The French Revolution
Publicis has had the enviable misfortune of being the target of other agency holding companies’ ire. It outgrew competitors and won blue-chip clients from WPP in particular.
Publicis was an early, unabashed proponent of principal-based buying, which is when the agency acquires the rights to inventory in bulk and resells that inventory to its marketer clients. It remains a touchy subject, though it seems to have caught on across holdcos.
Also, Publicis has acquired tech and data businesses with rival agency clients. And some of those agencies, holdco shops in particular, prefer to spend elsewhere.
So why is Publicis still winning?
The agency has a bunch of other unique selling points, Digiday reports.
For one thing, Publicis offers friendlier payment terms of 180 days. And new clients get fee-free internal resources for the first year at least.
Oh, also, apparently one contributing factor behind the consolidation of Hershey’s media account with Publicis last year was an offer of one free Super Bowl ad – going for about $8 million a pop.
And we can’t forget good ol’ principal media. Agency buyers say they can get behind the idea because it means Publicis brings them cheaper inventory.
Any Fool Can Do It
The Dollar Shave Club, the razor brand that was an early DTC standout, is cutting into new territory once again. The CPG created a unique mash-up of in-housing and influencer marketing.
Dollar Shave Club decided to make a group of 23 customer-brand ambassador types a sort of de facto in-house creative strategy agency.
The group, dubbed the Order of the Blade (Dollar Shave Club’s name), was assembled for one campaign, but, like, hit it off or something. And now they have Dollar Shave business cards, as Ad Age reports.
At least one member of the OOTB (our abbreviation) is worth his salt, having successfully pushed through campaign creative containing only his personal Venmo code and the copy: “hey everybody, give me a dollar.”
The group of 23 hadn’t known what the campaign was about, either. The whole “OOTB” thing was foisted on them.
“It’s a fun aspect of Order of the Blade,” says Dollar Shave Club CEO Larry Bodner. “If you get into a fraternity, you don’t know everything that’s going to go on.”
So far, the OOTB handles only creative strategy. Next up, media!
The End Of Critics
Traditional media, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Vanity Fair, are cutting criticism, like book, movie, restaurant and art reviews. The Chicago Tribune, once famous for movie reviews, no longer carries them at all.
One major cause, as reported by New York Magazine, is the data transparency about what stories drive digital readership. Although reviews were once an indispensable part of a newspaper’s art section, they are now easily identified as traffic laggards.
But it’s not just publishers’ internal metrics that discourage cultural criticism. Another problem is one the ad world describes as “fragmentation” or “currency drama.” The end of mass reach.
For example, it used to be much easier for cultural criticism to break through back in the cable TV days. Critics knew everyone with some exposure to radio and TV had seen the same new movie trailer, new brand announcement or upcoming TV show.
Nowadays, it’s difficult to intuit whether a movie, product or bit of content has broken through to a mass audience. Box office numbers, traditional TV ratings and top-seller book lists were all common zeitgeisty things that anchored fans and writers of cultural criticism. Those things just no longer hold much weight.
But Wait! There’s More!
AI analytics software startup Databricks raises $1 billion at a $100 billion valuation. [Bloomberg]
Only 37% of Americans have a positive view of big business, down from 46% in 2021 and 54% in 2019. [Business Insider]
Horizon Media executives sue the media agency alleging racial and gender discrimination. [Adweek]
Prebid’s Transaction ID change has reignited the programmatic debate between publisher-driven innovation and open standards. [AdMonsters]
