Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
Today we publish an article about McDonald’s and their absolutely outrageous demands laid down in the pitch for invited agencies. And not just any agencies. They invited WPP, Publicis and Omnicom. Only WPP had the backbone to stand up and say, “Fuck off. You can’t talk like this with us.” I wrote about something similar in yesterday’s diary entry, and just this morning I read the article about McDonald’s in the Adweek. Agencies must put an end to these insatiable appetites of advertisers, if they want to survive and prosper. Since there are advertisers and agencies, there is conflict between them. Clients have always wanted to get the best team and the best ideas from the agency, but if possible not to pay a dime. Nancy Salz, a well-known consultant from New York who deals with resolving agency-client conflicts, in her book How to get the best advertising from your agency, which we translated and published 26 years ago, says: “If you want to get the best advertising from your agency, enable them to profit.” Period! McDonald’s is now asking their agencies to work for nothing until a certain point, and then to participate in profit-sharing. That would be the same as if I was to go three months to eat at McDonald’s (God forbid) and say: You will feed me for three months. If the food I eat at your place triggers my creative brain cells, and I think of something that will bring me money, I will give you part of the profit, but if I earn nothing, forget the money for everything I ate.” I would be kicked out of the restaurant head first.
OK, clients aren’t fair, but agencies are still more to blame. It takes guts to say “Enough is enough. This can’t go on any longer.” They need to come together and agree. They need the advertisers’ budgets, but advertisers need the creative ideas from agencies much more. An agency may open a restaurant and it will survive, but the client has nowhere else to find good ideas except in agencies. In our work, the hardest thing to say is “NO”. This has led this entire industry to this situation. It benefits no one.
I remember a year before the World Football Championship in Brazil they were doing a reconstruction of the camp where the Brazilian national football team prepares for every major tournament. Part of the camp is also a large hill that serves for conditioning training. Since the camp was closed for half a year – which is how long it takes for barley to mature after planting – agency Africa, whose client is the leading Brazilian brewer AB InBev, whose brand Brahma is also the main sponsor of the national team of Brazil, proposed to the client to plant barley on this hill, which will later be used to make a limited edition of 2,014 numbered bottles of beer (association to the year in which the World Cup was held). They also proposed a slogan: The taste of boots of Brazilian players! Barley was planted, the whole mountain was covered by video cameras which recorded barley growing around the clock, and later through acceleration they achieved the ultimate result. They even filmed the Brazilian coach walking through the field, taking an ear of barley, rubbing it between his fingers and inhaling the scent with a deep exhalation.
Everything was well done, you can see the short video here:
The beer caused a frenzy in Brazil. All bottles were sold out in a single day at very exclusive prices. The client earned money. When they called the agency to agree on a budget for the creative, they received the following reply: “First let’s agree on a price for the product idea, we’ll do creative in a pinch, that’s a trifle.” That’s how you do it. Everything that agencies can sell to their clients are ideas, the rest is physical work. But ideas should be appreciated. Clients will not appreciate them if the agencies themselves don’t. It’s not uncommon that an agency offers creative at bargain price (or nothing) at a pitch for a client, and then settle their costs from the media budget. And customers know that, but they accept such game. Pure prostitution on both sides. When you go out on a pitch, don’t respond to the task set before you. Explore your client’s business and find a bigger problem than that for which they issued a pitch. Saša Savić, CEO of agency MediaCom in New York, says that in this way they win 84% of the pitches they participate in. That’s why – among other things – Saša was declared media director of the year for 2015 in America, and MediaCom was declared Agency of the Year. A Sarajevan has mastered all the shenanigans.
Yesterday I also wrote about how immature our industry is, that it’s not yet an adult. Today on Leader’s portal I read that last night, simultaneously by video link, in Zagreb and Ljubljana Deloitte Private Clubs were opened for business elite, for leaders. Exclusive guest, Emil Tedeschi, President of the Atlantic, said: “Our business elite is not educated enough, is not wide enough either for learning, or talk, and as long as we don’t work on our own quality, we will not get the respect of society.” This is also true of advertisers.
When I sent this diary entry to Adnan to translate it into English, he sent me a mail in which he wrote: “You’re on a roll with predictions :) While you’re at it, why not write in the diary that we will get a million from somewhere :)
I had to add this.