Marketers Shouldn’t Be “In The Business Of Putting You Out Of Business”
More marketers should “adopt” the ethos that “we’re not in the business of putting you out of business,” Andrew Howie said of the pressures shrinking client budgets put on agencies and particularly production companies.
The founder of Gallant Creative Advisory and former CMO of Taco Bell Australia gave the example of a builder quoting $100,000 to renovate a bathroom. “You don't say, ‘Well, no, because five years ago, I built my bathroom for $70,000, so let's do that.’ But in this space, marketers turn up with the same budget each year and expect the same output they got five years ago.
“Either that budget needs to get better or their creative aspirations have to change, and marketers just continue to try and force their budgetary issues onto other people. Unless we start pushing back and say that's not what it costs to do this business anymore, we're going to continue to suffer.
“Businesses not [being] sustainable comes back to a misalignment of expectation versus reality and what [marketers] can afford.”
There needs to be “a master reset at a level that helps marketers better understand actually what it would cost, and what great costs,” he argued, speaking on a panel at Australia’s inaugural Monthly Cut screening on Thursday, alongside Revolver MD Michael Richie and Droga5 ANZ co-CCO Barbara Humphries.
On whether marketers’ current expectations are in line with current budgets, Michael laughed he’s been saying “budgets are shit” for the last 30 or 40 years.
“There are people who want to do things properly, and that's having an impact. Even anecdotally, the stuff that I'm hearing around my own barbecue while I'm trying to overcook a steak [about work Revolver has made] is because people actually really like it.
“For the Olympics, they saw a lot of stuff that we might have done, and they actually liked it. Those budgets are being spent well, and I think budgets other than that are probably stagnating.”
Michael said he loves “the idea of us competing against production companies, and we compete really, really, really, really hard – we're trying to put the best treatment we can forward.”
In a usual production pitch process, an agency will conduct a three-way pitch in which directors create proposed treatments for the idea.
“Our directors put a hell of a lot into it, we put a hell of a lot into making that vision come alive. If they win that job, they've got a mandate – hopefully a great mandate. Why? Because you've got two other ideas, two other versions of how that job could go … please read that treatment and please enable that director [to] see that vision through.”
Joking he was “sorry to make everyone work hard on bids,” Michael said he thinks “that's what's great about our businesses. We're a bunch of entrepreneurial companies that fight against each other. We give clients more value because we fight against each other to try and outdo each other with better ways of making stuff, and that is a good place to be.”
Being entrepreneurial can be a double edged sword, though. The production exec acknowledged taking on a project that will lose money is something “you can only do so much” because “it's just not sustainable.”
Hosted at Revolver’s Redfern office following its Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, The Monthly Cut event saw LBB bring together top marketing, agency, and production leaders for a screening of the world's best work from June.
Andrew and Barbara agreed they want more openness from partners. “Clarity is a real challenge,” Andrew admitted.
“With clarity, often there's a singular problem that's identified in the business, and you write a brief about.
“But then corporate communications has got something that they all say, ‘Hang on, I also need to do this’. The sales team might go for the price of it, people want to know how much it costs. Then the legal team are going, ‘there's an offer’ or ‘there's a claim’. So clarity gets lost really quickly, and if clarity is not there from the start, the further down this path we go, the more murky things get.”
Barbara added it is more helpful for people in meetings to “just say the thing that's on their mind, rather than skirting around.” Ultimately, making something that matches the original vision is the most efficient way to spend money, because it doesn’t require second attempts.
Andrew added, “The best thing you can have is better creativity, because then people have greater break-through. It costs less money in the long term, because you'll get better payback. Stop wasting money on cheap work, invest in good work, and it will go further.”
