuff across persuasively. Account people who take reasonable risks, get beyond the day-to-day and become trusted, memorable or effective on the basis of their personalities play a critical role in offering clients the leadership they crave. 

Efficiency & Transparency.    Developing tools to train, manage, deploy and effectively use agency resources is critical to maintain margins and grow profitable businesses. Clients routinely ask skeptical questions about rates, billing and productivity. Though most agencies have adopted the professional services fee model, they haven’t used professional services norms to maximize the value, productivity and utilization of their people.

This is not a software problem. It is a matter of understanding who is working and what they can do and mapping these resources transparently against client needs in real time. Improved real-time resource planning in-tandem with clients is a necessity. 

Agencies have not parsed work among or between teams to capitalize on expertise or economies of scale. Nor have they used time zone differences, cost differentials or global resources to move projects ahead faster or to squeeze out better margins. Force utilization tactics and productivity measures, beyond counting billable time, are virtually unknown in the ad business, even though other industries have used these techniques to great effect in reducing costs and cycle times while motivating their best people. 

Alliances.  Every agency has loads of alliances. They are usually touted in press releases. Yet few can actually capitalize on these relationships to the benefit of clients. And while they sound good in credentials presentations, far too many agencies can’t,  don’t or won’t leverage these alliances because they cannot control the ally’s end product or they fear disintermediation.

These twin demons --- paranoia and the need for control – have undercut most agencies claims and seriously burned credibility in offering clients the ever elusive “integrated solution”. The ability to leverage resources within networks is still the exception rather than the rule and has led all but a few clients to reject the idea that they can get full service from any one company. 

Clients believe that each agency has one or two core strengths. Nobody really believes that any given agency is tops in everything. Having, using and delivering credible, expert allies is critical to consolidating, maintaining or expanding  any standing with the leading marketers and brands, especially at a time when they are working with skeletal staffs.

Being able to field a coordinated team of agencies who will uniformly understand client objectives and culture, work in a coordinated manner, deliver against integrated timetables and husband precious marketing dollars is the Holy Grail. Orchestrating alliances is the best chance for finding and delivering the Grail to our clients.

Leadership, efficiency and alliances are three areas directly controlled by agencies. They have traditionally influenced relationships with clients. Whining about the economy isn’t the answer. Leveraging agency assets is the only hope.

Ridiculously Rating the Digital Agencies

Imagine that at the height of a recession when digital agencies were beginning to muscle traditional agencies by attracting bigger media spending and getting a bigger voice in strategy, you set out to help clients differentiate and understand the strategic and executional capabilities across the field.

Then imagine that you only really looked closely at the top twelve biggest players, didn't talk to any independent clients, relied entirely on agency interviews and propaganda and then rated them all excellent or really strong by producing a magic quadrant where the scrum was all bunched in the upper left segment.

Would this have any value to anyone or would anyone plunk down $1749 to read the detailed report?

This is how Forrester created the new Forrester Wave:US Interactive Agencies -- Strategy and Execution, Q3 2009. 

Written by a former media guy with no senior management or client side management experience, Sean Corcoran, this is a laughable bogus exercise masquerading as strategic consulting. If the methodology represents Forrester's standard research and analytical approach cancel your subscription and run don't walk away as fast as you can. 

This is a half-assed attempt to extend their services and influence into the ad agency world. It's a world that barely tolerates search consultants who do a similar half-assed job without all the faux consulting rhetoric, artificial constructs and pedestrian graphics.  

In a field acknowledged to be relatively undifferentiated where agencies make almost identical claims and offer equivalent, if not exactly similar services, starting with only the top agencies billing more than $100 million who added 5 or more clients in the last year and offer 7 of 9 stated services skews the field from the get go. Interestingly my alma mater, Digitas, the biggest US interactive agency, opted out of this silliness and was rewarded with a gentle mealy-mouthed non-endorsement endorsement intended not to piss them off.

Basically these guys talked to each agency and collected their propaganda. They quizzed 3 of each firm's favorite clients. Then they established 39 evaluation criteria in three big buckets -- client offering, strategy and market presence. Then they ranked each agency. Although the mean score of 4.3 out of 5 suggests how useless this exercise was. 

They all make the same claims. They all offer offer the same services. They all have marquee clients. And they all have impressive staffs. Now they all score roughly the same. Would you ace DraftFCB because their 3.0 on strategy doesn't measure up to R/GA or Sapient's 4.80? Garbage expressed in 3 digits is still garbage. 

Buried in the blab or implied in what is not written are several truths about the current state of digital agencies. Here's what I culled:

Analytics is being used as a differentiator. As data becomes more important for driving campaigns and connecting marketing to business results, the size, quality and usefulness of analytical teams can distinguish one agency from another. In real life, this is much more rhetorical or aspirational than real for clients.

It's not about services but solutions. In a field where parity reigns the component services are much less important than how an agency marshals them to achieve client business results. There's no easy way to measure or compare this kind of performance but its the meat that clients look carefully for in every pitch.

There's damn little breakout creative. Clients and customers have sophisticated visual expectations set by heavy multi-channel and multi-media use. They expect eye-popping cool imagery and punchy copy in many formats. For agencies this is table stakes. With jaded clients and customers, even B2B customers, its particularly difficult to sustain creative claims. That's why ignoring smaller, younger more organically digital shops destined these "results" for irrelevancy.   

You can't escape heritage. Each agency started out specializing in something. R/GA was a traditional creative boutique. Ogilvy was a traditional and DM global network. Rosetta was an database analytical consulting shop. Rapp and Wunderman were direct marketers. Over time they added people and services. The extensions are a mixed bag -- some great, some not-so great. In some cases the old guard has been replaced. In other cases the original leadership, mindset and perspective still govern how they operate and go-to-market. Some get it and some are still trying to figure out what channel and creative integration are all about. Finding the point of origin and assessing the value and quality of the add-ons over time is critical to understanding what each agency is really good at and how well they can organize, orchestrate and deploy divergent skill sets and personalities to help a client achieve their goals.  

Clients looking to hire a digital agency could use a tool to help separate hype from reality and to undertake a savvy, nuanced comparison of personalities and services. 

This goofball "research wave" aint it. 

How to Hire A Digital Agency

The RFP process for hiring a digital agency is 22^nd century Kabuki. Highly trained, costumed and perfumed players sing and dance well rehearsed traditional lines in ritualized set-piece scenarios. Unfortunately the process rarely predicts the texture or substance of the subsequent client-agency relationship or the quality of the services likely to be delivered.

The process for finding an agency partner ought to be less arduous, more fun and more likely to foreshadow the working relationship. Yet getting there requires a willingness to break with tradition by confronting your demons, identifying genuine needs and political or psychological realities upfront and structuring a search process designed to elicit critical information about an agency’s competence, finances and operating style while and laying bare the tone and texture of how agencies operate day-to-day. 

Identify Your Practical Needs. Do you need a big brain, tech savants, masters of media, social media experimenters, an army of coders or just reliable arms and legs to execute your strategy, compensate for your too lean staff or interface with your IT guys? Understanding the real need and the division of labor between you and your agency is the first step in the RFP process. Be clear about how much control, direction and outsourcing you intend to do. 

Next recognize that different agencies have different levels of name recognition, positioning and points of origin which shape their competence, their processes, their ability to engage and their price. No single agency is great at everything. Every agency has its core competences and its good and bad days.

Don’t Re-fight The Last War. Often RFPs seek to overcome and compensate for the failures and disappointments with a current agency. Yet be careful not to over value  or over correct for these specific issues since they are likely to be a product of a particular agency-client pathology; partly a result of  your technical, political, personality  or marketing landscape and a partly a matter of casting, chemistry, timing or emphasis by the agency.

Focus on the mission – what needs to be done. Do you need a dramatic increase in market share, an improvement in eCommerce conversion, regular technical tweaks, media optimization, a more systematic and integrated campaign management approach or a complete brand re-stage? The task required compared with the state of the business ought to be the prime directive in shaping your agency search.   

Take the Political Temperature. You have to decide how much brand equity, brainpower, speed, creativity, media intimacy or technical chops you want, need or are willing to pay for at the outset. Do you need quick-and-dirty or famous-and flashy? Are you looking to impress the C suite or are you looking to augment or compliment the skills of your staff? Ask yourself how much validation or blame will you assign to the agency 

Then compare the needed skills with the budget you have to spend. How much of the budget are you willing to spend on travel, out of pocket expenses and infrastructure? Do you want a marquee New York agency owned by a global holding company, an independent firm with a hot reputation in your vertical or two renegade guys in a room completely dedicated to your brand? What will your management accept, appreciate and buy? 

Once you clarify your own needs and the desires of your management, you are ready to structure the RFP process. Give yourself 6 months. Assume the exercise will take 90-120 days and that a subsequent notice, transition and contracting period will be of equal length. Some firms prefer to outsource the search effort others do it themselves or construct a hybrid division of labor. The critical variable is a sense of control. Pick the solution that gives you optimal control of the process and the outcome.  

Cover the Basics. The three fundamental questions you need to answer in any RFP process are: a) who are they; b) what are they truly good at and c) can we sue them if they screw us?  Every agency worth its salt has standard language to answer these questions and financial details and references to substantiate their fiscal viability. You have to ask these questions but you’ll be surprised at how similar the answers are and how little real differentiation you get when comparing responses. Everyone is fabulous, with the greatest teams skilled at every task you can imagine. Everyone has great case studies, screen grabs, intricate process maps, snappy bios and ironclad financials. 

This material is the basic ante; table stakes in the game. All this material should be understood as a check off rather than as critical variables. Those who can’t produce this kind of information on a dime aren’t ready for your serious consideration.

Surface Your Working Team. There are pitch teams and working teams. Pitch teams are the agency’s smoothest, senior, accomplished veteran players. They are smart, glib, practiced and polished. Working teams are the munchkins behind the scenes you rarely see in a pitch. In many cases an agency will not empanel a working team until they win the business so in many cases your working team is a fantasy. Require your working team to be the pitch team. This will ensure that you get a clear look at the people you’ll be working with. Allow the senior supervisors to help, but insist that the agency identify and engage the account executives, account supervisors and frontline creative, media or technical  people who will actually work on your business. Be sure to meet the digital producer and/or the project manager because these individuals will really run your business and your budgets day by day. 

Probe for Process. Mechanics, skill and speed determine productivity. Agencies are notoriously slower and more expensive than client organizations and frequently have ad hoc processes that can leave you vulnerable. Figure out how the agency works and how it takes in and processes the information you give it. Compare that with your internal processes and your productivity tolerances. 

Are you willing to wait 4 weeks for a 5 paragraph e-mail? Will a mini-site or a landing page take 30, 60 or 90 days to complete? How many levels of editorial review and QA will those banner ads get? Will they traffic drafts digitally or on paper? Will they deploy secure intranets or just use FTP sites? Ask for process briefings and go through the agency process carefully to understand who does what to whom and when. Give them hypothetical assignments and ask for production time lines. 

Identify Agency Partners. In this climate it makes little economic sense for agencies to retain full-time people to manage occasional or contingent tasks. Almost every agency relies on freelancers, vendors and partners to round out their service offerings. List the tasks they do themselves and those they share with vendors or partners. Compare the home-grown tasks with your top priority needs. Then ask about the freelancers and vendors and how they manage these partner relationships. Require case studies to show productivity and business results. 

Illuminate Experience. If they did for somebody else, it’s likely they can do it for you, too. Identify your top priority needs and seek out analogous work that the agencies have done. Map their experience to your needs. Be as specific as possible. Carefully examine the planning process and the business goals and connect the dots. Look at creative examples and media plans. Get them talking about how they came up with the ideas in competitive contexts. You are looking for insightful thinking, smart execution and the ability to redeploy these skills on your behalf. And while experience is not 100% predictive of future results, all things being equal an agency that has done the task you need has a greater chance of doing it again right for you. 

Look for Efficiencies. Will the agency learn how to do things on your nickel or do they bring well-established learnings, relationships, procedures and added value to the table. Ask the agency about standing relationships and deals with technical vendors, media outlets or infrastructure suppliers. Ask them to outline and document approaches and philosophies on topics of importance to your marketing effort. You are looking to leverage their experience and their network to your benefit. Your goal in investigating these relationships is to assess the likely added value you get by selecting a particular agency on the basis of its experience and contacts. 

Be as specific as you can and be relentless in follow-up questioning. Ask pointed questions like ---Do you believe rich media yields incremental conversion? Do you prefer one web platform over another and why? Which off-the-shelf CRM solution have they used most often and why? Which media will grant you (and us) most-favored nation deals? Ask for examples of skillful media and vendor negotiations and then ask for the marketing and business impact of these financial efficiencies. 

Check References. No one will give you a bad reference. But ask probing questions about the nature of the relationship, the timing of projects, any claimed victories and/or the day-to-day working experience. Ask pointed questions about the leadership, the working team, timing and costs. Ask specifically about the things that went wrong. There always are a few. Sometimes understanding how an agency recovers from a screw-up is the most illuminating insight into their operation. 

Once you have satisfied yourself that the short list agencies have the requisite experience, relationships and energy, its time to get creative. In many cases your finalists will have equivalent experience, relationships and skill sets. They will have jumped the financial bar and provided strong references. You’ll need to devise an ordeal to establish true differences and to gauge how well you are likely to work with each of them. 

Road Test the Finalist Agencies. Don’t ask for spec creative or free strategic thinking. Instead ask agencies to participate in a live 90 minute strategy session. This more than anything will give you a live feel for what it will be like to work with any given agency team. 

In structuring the live working session, follow this formula:

 

1. Prepare real data to identify and document a real business issue or scenario that they agency will face. Supply this to the agency 1 week ahead of the session. Be sure all participating agencies have signed NDA agreements in advance.
2. Insist that only 2 senior people and the working team assigned to your business can participate.
3. Limit the session to 90 minutes. Set a clear outcome for the meeting. For example, the meeting should yield a campaign theme and 3 tactics to address this particular marketing problem.
4. Have your team, the people who will interact with the agency each day participate in the session.  Run it as if the relationship existed.
5. Use an independent leader. Don’t lead the session if you are assessing the outcome.
6. Devise a scorecard that accounts for the quality of the ideas, the creativity of the team, the experience demonstrated and the chemistry between the participants.
7. Measure how prepared the agencies were and what outside data, information or experience they brought to the party.
8. Try to understand the relative contributions of the senior agency people versus the working team members.
9. Ask your people which team they liked the best and why.
10. Weight this exercise relative to the other intelligence you’ve developed to make a final decision.

Finding the right agency partner can be a crucial step toward getting better business results. You want to break through the expected and sidestep the pat answers. The process should force contenders out of their comfort zones. Agencies have significant differences in style, skill and leadership. Using these concepts  should give you a head start toward identifying them and comparing them to your individual marketing needs .

    

Agency Pricing & Fees -- Benchmarks Revealed

Money makes everybody crazy. Money makes agency executives especially crazy because they are under constant pressure to close business at double digit margins in a marketplace that undervalues agency services. The magic that agencies make is often considered and bought as a commodity.

In a world where clients  buy marketing, advertising and PR services using the same criteria and the same purchasing professionals as they do for buying raw materials and office supplies, setting prices and extracting fees that have any relationship to value delivered is a source of continuing anxiety. Managing competitive pricing while simultaneously managing doubts about the perceived value of agency brands, agency negotiating skills and agency lead generation and selling skills is the target for the newly released Fees & Pricing Benchmark Report produced by RainToday and the Wellesley Hills Group.

This 80+ page book incorporates survey data from 343 professional services firms in the marketing, advertising, and PR industry mixed with analysis from RainToday, a leading sales consultant to professional services companies. It is loaded with data on rates, pricing, fee formulas and selling tactics.

The data shows that the truths agencies tell their clients are equally true for them. Brand awareness and perception drive demand. Brand leaders can charge more, discount less, earn better margins and more frequently manipulate the pricing/billing models. But accomplishing these things isn't easy even for firms with household names. The report documents an industry-wide insecurity about what clients will pay for services, what is the genuine business value agencies deliver to clients and the worry that agencies leave too much money on the table because they aren't good salesman or negotiators.

As you might imagine, the topics on everyone's mind -- those cobbler's son issues that agency executives whine about at the 4As and other venues -- get thorough coverage in this report. Here are some of the key take-aways:

• Almost everybody pays attention to the "going rates." Clients always give away competitive prices during pitches. Many firms actively scout and watch their competitors
• Fixed Fees are very popular because it gives clients predictability and to a certain extent finesses  client's questions and arguments about time/rate/skill/margin mix.
• Everybody discounts. The average variance from the rate card is 25%. Brand leaders discount less frequently and fewer dollars. Bigger firms discount more because they can.
• There is significant experimentation with value-based pricing. But there isn't common definitions of how to do it and no consensus on how clients measure the business value delivered from agency services. Only a third of firms use contingency or success fees in their billing formulas.

Amid the countless charts and verbatim quotes, the emergent prescription for agencies is:

1. Invest in business development. Get serious about lead generation and pipeline management. Aggressively target clients who you know will be right for your firm.

2. Invest in your brand. Make it different and distinctive to attract new business and substantiate better prices and margins.

3. Learn how to sell and negotiate. Get over yourselves. Stop bellyaching about the encroachment of consulting firms and others. Know when to walk away from a global brand with an inadequate budget. Don't let the bean counters push you around.

Perspectives on the Pathetic Pitch Process

I sat through 5 sequential pitches this week and was dumbstruck by how ineffective the process is in helping buyers learn what agencies can do for them. The artifice of the stand up pitch was unproductive, pitiful and pathetic.

Maybe in a world where finding a relationship is so difficult, I should have expected dysfunction but having been either a pitchman or a decision-maker so often I surprised myself at how awkward and flawed this familiar process is. Given how they meet and match, its no wonder that clients and agencies divorce at rates exceeding the collapse of individual relationships.

If we are deconstructing the process let's start at the beginning with mismatched expectations. Clients identify agencies that look like they can do the job. The usual criteria are industry experience, service to like clients, previous gigs with competitors, contacts between the two sides; usually somebody knows or previously worked with somebody and agency brand awareness and reputation. My team constructed a list mixing big guys with specialist boutiques and floated a middling RFP to solicit the basic credentials.

What we really wanted to find out was:

1. Can these guys really help us? Can they use their skills to move our needle not just do their usual act?

2. Will they really get to know us and our schtick or will they just apply a template approach and hope for the best?

3. Can these guys think about our business the way we do? Will they help us realize our goals?

4. Do they know anything we don't? Will we like being with them? Do they fit our style and pace?

On the flip side agencies are looking to find clients that will pay top dollar at healthy margins on time, help grow the agency's reputation and bag of tricks, keep the agency team interested and engaged and not be too much of a pain in the ass.

The agency guys really want to know ...

1. How much do these guys really know about what we do? Can we genuinely make an impact or will be just be somebody's bitch? Will they rely on our advice versus telling us what to do?

2. Every client says they want creativity. 80% buy plain vanilla. Are these guys in the risk-taking 20 percent and if so why?

3. How bureaucratic or process-driven are these guys? How many can say "no" versus how many and who can say "yes"? How much will they annoy, de-motivate and generally mess with us?

4. Can they pay the freight, will they nickel-and-dime us to death and are their pockets deep enough or flexible enough so that we can develop cutting edge new stuff on their dime?

So into the conference room go two teams sitting around a table, collectively focused at a projected slide, occasionally looking the other side up-and-down wondering about haircuts, decolletage, accessories, VPL and nasal accents desperately hoping for something good to happen. Here's what generally happens:

Big Guy Blabs. The senior agency person commands the presentation by leading the pitch and answering or parrying most questions. The senior person usually has the uncanny ability to put off the senior clients in record time.  Everybody understands the ego at-play as much as they understand that the two scared, silent young ones wearing cheap suits sitting in the cheap seats will actually end up servicing the account after all the blovating is done.

Big Idea Bombs. The agency bets the farm on a out-of-the box idea or a pedestrian idea that clearly indicates they don't understand the first thing about the client's business. This rhetorical Hail Mary pitch falls flat and the air goes out of the room like a tire with a fast leak. After its clear to both sides what a bomb the big idea has been neither side can wait to get out of the room.

Bad Mix. The sides hate each other on sight. There is no mystery, chemistry or fantasy. Its like being at a bad freshman mixer. You feel like you're in the wrong place. You can't imagine being seen much less working with people who look, talk, act, think like those guys. You are viscerally and emotionally put off by the number, quantity and oddity of the fashion don'ts and fatties set before you. 

Bullshit Blab-a-Thon. The agency works through the slides and invites questions by saying , " We want this to be a dialog. We want to be your partners. So ask us anything along the way. Feel free to interrupt us so we can really talk about the things that matter most to you."

The clients then ask questions. With each pointed question, the agency parries. By the third one you realize that the agency never answers the question asked. Instead like a weaselly politician the agency uses every question to reinforce or restate its key copy points. The more pointed the questions; the mushier and more evasive the answers. The more they blab, the more you can feel your blood pressure rising.

Process Parity. Every agency has a process. Usually it has a not-so-clever name and from 5 to 9 steps. It is presented in hushed and reverent tones and granted the potency of a magical formula handed down directly from Merlin. According to the agency, this sacred process insures blinding insights into customer behavior, exceptional creative that will make products fly off the shelves, unparalleled ideas that will forever change your market and unlimited success for this campaign and anything else the process touches. But whoa to those who don't follow or embrace the process. Like Old Testament sinners those clients who don't embrace and genuflect to the process are condemned to bleakness, doom and the same old shit.

Bashing Competitors. Agencies are fundamentally insecure. They position their strengths in ways that bash the unseen and often unknown competition by saying things like " We're specialists. You wouldn't go to a GP for a complicated lung operation would you?"  Or the say, "Your business is part of our DNA. We're not a multi-functional, multi-national conglomerate where you'll be treated like a pimple on an elephant;'s ass." Or they promise "We have the breathe of experience, contacts, skill and economies of scale that those little guys can never deliver. We're smarter, faster, cheaper and better." 

By attacking the unseen competitor, the agency makes the prospective client feel like an idiot; as if he didn't consider size, scale, experience in selecting potential agencies or as if he randomly picked names out of the phone book or rounded up the usual bunch of suspects. When each agency fires pre-emptive strikes into the darkness it feels like the last time you broke up with somebody who didn't want to break up with you. They assure you that you'll never find anyone else as good and that you'll be condemned to sit alone in a dark room masturbating for eternity. Its a pitch that never really works.

The next time I have to hire an agency, I'm going to define a problem we face in the business and a needed outcome. Then I'm going to put both teams in a room for 90 minutes and see what they come up with. This should give me both a feel for agency credentials and chops as well as a realistic chemistry and compatibility check. It will be messier and a lot less formal but it will spare me hours of torture. 

Ad Agencies Fighting Commoditization

Advertising is increasingly bought by purchasing criteria where ideas are valued like paper clips.

Add to this mentality a constant demand for process efficiency tied to downward price pressure on the pay-for-hours model and you understand why agency executives feel like fish squirming on hooks. As a result the search is on for alternative revenue streams and pricing models.

Conjecture about new models and the interaction between or coalescence of buyers and sellers was heightened by Microsoft's and WPP's purchases of ad serving firms last week. Some firms like aQuantive have "idea labs" to cook up new business opportunities and new business models. IPG has a "Futures Marketing Group" seeking similar results.

Doug Weaver, President of the UpStream Group frames the issue in terms of business models, according to Michael Estrin writing for iMediaConnection, He coined the phrase "The Oreo Doctrine" as way to distinguish between transactional media sellers and nimble problem solving consultants advising client firms. He argues by analogy that the cream filling sticks only to one side so, Weaver reasons, every organization has to choose which side to be on since you can't have it both ways. In Weaver's world you're either peddling media standardized units or peddling answers to problems; the former makes you into a commodity, the latter is your shot at fatter margins.

Transactional players, in his view, need to deliver the greatest efficiency and automation which probably involves outsourcing and requires a firm to develop proprietary math, software and systems not too mention an on-call geek squad to read the results. In contrast "marketecture" firms, a term I always thought was coined by Marty Bell at Prescients, refers to general contractors serving CEOs as trusted advisers nimbly addressing business issues without any media ax to grind. By proactively identifying client issues and "writing your own briefs" these consultants, possibly collaborating with competitors on client tasks, will save the day and the bottom line.

Compare Weaver's take to moves taken by agencies, chronicled by Brian Morrissey in Adweek, to monetize tools and find new revenue streams and more margin in new services.  In this world view agencies figure out how to serve ads, build networks, auction or arbitrage media, create software for specific applications, create content aimed at discrete audiences and offer consulting services.

They also take fees in stock and warrants rather than cash, charge based on performance or results achieved and share revenues based on their licensed inventions. Some spin out separate companies to sell these wares and others, like JWTIntelligence.com will sell via eCommerce.

The huge advertising holding companies have been fighting like mad to hold the line on pricing and to resist the pressure toward commoditization. They are continually hammered and have few effective tactics to withstand the increasing demands of large clients. The smaller guys have been forced to either give in or get creative though so far there is no broadly applicable strategy for saving agency margins beyond a willingness to experiment with risk.      

The Promise of Agency Digital Czars

A flurry of hiring among traditional agencies designed to create visible C-level digital advocates is a first step; one that has been tried before with uncertain results. Adweek's breathless celebration of this latest PR move is overstated.

Consider the situation. Large and bureaucratic holding companies with multiple agency brands acting like independent duchys serving disparate agendas had no visible digital gurus to parade before and pontificate to clients. Now some do.

But the addition of Jean-Phillipe Maheu to Ogilvy or the inclusion of David Kenney in the councils at Publicis or even the insertion of Brandon Berger at MDC or Mike Parker at Goodby opens the conversation but doesn't solve the problem that traditional agencies don't think digitally, don't have the right talent, haven't invested in or partnered to get the right technology infrastructure and still make big bucks and bonuses from TV and print ads. Spokespeople sometimes open the door but hardly ever deliver the products or services.

The real determining factor will be the affect of these individuals and others can have on the risk appetite of agencies and clients. To truly succeed, which means catching up with savvy marketing services firms and digitally innovative clients like Nike or Apple, these "czars" will have to be incredible salespeople and masterful change agents within their own organizations diverting attention, focus and resources away from the status quo. And then they'll not only have to dazzle clients with big ideas, they'll have convince leading brands that experimental ideas can yield affirmative ROI, build brand images and create new demand and then they'll have to finesse client organizations to get the ideas produced and into the market.

Its a much bigger deal than just hiring a guy who can mix it up with the digerati and who has a few friends on MySpace, an avatar on Second Life and can yammer about Web 2.0.

 

A Different Take on the Digitas Deal

Maurice Levy’s billion dollar purchase of Digitas has set tongues wagging about digital agencies. It’s a scene out of Rumplestiltskin. The sleeping industry awakes, is stunned by a changed reality and – POW-- flexes its checkbook.

Publicis has a different ethos than Omnicom, WPP or IPG but its still a balance sheet play in search of an operating model and a client rationale. Synergy has eluded all the advertising holding companies as has significant client cross-pollenization. Every company has digital assets. No one has found an easy, seamless or particularly effective way to integrate them into client work. Its hard enough to get them to make nice to each other.

Fundamentally there are mindset, legacy, leadership and compensation issues that stymie any real cooperation and integration. Maybe we have to wait till the old generation of white shoe ad guys and 40ish British wunderkinds passes from the scene. But by then the ad agency business will be dead and gone.

Achieving an ROI on this deal depends on leadership, evolving a new operational model and the cross-fertilization of people within the larger company. If this doesn’t happen and happen soon, the only value will be Digitas’ $380 million in revenue, 20+ points of margin, a few marquee client names for the lobby wall and bragging rights.

David Kenny’s hope to expand globally using the Publicis network sounds good though its hard to believe that Digitas clients, who were reluctant to give them work outside the USA as a stand-alone firm, will rush to embrace their new and mostly clueless partners when it comes to digital assignments. (Full disclosure: I lead this effort before 9/11.) The hope that clients who picked Burnett or Saatchi will instantly turn to Digitas for digital help is more about account relationships and sales skill than magical new synergy.

There will be some media advantages both in terms of online experience, savvy, media relationships, best practices  and volume discounts though it will be interesting to see if a TV oriented bureaucracy like Starcom Mediavest can or will learn anything from Carl Freeman’s merry media band.

Similarly Levy is acquiring a talent pool, though even Digitas has been scrambling lately to find seasoned digitally-oriented players and has made several alliances to get the technical chops it cannot effectively recruit. The question, that could well determine the true value of this move, is will they keep the talent concentrated and direct other teams to rely on specialized units or will they disperse Digitas account, strategy and analytics people throughout the organization so that the thinking, consciousness and mindset of the new media world gets inculcated across brands and across client teams. 

Don’t believe the hype in the ad trades that this acquisition jumps Publicis from worst to first in the digital space. The Levy-Kenny love fest will not last after the deal closes. Kenny will have to win over an executive committee that may talk the talk but hardly walks the walk. Watch and see what –if anything – they do with the new asset.