‘Brands should treat their agencies with more respect’

MWL 2012: Marketers need to treat their agencies as “partners” to produce better marketing rather than play them off one another, according to Marketing Week’s Secret Marketer.

Secret Marketer

The Secret Marketer, whose face was blurred out during a live video link Q&A session at Marketing Week Live yesterday (28 June), told the audience that agencies were an extension of his team rather than an external commodity.

He says: “Over time as client marketing teams have reduced in size and probably de-skilled in terms of experience, we are more and more reliant upon those agencies to bring things to the table that we don’t have ourselves within our own knowledge bank.”

He added that the challenge to this type of relationship, however, is that increasingly agencies “don’t always understand my business or don’t have the skillset to bring me new ideas.”

He says: It’s the question I’m always asking my agencies is do they really appreciate what my customers are saying, what’s happening with my competition.”

The comments come at a time when the likes of Kraft and Heineken are turning to developers and start-ups for creative ideas as they look to change how they build relationships with consumers.

Kraft is pursuing a strategy that aims to break away from the traditional routes of pitches and create new ideas for its brands by bringing in new people through a scheme called The Garage.

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