Advertising Week 2017: Building the Agency of the Future
Tags: CMO, Advertising Agency, Advertising, Marketing

There’s no denying that it’s an interesting time to work in advertising. While some may claim that “interesting” is a euphemism for “troubling,” I have a much more optimistic outlook for the industry. In the face of an incredibly complex marketing landscape, marketers truly need agency support. This is backed by a recent Gartner survey that revealed over 43 percent of marketers expect their use of agencies to increase over the next three to five years.

However, this optimism comes with a heavy dose of realism. Those of us leading agencies have watched the advertising industry evolve significantly over the course of our careers. The rise of programmatic technology, brand safety concerns, Facebook and Google’s growing dominance and improved access to reliable data are just a few of the developments that have completely upended our industry, challenging the way we traditionally thought about building campaigns and shaping brands.

Keenly aware of the need to react to these changes, agencies have reviewed their offerings, with many, like Walrus, making significant investments in new capabilities like media departments, public relations specialists and in-house data banks, to name a few. With these additions, ad agencies are slowly, but surely, on their way to building more holistic solutions for brand marketing leaders hoping to define, build, shape or refresh their brands.

However, there is still work to be done. Consultancies are quickly changing advertising’s competitive landscape, major brands like P&G and Unilever are pulling back on advertising investments and nearly half of agencies are prepared to lose work to in-house teams this year. To ignore these warning signs would be foolish. It’s time to assess the strength of our agencies and bolster our talent rosters. And it’s time to really tune into the needs and priorities of brand leaders.

More specifically, this means tuning into the needs and priorities of chief marketing officers.

The Harvard Business Review recently found that an astounding 80 percent of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs. Chief among the complex reasons for this finding is the lack of clarity regarding the role of the modern CMO, which is neither consistent nor clear across or within companies. While this uncertainty poses a challenging situation for CMOs, it also creates a prime opportunity for advertising agencies to step up and become the partner they need to conquer the complexity.

But how exactly can we do that? Glad you asked. One way is to play nicely on an agency roster. Whether you like it or not, after you win a piece of business, many times you are joining a roster of partner agencies. Park your ego at the door and remember the CMO and his or her marketing team are trying to build a competent team of partners to help drive their business forward. If you put your client’s business first and work well with the other roster agencies, the marketing team will appreciate it, trust you more and ultimately (and counterintuitively) give you more business.

On Monday, September 25, I will be talking more about how ad agencies can better support CMOs and marketers alongside some incredible, accomplished brand and agency leaders. From identifying and tackling the challenges facing CMOs today, to reexamining agency offerings and pricing models, our panel is going to debate the critical issues we need to address today to keep ad agencies strong and healthy in the years ahead.

This is going to be fun.

See Walrus at Advertising Week New York 2017 on Monday, September 27 at 4:30 pm at B.B. Kings. Additional information here.