The Case Against Clout

 The Case Against Clout

If you’ve worked in marketing for more than a week, you’re familiar with the agency selection process: brands with hefty marketing budgets put their business in review and agencies (usually three of them) put on a dog and pony show, touting their transparency and performance metrics to the brand. Throughout the request for proposal process (RFP) agencies promise to optimize the brand’s media spend and provide detailed reporting dashboards—all for hefty incremental fees, with no real guarantee of results. More often than not, that approach separates clients from the planning process, agency teams unable to properly track growth KPIs and the business is back in review eighteen months later. This pattern raises critical questions about the true nature of these partnerships and whether today's agency partnerships are genuinely serving their clients best interests.

The Impact of Network Consolidations

Since the pandemic, Holding Companies have clearly shifted the balance of power to centralized models. ‘Westeros’ is winning in this outdated and overplayed season of Game of Holding Company Thrones, as evidenced by their optimistic earnings reports and mergers and acquisitions….and acqui-clout-isitions—but at what cost to their clients?

Two Fundamental Issues in today’s Media Landscape:

1. Marketers are desirous of driving business outcomes, while agencies are focused on full time equivalent (FTE’s). 

2. Agencies are deflecting key issues while making performance media confusing. 

Antiquated Financial Models

In today’s advertising landscape, Marketers are challenged to drive business outcomes, not hours. Agencies like Omnicom Media Group are restructuring to embrace a more integrated, technology-driven approach known as “Agency as a Platform,” aiming to deliver holistic solutions, like business consulting, that extend beyond traditional advertising agency offerings. However, selling this bespoke solution to new clients does not necessarily change the current  antiquated financial models that most clients are paying for: one that is reliant on the FTE (full time equivalent) model of days gone by.   

This reliance on antiquated structures raises significant concerns for Brand Marketers seeking genuine value from their partnerships. When agencies charge based on FTEs, it often creates a disconnect between the services provided and the real business outcomes achieved, undermining the essence of collaboration. Furthermore, it creates systems and processes which bottleneck client outcomes in service of proprietary agency tools like financial models and dashboards. 

To build meaningful relationships, agencies must evolve their compensation strategies to align more closely with client goals and sustained performance. Marketers need to demand the question: if these platforms are so impressive, why aren’t we building compensation models based on results?

Navigating Performance Deflection: Demanding Transparency in Media Investments

While Holding Companies engage in a fierce game of blame—debating the best way to buy media—they collectively shy away from the crucial responsibility of demonstrating results that drive true ROAS optimization in media buying. This is the single largest explanation for the rise of independent media agencies in the last ten years.

We need to stop stating the obvious: the media landscape is perpetually in flux, particularly due to the rising influence of Retail Media Networks like Amazon. This shift should focus on agencies' ability to commit to results with more data centered on lower-funnel transactions. Instead, it has ignited debates around transparency in media buying. While this conversation may lead to clickbait headlines for trade publications, it underscores a fundamental issue: marketers need clearer visibility into their investments. WPP's Mark Read and Publicis’ Arthur Sadoun are both navigating a critical moment as their firms defend their approaches against increasing scrutiny, yet there remains a noticeable lack of commitment to client results.

Clients deserve a voice in how their media is purchased—whether through non-disclosed/disclosed or non-bundled/bundled approaches—each with its own opportunities and challenges. The real conversation needs to exist in establishing standards for tracking results: as we know, each client tracks success differently across many various industries and product offerings: a B2B advertiser like a law firm will use different media tactics than a D2C client selling a subscription-based product. At a basic level, ensuring transparency to optimize the best-performing media, rather than relying on back-end handshake commitments for ‘clout’ should be the foundation of all marketer and agency relationships. Such transparency is essential for serving as a good steward for our clients’ money, for optimizing campaigns and ensuring accountability with agency partnerships.

A key challenge is implementing robust tracking systems to facilitate detailed performance analysis. This critical focus area seems to diminish as holding companies sunset performance marketing agencies in favor of proprietary walled-garden platform models. 

At Powers of Reasoning, we are advocates of open information and transparency in our media buying tactics for our clients. This level of transparency not only enhances accountability but also empowers clients to make informed decisions about their media strategies. We are not beholden to the media mix modeling of yesteryear: we are constantly pushing the model forward to meet our clients’ unique needs. If the conclusion of GOT ends with melting the iron throne, perhaps we can all be empowered and do the same and look to choices by council, not monarchs. 

With all of the existing  marketplace leverage, platform intelligence, and quarter-over-quarter growth, perhaps it’s time for the Big Three Holding Companies to enable their clients to do the same.