In-Housing and Trust

Surely there are agencies with access to evidence and data How come their expertise is not being accessed as frequently as it could beMaybe the influencer market is too small for anyone to bother much aboutThe issue of influencers and their pay and thus the size of the market is in the news here as the whole matter is the subject of a recommendation from MPs to the UK government that an investigation is held into what are referred to by The Guardian as quotinconsistent pay rates and evidence of a racial pay gapquot The influencer market is estimated in The Guardian piece to be worth 6bn in 2020 rising to 241bn by 2025 So not small potatoes and well worth the botherIt seems though that when it comes to direct relationship between brand and influencer the choice of individual and the details of any deal are frequently handled inhouse as opposed to by the client39s media or creative agencyDespite what you may read inhousing is nothing new Many advertisers PampampG Unilever Mars Diageo to name but a few have been handling certain media functions for decades But there is no question the inhousing trend has accelerated both in terms of number of advertisers investing in specialists and the functions their teams deliverSome of this makes a lot of sense In the case of performance marketing of a typical fastmoving consumer goods brand linking the advertiser39s proprietary firstparty data with social media outputs and adjusting as you go along is at least in theory made smoother if the whole exercise is done within the advertiserSetting corporate policy on such sensitive issues as diversity inclusiveness and social responsibility and linking such policies to media activities is hard for any third party to doNone of this is to suggest the agency can39t contribute It can and it should by using its collective experience supported by research and insights to offer informed impartial advice However quotimpartial advicequot is something agencies put at risk when they chose to make money doing agency deals with media vendors After all if you39re risking impartiality in your media selection by acting in a nontransparent manner why should anything you advise be trustedTo add to the perfect storm of declining agency influence the giant social media platforms have built impressive directtoclient sales operations They39ve in effect disintermediated the agencies although they make all the right noises to convince the agencies to think otherwiseThe extent of the work done inhouse by the advertiser is correlated with trust It39s not black and white Having a team responsible for how the money is spent and ensuring the company39s corporate reputation is at the very least protected makes perfect sense and should happen anywayBut there are borderline tasks when the thought must occur quotI39d be better off doing this myself rather than risk getting into a fight over trust and transparencyquotThe best inhousing teams work with their agency partners They recognize that the agency has experience outside of their own narrow sector and the resources that can be brought to bear where necessary to enhance client performance through partnershipThe trust and transparency debate was downplayed by the largest agencies when it first appeared quotNothing to see herequot was a recurring themeSome of us though recognized that you reap what you sow and that trust once lost is mighty hard to regainClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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In-Housing and Trust

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Brian Jacobs

Jim Lecinski | Clinical Marketing Professor | The Insomnia Cookies Case - The GOST Model Taught at Northwestern - By Mike Linton

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