Media owners and agencies have railed against early signs of a massive line-up of major media account reviews this year which unnecessarily disrupt already pressured workloads.
Some pitch consultants have said major advertisers are trying to ascertain whether they should bundle their digital, search and social media activities into a single media agency partner and believe the only way to ascertain the direction they should take is through a pitch process.
However, senior media and agency executives have told AdNews they are increasingly concerned about the volume of reviews in the wind and the enormous disruption it places on already tight resources.
“Why do clients need to do this?” said one media executive who did not want to be named. “I’m no big friend of media agencies a lot of the time but I don’t think all these reviews to screw down remuneration or because a company has a new CMO does the whole industry any favours. Something is fundamentally broken. It’s hugely disruptive for everyone.”
Another media executive said the pitch consultants were agitating for the reviews. “You’ve got Richard Halmarick’s Kinesis show doing stuff, all the usual pitch consultants and we’re hearing that KPMG and PwC have been offering those sorts of services as well,” he said. “The whole thing is getting nasty.”
Trinity P3 managing director Darren Woolley said there were a handful of very large account reviews being drawn up which may be triggering market concerns.
“They’re pretty
much all because companies are asking where does digital sit and should it be
incorporated in a traditional or a separate agency,” he said. “I haven’t seen a
lot of indications they’re looking for cost reductions.”
But Woolley did
warn agencies not to try and win accounts on price this year. “Perhaps all the
pressure is because people are wanting to win the account on price alone,” he
said. “The old adage fits here – you get what you pay for.”
Others, however, said there was as much onus on advertisers and procurement
departments to understand the difference between price and value and said
procurement processes and evaluation models forced the industry to lowest cost,
not effectiveness.
Another pitch consultant, Enth Degree’s Graham Webster, said his firm was not seeing any activity so far of an uplift in media account reviews, although he too confirmed there were some large accounts up for renewal this year.
“There are a
couple of large ones that I know are up for review this year which I won’t go
into that might be creating some concerns for the media,” he said.
“But we’re not seeing any disproportionate increase in reviews. Not at this
stage, anyway.”
This article first appeared in the 08 February 2013 edition of AdNews, in print and on iPad. Click here to subscribe for more news, features and opinion.
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