“You're All Talking to Yourself, No Client Gives a Shit”: M+C Boss On Whether Agencies Do ‘Advertising’

M+C Saatchi’s global CEO, Zaid Al-Qassab, has called agency attitudes towards the word ‘advertising’ “a classic example of the sort of nonsense we talk at Cannes [about] to ourselves.” Not holding back, he asked, “Have you ever realised that you're all just talking to yourself and no client gives a shit?”

Fellow agency leaders Nancy Reyes, Amitesh Rao, and Melissa Jackson Parsey unpicked whether they believe their businesses are correctly categorised as advertising agencies on an LBB Cannes panel on Tuesday. BBDO global CEO Nancy continued her track record of vocally calling for peers to take pride in being “a fucking advertising agency.”

Melissa, R/GA’s newly-promoted global chief strategy officer, noted the business started out innovating motion effects technology, working on films like ‘Superman’, ‘Alien’, and ‘Ghostbusters’ – not in advertising. And Leo South Asia CEO Amitesh argued the term is too “myopic” and “narrow” to capture the kind of work that solves big business problems and drives growth.

​“We're not advertising anymore,” he said. “There was a time when we were. We are into the creative solutions business, for want of a better word.

“Increasingly, the best work that we do is able to harness the power of creative thinking to change something, and that change doesn't come through an ad. Often, increasingly, in fact, it doesn't. We're working with PepsiCo to transform the way they do potato farming so that they make better chips. There is not a single ad involved in that. But we call ourselves an advertising business. 

“We're not an agriculturist, we're not a technologist, we're creative people, but that creative thinking is being applied to something that you'll find it hard to fit into this box called advertising. So the more we think of ourselves as people who change something for a brand, for a human being, for a community or for the planet, through creative thinking, the better we'll be able to market ourselves, position ourselves, and ... price ourselves.”

Asked to weigh in on how M+C Saatchi is using, or thinking about, the term ‘advertising’, Zaid was clear: “Have you ever realised that you're all just talking to yourself and no client gives a shit?” 

When the audience laughed, he continued, “Seriously. I mean, the truth is, most clients call everything we do, even the potato farming, advertising. It really doesn't matter. It matters what you do. And you'll notice that in the way the positionings work, right? They don't say, 'We make hats'. No one's saying that. I think it's a classic example of the sort of nonsense we talk at Cannes [about] to ourselves.”

​Nancy suggested, “It's perfectly predictable that we might all have different definitions of advertising. That's part of the business that we're in, whether we love it or we hate it, and clients may not care about it, but our people do.”

During the rigorous, wide-ranging panel discussion, called ‘The Future of Agency Brands’, Melissa also set out the ways in which R/GA’s newfound independence – “We've officially moved out from IPG, and it feels really good” – has given it freedom to experiment with, and invest in, its model, including pricing. 

“If we're changing our cost base, we're changing our operating model, and we're changing the way we're using technology to enable those experiences, it does enable us to go to our clients and say, 'And yes, we'll change our pricing'.  ... If the lead in for everything is, 'Can you be cheaper?' we're just killing ourselves.”

M+C Saatchi repositioned to ‘Cultural Power’ late last year to signal an ambition to make work that gets noticed, picked up by algorithms, and creates and shapes culture. “If you do that, you find, miraculously, clients are willing to pay for it,” Zaid said. “Agencies are their own worst enemies. We make stuff that's talking to ourselves in a vacuum and it doesn't have an effect out there. Don't be surprised if clients start beating you down on price.”

The industry – including clients and procurement – are “addicted” to a people-based model. That’s the issue, Nancy said.

“We're never going to stop talking about it until we start to drive more of a value-based conversation. There is no 20% of an FTE [full-time employee] value you can put on a business problem that you're solving that is of a higher IP, a higher value.

“We've done ourselves some damage in it, and it's been, for some people, very convenient to continue to use that pricing model.”

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Building value and pride in advertising ultimately means building trust in it. And that means the agencies with the biggest names on the door have a responsibility to grow the category, not just their brands, the panel argued. It’s commonplace for clients to outline the same problem: “We all keep stealing share from one another, and therefore the category itself isn’t growing,” said Nancy.

“What we're doing is undermining what we provide. We're commoditising what we provide. We're devaluing what we provide. So we need to grow the category. It would be wonderful if we could all think about the business that way, but in the absence of us all coming together to do that, I do believe we have a responsibility, given the equity, the heritage, what we believe in, the fact that we're going out there to say, 'Do Big Things', we will work hard to grow this category, because we believe in it.

“We have this misperception that the way to get clients to love us more, to trust us more, is to discount ourselves, to over-service them, to do exactly what they say. And that doesn't mean that clients don't tell us to do really smart things. They do, but our job is to also not only answer what they want, but give them what they need.”