A David versus Goliath Battle Comes to Adland, But will Goliath Win?

Every high schooler can recite Newton’s third law of motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

But it’s a rule that applies far beyond physics classrooms. In the advertising world, an attempt at an equal and opposite reaction to this past summer’s mega-merger of Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe, now Publicis-Omnicom and the world’s largest advertising agency, is already under way.

Like the Alliance of Small Island States or any “big guy versus little guy” organization, several small to mid-sized advertising agencies including Chi & Partners, its media operation M Six, customer relationship shop Rapier, PR agency Halpern and social shop The Social Practice have begun to push back by creating their own joint holding company called The & Partnership, according to AdAge.

Headed by Chi & Partners CEO Johnny Hornby with a North American arm run by Proximity CEO Andrew Bailey (formerly of Proximity Worldwide, an Omnicom company), the new conglomerate is a recognition that small and medium-sized advertising agencies risk losing clients and being squeezed out of the market as mega mergers like Publicis-Omnicom become more common. In reaction, small agencies are fighting fire with fire. 

But are mid-sized mergers really the right solution?

Media analyst and blogger Don Cole doesn’t think so and I agree to an extent. He fears that small to mid-sized agencies won’t have the staffing, creative talent and big data resources to be truly appealing to larger (and more profitable) clients. In the end, mid-sized mergers are like pooling the skills of several minor league baseball teams. More players don’t mean more capabilities. If anything, he cautions, cost cutting (read: layoffs) will be first on their agenda. In this scenario, the Goliath that Publicis-Omnicom has become (and the others that follow) wins out over the smaller Davids.

So if mini mergers aren’t the solution, what is? It’s not as black and white as Don Coles sees it. To return to my baseball analogy, not all minor league players stay minor league forever. Some do make it to the majors. And “making it to the majors” is what all advertising and PR agencies aspire to achieve. While one route to that success is, of course, growing large (and influential) enough to be bought by a conglomerate such as Publicis-Omnicom, another way is to continuously recruit new, young talent and also become expert in specific niche communication fields. That’s what we’re doing at ThinkInk.

It’s important to remember that smaller agencies aren’t devoid of assets. At smaller shops there is often less process, less bureaucracy and less confusion over who has the authority to do what. Small agencies are nimble and can better respond to client crises, when they inevitably occur.

As for The & Partnership, you can be bet adland will be watching its success or failure as closely as it’s watching Publicis-Omnicom. The David and Goliath ad agency battle is just heating up and it’s anyone’s guess which side will win.

Ditch the Pitch says AdAge? In a Heartbeat says ThinkInk!

At ThinkInk, we often think that RFPs (requests for proposals) actually stand for Really Flawed Presentations.

That’s also the takeaway from a recent AdAge article which looks at how, as the economy has rebounded and revenue is again flowing (modestly, at least), agencies are being more selective with the RFPs they review and the pitches they accept – PR agencies included.

Desperate times may have called for desperate measures with agencies taking on any business just to survive. But the lessons learned are likely to be applied the next time the economy goes bust. And it will. 

For my non-PR readers, a word on RFPs. RFPs are supposed to be well thought out, clearly written documents that explain to an agency what the client does and how they envision the agency-client relationship evolving. Central to this professional worldview:

How can a communications company advance the client’s mission/messaging?

To what extent can they (the agency) deliver a concrete return on investment, realized in a timely and efficient manner?

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s not.

Unlike architectural RFPs, chock full of data, building timelines, artist renderings and estimated costs, would be client-submitted RFPs are often vague, filled with unreasonable deadlines, unclear messaging and unrealistic (think: meager) budgets.

Granted, it’s a bit of a Catch-22. Prospective clients aren’t communications professionals. They seek our input in helping craft their messaging.

So rather than rejecting such flawed documents outright, perhaps we should instead put our proverbial foot down. Even before the RFP process gets underway PR agencies, proud of their own self worth – and recognition that they, too, are businesses which have to protect their bottom lines – must establish pre-RFP guidelines. The age of indiscriminate RFP acceptance is over. Potential clients should be given a dose of pre-relationship “tough love,” couched in the language that the more fine-tuned an RFP is prior to its submission to an agency, the greater the likelihood that agency will accept its terms.

In other words, potential clients need to do a little more homework if we are to take their communications strategy to the next level. Pushback and dialogue should be nothing to fear.

Sometimes an assertive ‘NO’ to a prospective client and its demands is as important as a hearty ‘YES.’   They may even respect you for it.

Maybe that’s what RFP should stand for… Respect For Professional

‘Going Rogue’ Again? Keeping Client Communications In Check

With a title like the above, you might think we’ve returned to the days of Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. 

But this time I’m not talking about a “mavericky” Alaskan -- who, along with a very talented PR machine, masterminded a brilliant and profitable 15 minutes of fame. I’m talking about the client-PR agency relationship and how, despite living in an age of instant communication, some maverick-prone clients fail to keep their PR agencies abreast of what they are planning to say, how they plan to say it, which media outlets they’re talking to and who’s writing what. It’s as if we’re being undervalued -- a topic I discussed in a recent blog, Proving PR’s Business Value Easier Said than Done, But Not Impossible.

A recent AdAge article also addresses this growing advertising agency concern, citing data from The Bedford Group that finds the average client-agency relationship length has fallen to under 3 years versus 7.2 years in 1984 -- a drop of almost 60% over three decades.

What has changed and why is this happening?

Even my agency has not been immune to so-called rogue clients. A press release gets drafted without our knowledge. A media interview is conducted without our review and the client is caught off guard. Each scenario is a potential PR minefield.

Notice in the preceding paragraph that I was very selective in my language, as all PR execs should be. At no point did I say “without our consent” or “without our green light” -- and I think that’s the problem right there. Turf wars between agency management/oversight and client control. Considering that client-agency relationship lengths are so short, we must do everything in our power not to step on clients’ toes, or we may be perceived as know-it-alls.

Trust me, we’re not. And in the power struggle that communications can become, clients have the final say.

That said, there is a reason why we call the client-agency arrangement a relationship and not a doctor-patient review. Clients come to us for creative ways to improve their brand, not reinvent it. They’re not sick. They’re not dying. Agencies are integral to this team effort. And that collaboration, as I addressed in another blog, begins with thinking about clients less as machine-like conglomerates, and more like individuals with communication needs that must be met, not serviced.

So what we have here are two partners failing to communicate -- one that is perceived to be micromanaging (the agency) and one that’s looking to preserve its own voice. As AdAge rightly points out, technology ironically hampers our communication efforts as excessive emails and meetings trump genuine correspondence and conversations, watering down the quality of our time together.

And since this article began with a political reference, I’ll begin my wrap-up like this: agencies and the clients they represent need to press the “reset button,” remembering to be transparent about what each side plans to do and when they plan to do it, within reason. It’s a building block of trust and mutual respect. PR agencies are there to help, not hurt. And we can only do that when clients are honest with us and we are aware of their intentions. Likewise, agencies must involve their clients actively in the communications and PR outreach process.

Of course, this advice won’t stop all instances of going rogue, nor will it consign the occurrence solely to our industry. Sometimes, for very deliberate reasons, clients employ elements of surprise to their communications advantage, keeping everyone but their innermost circle in the dark. The recent shocking resignation of Pope Benedict XVI demonstrates that even inner, inner circles aren’t always privy to the thoughts of one individual.

In most cases, as seems to be the case with Alaska’s former governor, going rogue helps no one, not even the so-called “maverick.” Fittingly, like the drop in client-agency relationship length, Palin’s Amazon book price has fallen 60% too.

Does your agency have a going rogue problem? Inspired by the data gathered from The Bedford Group, I’d like to begin collating my own research on the client-agency “going rogue” phenomenon and report our findings in a follow-up article. Beyond the suggestions I have offered, how does your agency address the problem? Are there examples of a contentious client-agency relationship being healed by an attitude adjustment? Any particularly jarring “rogue moment” that caused your agency to put its foot down and change communications course? Lastly, like a heart attack, are there any warning signs that rogue has arrived? I would love to hear about your experiences with clients “going rogue.” 

This article originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 03/06/13. 

No More Bulls#!t: Let’s Just Be Straight With Each Other

Lots of people – in fact, too many people – in the legal, medical, academic, government and other professions like to pad their documents with a level of verbosity (a big word for long-winded) that makes them sound really important.


Here’s an example from the Plain Language Network, the website of the international plain-language movement, taken from a life insurance application form:


Before: If you fail to comply with your duty of disclosure and we would not have entered into the contract on any terms if the failure had not occurred, we may void the contract within three years of entering into it. If your non- disclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time. Where we are entitled to void a contract of life insurance we may, within three years of entering into it, elect not to void it but to reduce the sum that you have been insured for in accordance with a formula that takes into account the premium that would have been payable if you had disclosed all relevant matters to us.


After: If you fail to disclose any relevant matter and we would not offer you insurance if this matter were known, we may within three years (1) void the contract or (2) reduce the sum for which you have been insured. If your nondisclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time.

I don’t even want to begin to point out everything that’s wrong with the original wording. It just sounds like gobbledygook. Verbal whiplash. The second is an actual statement that anyone who speaks English can understand. At 53 words, it’s also 54% shorter, but with the same meaning. Just imagine how much paper and gigabytes of data would be saved if all written material could be reduced in half but with greater clarity. Why can’t we just say what we mean and bury the B.S.?


I ask this because I am tired of having to slog through mountains of legalese every time I have to protect my rights to the name of my business, ThinkInk. Or trudge across a swamp of medical-ese any time I or one of my kids has to see a new doctor. Or try to pick out the real meat in client work that a journalist or media outlet would salivate over and ignore some of the bloviated doublespeak.  


It boggles my mind to even try to think how much time – and, after all, time is money – we waste just trying to make sense of the hefty documents that are such an inescapable part of our lives. Recently I came across a Bulldog Reporter article about how the Veterans’ Benefits Administration saved $4.4 million just by editing one letter that was sent to the country’s millions of veterans.


Let me repeat that little jaw-dropper. Revising one letter = saving $4.4 million. Can you imagine the sums of money government wastes just on verbal baggage?


And that brings me back to the world of marketing and PR. Granted, when you are marketing something, B.S. – or its kinder, gentler cousin, “spin,” is almost impossible to avoid completely. But, considering all the documents we produce – pitches, press releases, whitepapers, articles, thought leadership – I wonder how much time and money we, like government, are misusing. Our job in representing clients comes down to shopping a message to media and achieving that goal in the most cost-conscious way possible. Not just for our own budgets, but also for the people we represent.


While many of us may be afraid of sounding unprofessional if we use plain language, I think we’d do well to remember that, in the end, everything we do comes down to communication. Why not try to do that as effectively as possible? All we’d be doing is saving time and money while cutting sesquipedalian language from our copy. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Stop The Presses!

Yes, there are still presses!

And, no, we’re not talking about cookie presses, juice presses or drill presses, but rather that staple of mechanical print writing that for oh, about the last five and ¾ centuries –iPads and other iOS devices aside— dominated the newspaper and communications industries and marked the dawn of our information age, version 1.0.

That was the heartening, (and perhaps stunning) conclusion in a recent article on The Daily, which profiled a Brooklyn “pressman” Dan Morris and his efforts through his business, The Arm letterpress, to help a now-niche industry prosper in decidedly digital times.

Considering that I recently wrote about the power of old school print and supported our cheers with data that suggests print media – in all formats – may have endured the worst of its circulation declines, I wanted to throw my support (and ThinkInk’s), albeit digital, to Mr. Morris’s work. His business, launched in 2005, offers Sunday DIY classes on the mechanical printing art while his own 1950s-era Vandercook presses, according to The Daily, pump out wedding invitations among other individualized requests.

Morris’s passion for print preserves our written heritage. From Gutenberg to Jobs, we all should offer a simple thank you.

Now start those presses!

Why Do Some Sabotage Their Own PR Efforts?

If you are in the PR profession, it’s very likely that you have experienced the following scenario: a prime client insists on micro-managing visibility campaigns to the point where it’s almost impossible for us to work, or to focus on the strategy and execution of big ideas, instead of sweating the small stuff. Forget about achieving the results that are expected of us.

The PR industry is not alone in this dilemma: creatives and marketers join us in the struggle of extracting project briefs from some clients, or getting campaign details approved, or media interviews scheduled in a timely manner. And then there is the next-level challenge — the client that consistently misses top opportunities, cherry-picking interviews and walking away from top-tier placements because they can’t see the big picture — all while grumbling about farfetched initiatives planned to avoid the next kerfuffle.

I touched on this subject in a previous post over a year ago, and it continues to baffle me today. So why do companies hire us if they want to control what we do, never fully trusting us to be the experts that they hired us as?

Which also begs the question: “How do they stay in business if they micro-manage all their external resources and consultants?” It turns out that a lot of them don’t.

Hiring for All the Wrong Reasons

Companies don’t sabotage their own campaigns intentionally. It usually starts off with someone in management who thinks that their ideas are well-placed and timely; their interview rejections justified and reasonable — even if these decisions contradict strategies that have been well thought out and agreed upon. They are the CEO, after all. They have reasons and the need for hiring PR professionals, yet don’t end up taking our advice.

Why? Here are a few of my thoughts on why a company so interested in preserving its own good ideas would bother to look outside its own little bubble.

1: A supreme misstep that needs isolation — call in the professionals.

Maybe a firm doesn’t know how badly it has messed up until the legal threats start coming, or there’s an ugly sales dip that has shareholders riled. That’s when the need to call in someone else oversteps the need to micromanage campaigns. For a while, at least…

2: Recent restructuring and little direction — budget changes, hiring-and-firing.

An overzealous primary point of contact — possibly a new hire, perhaps someone who’s feeling pressure in their department — starts to quell campaigns for the sake of their own bright ideas, hoping for some recognition (and possibly a pay raise). This could be ego talking, or it could be fear in a competitive environment.

3: A well-meaning higher-up — not everyone is out to get us.

Someone in management knows what they’re doing — and recognizes that they can’t do everything on their own — but they’re not in charge of dealing with the day-to-day approvals, editing, releases, and interviews. If the “smart boss” was the one you talked with daily, there wouldn’t be an issue — but sadly, they’re not.

4: Power struggles — to seek help or not to seek help?

Maybe somebody got vetoed, and you are the shining cavalry that got called in, much to their dismay. Maybe an entire department got axed, and whoever is in charge now wants to make a point that their group could have done it better. Interoffice politics will almost always affect your dealings, sometimes seriously. Watch your back here because you may be set up to fail.

Apart from firing the misbehavers and walking away, there are a number of ways to compromise (if you want to compromise, that is) when working with a client who is a PR self-saboteur:

• Weed Out Inconsistencies When your company contact is killing ideas and media opportunities (and coming up with their own “great ideas”), try to keep campaigns consistent at the very least. You might find that the same companies that kill ideas and opportunities are extremely prolific when it comes to tossing in-house ideas around. Cohesiveness is a boon, too.
• Increase Communication and Accountability CC, double-check, confirm, and re-confirm. When finger-pointing about missed opportunities comes up, engage in CYA mode. You want to have names of exactly who nixed what and cover your behind at all times. Accountability is critical and it’ll get you to the end of your contract — or to the end of the campaign — without torching your own reputation. Containing sabotage is much better than having people ask: “Who is in charge of this mess?”

There is really only so much we can do for a company that is prone to consistently acting this way. There are fatal marketing mistakes lurking out there, and if the company is truly set in its ways, the mistakes will keep happening again and again. And as much as getting that retainer check was nice every month, you will be glad that the mistakes weren’t on your watch. It’s your reputation — and your sanity — on the line.

I like to think of these types of clients as horses: the ones you can steer to the water, but can never make drink. We may push and force and struggle to get things done with these companies, but in the end they will rear their heads and refuse to cooperate with us. Past experience has taught me (and my still sane team), that the struggle is almost always unsustainable and really not worth having.

Via Media Post: Marketing Daily by Vanessa Horwell – http://bit.ly/op0iml

Communicate or Die Mr. President

In the vein of all things political this week, I've been looking at the impact of paid media on the elections. No need to point out that the Dems got absolutely hammered by digruntled voters. But was it the misleading ads, the relentless tea party coverage and the extreme soundbytes from the extreme right polluting our eardrums that have contributed -- to what I believe -- is a temporary demise?

Or could our polarized, 24-hour/cable news cycle have tipped voters over the edge?

Or perhaps it was the billions of dollars that under-the-radar orgs like
American Action Network, or American Crossroads pumped into the most heinous ad
campaigns that, anywhere else, would have led to massive libel suits?

The answer is all of the above. And more still, the lack of communication from Mr. POTUS and Co.

Like millions of Americans, I fell in love with the new vision being sold to us in 2008. I don't believe that vision has changed drastically. But what's clearly lacking is communication from the White House - and from our President.

Working in PR, I know too well that when a company you work with cuts back on the communication, or "goes dark" for a while, this is exactly the time that eager competitors pounce - and find their spot in the limelight. Sometimes deservedly so, other times not.

We've seen that spending $140 million doesn't assure a win (too bad Ms.Whitman), but consistent communication does.

So Mr. President, here's my PR advice to you right now.

Communicate with your people, or die.

Because sorry won't be good enough in 2012.