It used to be that a new client CMO = death sentence for incumbent agencies. Yet in the past couple months, we’ve witnessed several examples of incumbent shops beating the odds and retaining the account. MediaCom recently pitched against several other media shops and emerged the victor for Staples, even adding the UK and Canada to its existing domestic duties. Philips Electronics is re-awarding Carat London with its global media duties and Revlon has come running back to Carat after briefly handing over the reins to Initiative. To top it off, Initiative has also retained and added duties to their Big Lots account, after a review which included several other shops.
Notice that all of these incumbents are media shops. Perhaps it has to do with accountability: media shops are particularly good at pulling out the numbers and wooing clients with results and figures, while creatives…. Well, here’s a pretty storyboard we made??
Regardless of the cause, this could be a sign that incumbents may actually have a fighting chance in the crazy world of pitches.
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2 comments:
pretty storyboards? Ouch. I think you're a media person.
I'm not an any type of person yet seeing as I've not yet graduated, but I do wonder how all these media shops manage to hold onto their businesses. There's definitely a trend here that I'm not seeing reciprocated on the creative end. And it probably has nothing to do with the quality of the creative at all. I'm just speculating as to how these shops have managed to hang onto their business despite the odds. Who knows what the secret weapon is?
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