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Are you choosing an agency or getting the leftovers?

Jul 26, 2017
1 min

Are you choosing an agency or getting the leftovers?

As agency tenure has declined the new business market for agencies has, of course, naturally increased. In a busy new business market, the better agencies have to choose more carefully which pitch invitations to accept - they can’t afford to go after everything. But agencies are repeatedly told their market is oversupplied, and advertisers approach it like it's a buyers’ market. Ironically, is a shorter average agency tenure making it more of a sellers’ market? And, if so, ar

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Five ways to spot an agency bullshitter.

Jun 26, 2017
4 min

Five ways to spot an agency bullshitter.

“False positive” is a scientific term. It’s used when something gets a positive result from a test that should have produced a negative result. In the world of medicine they are acutely aware false positives (and false negatives) and therefore they will often retest results before acting, particularly if the result seems unlikely and the actions are serious. In the advertising world, the term false positive has a place too. I find it a useful way to describe somebody who has

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On Procurement and Pensions

Jun 21, 2017
2 min

On Procurement and Pensions

Marketing procurement continues to get a lot of flack from the agency community, not least for heavy handed negotiation practices over the levels and terms of fee payments. There are lots of contentious issues that contribute to the cyclical debates between these two parties: What is a reasonable overhead calculation? What is a reasonable profit? How much should a middleweight creative team cost? How many billable hours are there in a year? Spreadsheets are calculated and rec

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What Brands Can Do for Brexit

Jun 19, 2017
2 min

What Brands Can Do for Brexit

The laws of investment apply to marketing investments as much they apply to investing in starting a business or buying government bonds: you cannot increase your return on a reduced investment without increasing your risk. To put this statement into a context for the challenge facing marketers, and assuming past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour, then the uncertainty facing British businesses in the face of Brexit will encourage many businesses to batten down the h

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If I could only ask one question in an advertising pitch

Aug 31, 2016
3 min

If I could only ask one question in an advertising pitch

There was a time when it was enough to have a reasonable non-vocational degree from a reasonable university to make it in the advertising business – because you could learn the rest on the job. You’d learn about advertising strategies and ways of working, you’d learn about marketing, and you’d pick the rest up through some sort of process of osmosis. And on top of that you’d get a bit of training once every couple of years. It’s not enough though, really, is it? And I doubt i

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My wife is dating again.

Apr 19, 2016
4 min

My wife is dating again.

OK. Guilty. In a slightly cynical manner I borrowed your interest with an offbeat headline, sorry. But please bear with me – I’ll get to an important point. Just pretend for a minute that my wife had been dating again. We might have had a conversation something like this: Me: “Have you got any plans for the weekend, darling?” My wife: “I've got a couple of first dates lined up, that’s all.” she replies casually. Awkward silence as the sense of incred

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RFIs are out of control

Dec 23, 2014
2 min

RFIs are out of control

(This article was first published in Campaign Magazine 23.12.2014) RFI submissions have somehow morphed from questionnaire responses into creative showcases, requiring significant investment of time and money. At a recent RFI awards ceremony a high-cost brochure clad in Perspex and one-off magazine with a video were lauded for their high-production values. I fear that we’re regressing to the beauty parades of the 80s and 90s, but just in brochure form. So what is the problem?

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