One of the key effects of the Great Recession is the criteria by which client decision-makers approve work or choose their agencies. It used to be primarily on chemistry, which was borne out by an agency that went deep to understand the client’s business and expressed an insight in marvelous creativity. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. The scars from more than 30 million people losing their jobs is that companies are doing more with less. The mantra is: leaner and meaner. Naturally that flows downhill to agencies and their special talents.
So agencies are now hired and our work is now approved on price. That is, of course, after the strategy, creative and chemistry boxes are already checked. We have certainly experienced this at Spiker Communications. Agencies are regularly chosen, or our work is approved, or disapproved, for production based on the lowest price, even if the strategic thinking and creativity wasn’t the best. As long as it was good enough, the lowest price wins today. Losing sucks, as does producing inferior work when you know better work is sitting there on your desk. I can stomach losing to a better idea, but I have a tough time losing to an unreasonably low price that, in my opinion, devalues what our industry does.
With the world’s media changing so fast– and many clients confused about what to do with Social Media, traditional media and online marketing –this is where clients need an experienced agency to guide them through the maze of options, to help them gain great effectiveness with their marketing efforts, and achieve high levels of efficiencies with their marketing dollars. That is certainly what I would call staying important, and that is certainly important.
And we agencies are the harbinger of things to come, peering out over the horizon for new trends, technology and change so we can prepare clients to make adjustments. Most clients don’t have the time to think about issues like that. And, it would be a welcome relief to have that kind of proactive thinking on their side. And, we can’t afford to offer these services for free.
Since agencies are in the business of building unique brand identities and taking our clients out of their industry clutter into leadership positions, it goes against everything we do to take shortcuts and try to keep it cheap. Cheap, Cheap, Cheap is a bird call and not a marketing strategy. Clients need what we have to offer, today and tomorrow. And you can’t put a price on that.
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