W
E A
TER
ENT
me a better client? Ad Age
how they’ve achieved that
to do even better in 2012.
ponses will inspire you.
and most strategic result.
As a team, we get most
things right, but I think we
could always benefit from
spending more time and
energy toward staying
connected at a high level—collaborating,
idea sharing and brainstorming.”
TIMVANHOOF,
DIRECTOR-MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS,
STATE FARM
“I’ve started doing
something a little
differently with some of the key agencies.
I’m calling it my ad-agency advisory
counsel. I’ve picked a leader from each [lead
shop] to dig into business matters—more
than just collaborating and integrating
advertising, but looking at what are the
business issues facing our brand, and some
of the even more local challenges in
marketing communications in advertising.
For example, with retainers and production
fees ... we all feel a downward pressure on
that ... but we’ve not really engaged in
conversations with agencies about how to
best compensate them. We meet every
month and it’s already brought some issues
to the forefront that I, as the client, wasn’t
realizing they were having.”
KEEPTHECHANGE
Some things Best Buy Senior VP-Marketing
Drew Panayiotou will and won’t do in 2012
THINGS I’LL KEEP:
1. Tissue sessions that are deep-dive
discussions around the creative brief
2. Tweaking account teams for fit with
Best Buy culture
3. Routine top-to-top monthly dinners
4. Better advance planning
THINGS I’LL CHANGE:
1. Driving more
cross-agency
collaboration
between media
planning and buying
2. Investing too
much time on poorly
written briefs. Get the
brief right the first time.
3. Thinking about
advertising in a
less-siloed fashion.
RUSSELLWEINER,
CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, DOMINO’S
“Involve [the agency] in
your entire business, not
just the advertising. Make
them partners in the process, from
planning to execution.”
CLARKWOOD,
CMO AT AUTOTRADER.COM
“We need our agency,
Doner, to push us out of
our comfort zone. ... One of
the commitments I’d make to the agency is
that we are open to being pushed and I’m
encouraging the team to be more open to
ideas and opportunities to expand our
marketing approach. I rely heavily on the
agency to bring us really clear objective
thinking. There’s an expression, ‘you can’t
see the forest through the trees,’ but
sometimes we can’t see the tree through
the bark. We get so close to it that
sometimes we can’t step back. If the truth
hurts, let’s listen to it—and have them give
us a sanity check sometimes from the
outside looking in.... Thequestionto my
team if the work is off target is, was that the
agency’s fault or our fault? Chances are it’s
our fault.”
MARC
PRITCHARD,
GLOBAL MARKETING AND BRAND BUILDING
OFFICER, P&G
“We are all dealing with
constant change and the always-on, real-
time nature of brand building. As a client,
in 2012, I want P&G to become brilliant at
creating big, creative ideas and adopting a
‘do-learn’ approach to brand building. This
means doing and learning simultaneously,
rather than learning, learning, learning
some more, and then doing. It’s more
important than ever to act in real time
with big ideas that engage the hearts and
minds of every consumer we serve. We
are on an exciting journey with our
partners and I’m excited to see what new
opportunities 2012 will bring.“
Advertising Age | January 9, 2012 9
BACARDI CMO SHARES AGENCY
ADVICE FROM SIMON CLIFT
To enhance her company’s relationships with shops,
Silvia Lagnado turned to her former Unilever boss for tips
■ BY E.J. SCHULTZ eschultz@adage.com
BACARDI’S GLOBAL CHIEF marketing
officer, Silvia Lagnado, puts a premium
on having good relationships with her
agencies. Yet Ms. Lagnado, who took
the post in 2010 after a lengthy career
at Unilever, always sees room for
improvement.
“The quality of your leadership and
the quality of your relationship with
the agencies makes a huge difference,
and I don’t think we are as good as we
need to be here,” she said.
To get some advice, she invited former Unilever CMO Simon Clift to talk
to her team at Cannes last year. Mr. Clift,
who conducts similar seminars for
McDonald’s marketing managers in various countries, shared his major points
with Ad Age. A few are listed here, along
with observations from Ms. Lagnado:
The process by which the work
will be briefed, developed and
judged is laid out in advance,
understood and agreed by all
parties.
A client allowing senior marketing
executives to swoop in at the end of a
campaign’s development can complicate things for the agency, Ms. Lagnado
said. She empowers Bacardi’s global
brand managers to make all decisions.
“Be clear, not just to [the] agency but
internally in the business, who … will
make the call,” she advised. It doesn’t
mean the brand leader won’t consult
with senior executives, she added, but
“the brand manager still makes the
call.”
The brief is tightly focused on
a single primary objective.
Ms. Lagnado encourages her agencies
to “push back if the brief isn’t good and
take co-ownership of making it good.”
It is one of the main areas where agen-
cies let her down, she said. “They
accept a poor brief. They should know
even better than we do, because it’s
their business to do creative work. And
they know how much more powerful
it is to do work to a great brief.”
The brief targets a measurable
business result based on
consumer behavior change.
Good briefs can be written on just
one page, including the business objective, consumer target, behavior change
sought and key message, Ms. Lagnado
said. “Most creative people just have no
patience for anything much longer
than that,” she added.
The criteria for judgment,
including the specific role of
qualitative and quantitative
testing, are agreed upon
upfront.
If an agency pushes back on testing
methods or results “we listen … but
the decision is ours in the end,” said
Ms. Lagnado. “Part of a great [client-agency] relationship is if you can be
clear why you’ve made the decision
you’ve made.” If the explanation is
“fair and sensible, even though you
might disagree, that’s OK,” she said.
Clients should test to learn if the work
is good and “avoid testing just to sell
the work internally,” she added.
There is a realistic time
schedule, with sufficient slack
to explore, test and, if
necessary, restart.
Ms. Lagnado recommends starting the
briefing process 18 months before you
want to be on air. When timelines get
squeezed, time for the creative work
gets cut more than not. “The problem
is that creative development is unpredictable by nature,” Ms. Lagnado said.
“And you don’t know when you are
going to get a great idea. If you
squeeze that too much, you basically
don’t give yourself time to try … until
you have something exciting.”
PROBLEM CLIENTS ARE NOTHING NEW
A book being penned by Raymond Rubicam’s
grandson Duncan Pollock tells the story of how
the ad legend resigned a difficult client, Pall Mall,
in the 1940s. Read the excerpt at AdAge.com.
