By his own admission, Brett Marchand was elected chairman of the Institute of Communications and Advertising last November because he was the compromise candidate.
“I was the only [ICA director] not on one side or the other,” says Marchand. “One camp was [saying] that ‘Everything is fine, we just need to tweak things and Rupert [Brendon, longtime ICA president and CEO] is doing a great job,’ and the other side was, ‘We need to blow things up and start from scratch.’ “
In the end, dynamite wasn’t used to solve the ICA’s woes, though at one point it seemed like a viable option. In the last year the association’s relevance has been called into question and three of its largest agency members quit amid rumblings of widespread discontent.
Eight months into his one-year term, Marchand is attempting to turn things around. The “new” ICA has revamped its service offering and is putting on more for-fee activities. It also intends to boost its membership rolls and has reduced the annual dues charged to larger agencies. Plus, with Brendon’s departure in December, there’s a new management team. In May, an outsider, Gillian Graham, was hired as CEO and longtime ICA vice-president Jani Yates was promoted to president. The ICA board, Marchand says, no longer resembles a showdown between the Hatfields and McCoys.
Much of what Marchand et. al. have announced sounds good, but will it play to its agency audience after years of mounting frustration?
Maybe not. Besides the well-publicized departures of Publicis and MacLaren McCann last year, Young & Rubicam quietly walked out of the ICA at the start of this year. “It was a huge item on our P&L,” says Susan Murray, executive vice-president and chief marketing officer at Y&R, of the $75,000 annual fee her agency paid the ICA. “We looked around the table at a management meeting and said, ‘What are we getting for this?’ Nobody could really come up with anything that was terribly critical to our business.”
While not exactly death blows, the departures of Publicis and MacLaren did jolt the ICA into something of a mid-life crisis. The discussion points for its fall 2006 meetings (obtained by Marketing) acknowledged the defections, stating the institute was “under threat from non-renewals” and that member defections would result in a $127,000 operating shortfall. (That was prior to Y&R’s departure.)
While Publicis and MacLaren refused to talk about the “new” ICA, Y&R says it is keeping an open mind. “We’ll certainly keep listening,” says Murray. “It is just about looking for value for the money. In my opinion it was the smaller to mid-sized agencies that used the ICA the most.”
The ICA doesn’t expect to stray too far out of the black in its 2007 fiscal year because the disappearing fees were offset by what is effectively a nine-month savings in CEO salary until Graham takes the position in September, says Andy Macaulay, the ICA’s treasurer.
Plans to reduce the ICA’s heavy reliance on member fees sounds chancy over the longer term. Currently, 66% of the ICA’s revenue comes from annual fees, a number that is likely to come down as it reduces the top dues paid by big agencies to $50,000 from $75,000. But for-fee events, such as the recent ICA-run leadership forum, could take time to gain traction. The May Future Flash event only broke even, Macaulay says.
Not only does the ICA have to lure back former dues payers, it wants to add approximately 15 new members and must regain the affection of a group of paid-up, but dissatisfied members. “I will remain open-minded, but very skeptical,” says Frank Palmer, Vancouver-based chairman and CEO of DDB Canada. “The ICA to me has always been more Toronto-centric. It has not kept up with the times and what the industry really needs today. I’m hopeful that the changes that they are talking about will really make a difference.”
It seems the ICA has less of a credibility gap with smaller agencies, which treasure the institute’s resources. “The value is so good that in a sense I can’t really use what’s there in total. It’s vast,” says Bob Michener, president and CEO of 10-person Toronto agency Campbell Michener & Lee.
Marchand’s laundry list of changes also includes: greater promotion of the Cassies-“it should be the most important show in the country”-and turning it into a money-maker; improve the ICA’s Communications and Advertising Accredited Professional program; start a Masters-level program with a Canadian university; and emphasize the value advertising brings to clients.
The ICA also expects to play a more consultative role with the federal government and is trying to hammer out a new RFP process with Ottawa. “We have taken a different tack with Public Works and the feds in general, which is to sit at the table and figure out what is the right thing to do instead of firing off nasty letters,” says Marchand.
He’s also hopeful the ICA can eventually welcome Publicis, MacLaren and Y&R back into the fold. “I wouldn’t say we specifically put a mandate together to get them back, but we did one that I am pretty confident addresses some, if not all, of their issues.”
Time will tell if the “new” ICA can prove its relevance once again. If not, those board meetings might start getting explosive.
