The Shiny Part

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by Cameron McNaughton
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Avoiding the creation of an unreasonable expectation is critical in an agency search. As a marketer you must be sure that you define specific criteria on which to judge the agencies. You must be honest with yourself about what you need. Sometimes marketers like to focus on what a colleague of mine used to call “shiny part of the business.” What he meant was that we all like talking about the brand level work, e.g., the Super Bowl commercial we might get to do. Often the reality of successfully handling the MarCom needs of a complex business is quite different. An automotive assignment is a good case in point.

Automotive companies are among the most desirable of accounts from the advertising or communications agency perspective. They are big (the automotive segment spends over $18 billion in measured media on an annual basis), have high visibility, and are a showcase for the agency’s work. Whenever an automotive review comes up, the entire industry gets excited and every agency that doesn’t have a conflict wants a piece of the action. Given the size and scope of these accounts, they often create opportunities to try new and innovative approaches to marketing.

I have insights gained from 20 years running automotive accounts at agencies. I have had success too. The challenge was to bring Audi’s business back (from the brink of US extinction in 1993 when they sold 12,500 units)  to a respected luxury brand, selling 75,000 cars in 2000. To make this happen all pieces of business have to work well, and that does not happen unless the agency relationship is on solid footing. The issue that undermines automotive accounts usually has to do with unrealistic expectations that are created from the very beginning of the relationship…the pitch.

If you look back over the last 30 or 40 years, it amazing how often automotive clients and their agencies split up over the repeated issue. It’s always published as “creative differences” but the real reason is that the balance between communicating “brand” messages is out of whack with the need for “retail” or sales-driven messages.

During the pitch everyone spends a great deal of time discussing and working on the “brand” side of the equation. Frankly it’s more fun and the opportunity to do terrific work is more appealing to the senior marketing clients and the agency. Often the retail needs of the business are pushed aside and almost treated as a “necessary evil.” The brand work is important, so it’s not as if anyone is “wrong” to focus on it, the mistake is in not being clear about the retail needs of the business.

When client and agency focus on the brand during the pitch process, it leads to an unreasonable expectation that the agency will spend most of its time working on brand-related issues.  The reality of an automotive assignment is exactly the opposite, most of the agency hours are spent on the retail side of the business, doing everything you can to “make the doors swing” at the dealerships.

This false expectation could have been easily avoided if the marketer had been crystal clear about the retail needs of the business during the pitch and defined them as both part of the evaluative criteria on which the agency would be judged and the scope of work that the winning agency will service.  If both parties go into a relationship that has been defined based on the total needs of the business rather than just the “shiny part,” then the partnership will be on solid footing.  As search consultants we recognize the importance of clearly defining the prospective scope for the agency, the criteria for agency evaluation, and role and relationship across multiple agency partners.. all of which is part of the winning formula.

One more thing about automotive marketing communications, the agency that can figure out how to bring effective digital communications and analytics down to the dealer level will never be wanting for an automotive assignment.  One of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers and their dealers today is that their old retail communications standby…newspaper…is no longer effective.  They need a new “toolkit” to make the doors swing.

If you’d like to discuss how best to balance development of the brand versus driving the retail needs of any business, or finding the best agency to do so, please send me an email at cmcnaughton@rcgconsulting.com.