Client weds Agency: To have and to hold
Is it still possible to enjoy a long and happy client-agency marriage?
By TNN |
Is it still possible to enjoy a long and happy client-agency marriage? Long-lasting client-agency relationships are thin on the ground these days. Here, John Tylee looks at the few cherished marriages left in adland, and discovers the recipe for an enduring partnership.
It was a September morning in 1981 and FCB had just lost the British Airways account. In the mews outside the agency, sombre staffers were being addressed by their boss, Bill Barry, when two passenger planes passed overhead.
A pair of long-serving BA account handlers glanced instinctively skywards. The national flag carrier had been a client at the agency in some form since Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister.
Now Margaret Thatcher, 10 Downing Street’s newest incumbent, stood accused of making a present of the business to the Saatchi brothers. For the first time in UK advertising history, an account switch had made the
national TV news.
For years, FCB employees had been looking up at the airborne traffic flying in and out of Heathrow and enjoying a brief moment of pride when they spotted BA’s distinctive livery. This time it was different. “The account handlers looked up, but a moment later were staring at their shoes,” Andrew Cracknell, then FCB’s executive creative director, recalls.
“Our collective self-confidence went. People began worrying that if the management could lose a piece of business the size of BA, what was the likelihood of their own accounts staying.”
Gradually, clients began picking up the vibes. By the mid-80s, Dulux had ended a 25-year relationship, while Heinz, frustrated by FCB’s management problems, fired the agency. These were hammer blows from which it never fully recovered. If FCB’s fate proves anything, it’s that enduring client relationships are like marriages. While they exist and work well, they’re a great source of stability and comfort for both parties. When they end, the fallout may be acrimonious and long-lasting.
Hardly surprising, when a long-standing client’s influence on an agency can be profound. When a boardroom coup threatened to oust Bruce Mason, the chairman of FCB’s True North parent, in the mid-90s, it was SC Johnson, the cleaning products manufacturer and an FCB client since 1953 that came to his rescue. And when Publicis Groupe’s Maurice Levy mounted a hostile bid for True North in 1997, it was SC Johnson’s threat to pull the $400 million business out of FCB should Levy succeed that saw him off.
Whether or not clients of the future will hang around long enough to become such important power brokers is questionable. Even now, the number of enduring marriages is few and becoming fewer. It seems inconceivable that there could ever be another relationship to match that of BBDO and General Electric, which stretches back to 1920. And what of Beiersdorf? The Nivea manufacturer, originally a client of the German-based Wilkens network, remained on board when FCB acquired Wilkens in 1997. This month, agency and client celebrate 100 years of that relationship.
To an extent, these relationships are born of necessity. For one thing, a car client looking to review has very few options. For another, car accounts are complex pieces of business. John Banks, Imagination’s executive chairman, led O&M’s pitch for Ford’s UK business and ran the account for nine years.
He says: “The agency becomes so embedded in the business that a review becomes a massive pain in the arse for the client. As long as you don’t screw up big time, you’re usually OK.” “The amount of confidential information shared between us and our client is profound,” George Rogers, the president and chief executive of Team Detroit, the JWT-led joint venture of six WPP agencies that runs Ford’s US account, says.
“We’re working on programmes and launches stretching well into the future.” Of course, all this assumes that long-term relationships are always good for an agency. Some question whether this is necessarily so, and warn that big long-standing clients who take up so much of an agency’s resource without adding to its creative reputation can be more trouble than they’re worth.
Campaign(C)Brandrepublic
It was a September morning in 1981 and FCB had just lost the British Airways account. In the mews outside the agency, sombre staffers were being addressed by their boss, Bill Barry, when two passenger planes passed overhead.
A pair of long-serving BA account handlers glanced instinctively skywards. The national flag carrier had been a client at the agency in some form since Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister.
Now Margaret Thatcher, 10 Downing Street’s newest incumbent, stood accused of making a present of the business to the Saatchi brothers. For the first time in UK advertising history, an account switch had made the
national TV news.
For years, FCB employees had been looking up at the airborne traffic flying in and out of Heathrow and enjoying a brief moment of pride when they spotted BA’s distinctive livery. This time it was different. “The account handlers looked up, but a moment later were staring at their shoes,” Andrew Cracknell, then FCB’s executive creative director, recalls.
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The rancour with which those directly involved in the FCB and BA split still speak, more than a quarter of a century later, is testament to the anguish that can ensue when a long-running agency-client relationship ends. “It wasn’t just the effect on the agency’s profitability, but the fact that so much emotion had been invested in the account,” Cracknell says. “Our collective self-confidence went. People began worrying that if the management could lose a piece of business the size of BA, what was the likelihood of their own accounts staying.”
Gradually, clients began picking up the vibes. By the mid-80s, Dulux had ended a 25-year relationship, while Heinz, frustrated by FCB’s management problems, fired the agency. These were hammer blows from which it never fully recovered. If FCB’s fate proves anything, it’s that enduring client relationships are like marriages. While they exist and work well, they’re a great source of stability and comfort for both parties. When they end, the fallout may be acrimonious and long-lasting.
Hardly surprising, when a long-standing client’s influence on an agency can be profound. When a boardroom coup threatened to oust Bruce Mason, the chairman of FCB’s True North parent, in the mid-90s, it was SC Johnson, the cleaning products manufacturer and an FCB client since 1953 that came to his rescue. And when Publicis Groupe’s Maurice Levy mounted a hostile bid for True North in 1997, it was SC Johnson’s threat to pull the $400 million business out of FCB should Levy succeed that saw him off.
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Only last year, the company interceded again, forcing FCB’s Inter-public owner to order its McCann Erickson subsidiary to withdraw from the $1.5 billion Reckitt Benckiser pitch and resign its Boots Healthcare International business because of what it claimed was conflict.Whether or not clients of the future will hang around long enough to become such important power brokers is questionable. Even now, the number of enduring marriages is few and becoming fewer. It seems inconceivable that there could ever be another relationship to match that of BBDO and General Electric, which stretches back to 1920. And what of Beiersdorf? The Nivea manufacturer, originally a client of the German-based Wilkens network, remained on board when FCB acquired Wilkens in 1997. This month, agency and client celebrate 100 years of that relationship.
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Moreover, the number reduces to a handful once the car manufacturers are stripped out. They include Ford, which has worked with JWT in the US since 1943 and Ogilvy & Mather in Europe since 1975, Audi and BMW, the founding clients of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and WCRS respectively, and Renault, which has been with Publicis since 1963.To an extent, these relationships are born of necessity. For one thing, a car client looking to review has very few options. For another, car accounts are complex pieces of business. John Banks, Imagination’s executive chairman, led O&M’s pitch for Ford’s UK business and ran the account for nine years.
He says: “The agency becomes so embedded in the business that a review becomes a massive pain in the arse for the client. As long as you don’t screw up big time, you’re usually OK.” “The amount of confidential information shared between us and our client is profound,” George Rogers, the president and chief executive of Team Detroit, the JWT-led joint venture of six WPP agencies that runs Ford’s US account, says.
“We’re working on programmes and launches stretching well into the future.” Of course, all this assumes that long-term relationships are always good for an agency. Some question whether this is necessarily so, and warn that big long-standing clients who take up so much of an agency’s resource without adding to its creative reputation can be more trouble than they’re worth.
Campaign(C)Brandrepublic
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