Based on a sample size of 200 advertiser respondents CREAM 2008 revealed just how far short Malaysian advertising agencies in general fell in meeting their clients’ expectations. In increasing the sample to 800 advertiser respondents this time around, CREAM 2009’s finger can now point to individual agencies, separating the wheat from the chaff. Last year, starting with the desire to have a more definitive and clear notion of realities in the Malaysian marketplace, Marketing magazine, with help from research agency TNS Malaysia and advised by R3 Asia Pacific, embarked on an agency evaluation survey.
The research study was named the CREAM Report, CREAM being an acronym standing for Client Relationships and Experiences of Ad agencies in Malaysia. The nature of the research allowed two hundred marketing decision-makers, including company heads, to provide direct feedback about their respective advertising agencies.
The CREAM Report is intended to be an ongoing report card serving as a dynamic barometer to gauge the health of the client-agency relationship and a strategic tool to help clients and their agencies improve the quality of the agency’s contributions and the relationship. The Malaysian data used in the study is benchmarked against findings from similar stakeholder satisfaction studies done elsewhere among service providers which allow us to compare Malaysian results with results from Asia and the world. 66 is the norm for service providers around the world on an overall relationship index that is a composite measure of “today’s satisfaction” and “tomorrow’s loyalty.” Asian service providers scored even better at 70 suggesting a higher quality and greater relevance of service provided by Asian companies to their clients and/or customers Bucking that trend, Malaysia scored 44. Macam ini pun Malaysia boleh? In client’s eyes, Malaysian advertising agencies are not providing the kind of value that they look for in an agency.
Importance of Creating Value
Today, where more is wanted, where clients are looking for their agency to help give them a competitive advantage, agencies too have to have a relevant and competitive advantage of their own. The creation of business value by an advertising agency transforms the clients they serve into staunch agency “apostles” or “ambassadors”. Less than a quarter of Malaysian clients are “apostles” or “ambassadors” of their agencies. Nearly a fifth of Malaysian clients are “satisfied” but not really loyal to their agency. Five percent of Malaysian clients are “hostages” – clients who are not really satisfied but are tied to their agency through global contracts or international alignments. And fifty-five percent are what the TNS stakeholder relationship model calls “terrorists” – clients who are neither satisfied with nor loyal to their advertising agency. Now, more than ever, agencies need to up their ante and do whatever it takes to secure relationships with their client.
Clients are looking for a greater degree of accountability from their advertising agencies and stronger support to help get the most out of their marketing and communication dollar. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently announced they were projecting a 3.5 percent contraction of Malaysia’s economy. For perspective, the IMF projects the US economy to contract by 2.8 percent and the world economy to contract by 1.3 percent. And while the government say they are still banking on domestic consumption to save the day, exports are down and things don’t look too good on the employment side. What this means for agencies is that the relationship could be more fragile than ever and that clients, for budgetary or any other number of reasons, might not need more than a nudge or two to decide the time has come to try out a new agency. “As far as relationships go, I know some marketing companies are finding it rewarding to deal with production houses or third-party suppliers directly when getting work done.
A lot of work is being siphoned away from agencies this way, and the trend will continue to grow. Agencies will suffer when they do not get their agency fee for overseeing such work. In this case, the agency has to demonstrate to the client how they can add value to their business, not just costs.” Khoo Kar Khoon, Communications Director, Nestle Products Sdn Bhd What this means for clients is that this is a timely opportunity to support your agency to change so they can improve allowing you in turn to justify continuing with the relationship. There is no better time than now.
Good Attitude But There’s Not Much Up There….
Clients are satisfied with the proactive and flexible nature of servicing personnel bunch who are available, responsive and quick to revert. There is a great opportunity for servicing people to enhance client’s thinking and not just replicate it. But clients want to see that servicing personnel are value-minded and have an objective, unbiased point of view of the business.
“We used to joke that working with some clients is like going on ‘Fear Factor’ – you have no idea when and how you might be fired.” Greg Paull R3 Asia They would like to see servicing personnel make recommendations based on good consumer insights, be able to justify the need to spend with a return on investment (ROI) focus and be measured against internal or joint key performance indices (KPI’s) – a clear call for accountability. “Funny how award-giving bodies give out separate awards for ‘best creative’ and ‘best market performance’ as if they exist in different planes. We have been approached many times by our ad agencies to allow them to do an edit of the main ad that can compete in the ‘best in creative’ awards. In the end we can evaluate what we are doing by writing down on a piece of paper what we want our legacy to be many years from now, is it creativity that sells or creativity that sells itself?” Noel Lorenzana Until recently, chairman of Unilever Malaysia:
Where’s The Planning?
Agencies are seen to be saying things the client already knows. The gap is around delivering great and new ideas, backed by sound rationale, put forward in a logical way that can make the idea come alive culminating in a perfect creative brief based on an understanding of the brand life stage and having distilled insights from information.
Different Take On “Creative”?
The currency of an agency are its ideas and what an agency sells is creativity. Why then have Malaysian advertising agencies fared poorly in this regard? Clients want to see their agencies produce advertising where there is a strong link between the strategic thinking and the creative idea, is in line with the brief and strikes a balance between creativity and business objectives. “Agencies need to understand that clarity is important to help clients ‘sell-in’ creative ideas to their field marketing staff, so the campaign can roll out effectively into the marketplace. A disconnect in this chain is disastrous.” Allan Khoo, General Manager Branding & Marketin Communication Maxis Communications Bhd Agencies rated lowest on the ability to understand the different purposes of advertising and in creating ads in line with the creative brief. Ideas that win awards are clearly nice to have but do not make much of a difference to the relationship the client shares with the agency.
Over the years, we have applauded agencies on winning awards for their campaigns but only a few have come forward to really measure the strength of the agency client relationship based on ground realities of performance and competitive advantage.
Yes, there are measures and measures somewhere out there which rank and rate agencies on perception, awareness and so on but not on performance based on actual experience ?
But that’s what matters. A transparent measure of ad agency performance where the clients themselves score agencies based on experience on fundamental expectations versus delivery. Rajesh Kumar Deputy Managing Director TNS Malaysia
The real thing
The facts are hard and cold as are the comments and feedback and they are all from real decision-making end users of agency services. These results are based on 200 responses from key decision-makers at companies that feature among the top 100 advertisers in Malaysia. The study was conducted by TNS Malaysia using its branded solution TRI*M. With 12,000 studies, and work for 51 of the 100 Fortune 100 companies, TRI*M is the global leader in customer stakeholder management research – a robust management information system for effectively monitoring, measuring and managing stakeholder relationships. Respondents were asked to comment on their expectations of agencies and their satisfaction against those expectations. Marketers provides feedback on their agencies on attributes involving business professionalism, market knowledge, responsiveness to client needs, value consciousness, innovativeness, holistic offerings, creative awards, etc. CREAM is a transparent look by clients at their agencies in a holistic manner to measure against what agencies are capable of and should be providing to their clients. This providers greater advertising industry transparency to marketers, and it gives greater clarity to individual agencies on areas of strength and areas to improve.
CREAM 2009
2008 was just the beginning, this year we aim to provide even more details. What was studied, in 2008, at an aggregate level across agencies in Malaysia, will be studied for agencies at an individual level and a ranking of agencies will be derived. There will be an award presentation to recognise the leading agency at an overall basis and leading agencies on key leverage attributes driving the relationship.