Rare is the marketer-agency relationship that is free of conflict, so on the second day of the its annual convention in Toronto, the Canadian Marketing Association made them sit down to work things out in front of an audience.
The panel discussion, called “Getting the Best Out of Your Agency,” put senior agency creatives next to national brand marketers to foster discussion around improving relationships. Moderated by Brent Choi, chief creative officer at Cundari, panelists included Scott Cooper, vice-president, marketing for Molson brands at Molson Coors, Sharon MacLeod, skin and household cleaning brand building director at Unilever Canada, Israel Diaz, executive creative director at David + Goliath‘s new Toronto office, and Andrew Simon, executive creative director at DDB Canada.
Choi stirred controversy from the outset, asking Cooper to choose his ideal agency setup: one large full-service “super” agency, or several smaller specialist companies working together.
“Super agencies suck,” Cooper replied. “If you’re going for mediocre work, then super agencies are the way to go.”
The supposed efficiencies of the “one-team” model usually means client meetings with more than 10 agency staff sitting around the table, he said.
“Are you going to sit there and take that?” Choi prodded Simon, who’s multinational DDB touts services similar to those Cooper derides.
“Scott, you are quite naive,” Simon teased back. “Obviously marketers come in different sizes, so there’s no one-answer-fits-all.”
Simon defended his agency’s model by saying it lets clients dictate its role. “Sometimes we are the super agency, sometimes we’re the lead agency of a number of agencies, and sometimes we’re along for the ride because we bring a specialty… I can tell you from experience that we’ve had the most success when we’ve been able to control [everything].”
Unilever’s MacLeod, however, said larger agencies have done a good job catching up to boutique agencies when it comes to social media.
“The bigger agencies have now invested,” she said. “They’re putting people in [positions] dedicated to figuring out the space. These are people who don’t have to run a business day-to-day, and they’ve actually put a framework around the digital world that’s helped me understand something that’s out of control.”
The panel covered a number of topics, including compensation for social media management and how best to measure results, and key areas of disconnect in getting campaigns to market.
Diaz, like many agency creatives, believes marketers test creative work far too frequently.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work with clients… who every once in a while go with their gut. I think there’s a tendency to involve too many people’s opinions,” Diaz said.
MacLeod pointed out that Unilever’s “Evolution” viral for Dove soap–a winner of two Grand Prix at Cannes in 2008 and one of Marketing‘s contenders for Best of Decade–never went through testing.
