Michael Farmer’s “Madison Avenue Manslaughter” -- Book Review

Yes the pages are splattered with amp8220bloodamp8221 but using black ink not red and the title is startling enough that it may take some readers a day or two to muster the courage to open it But the industryshaking insights in Madison Avenue Manslaughter make it required reading for everyone who works in advertising marketers and agencies alikeWith a firstclass pedigree and years of practical experience in the trenches of the business author Michael Farmer builds a convincing case for why advertising agencies must make a radical change in the way they manage their businesses He first paints a historical backdrop going back to the early economic roots of the industry showing step by step how agencies once megaprofitable enterprises basking in the glow of advertisingamp8217s amp8220golden ageamp8221 are now fighting for their financial survival whether they admit it or notFarmer shows how the current practice of large marketers buying an agency amp8220staffing planamp8221 a team of people or chunks of their time instead of a clearly defined set of outputs and outcomes makes it almost impossible for agencies to allocate and deploy the resources effectively and profitably Actually Farmeramp8217s larger point is that even if agencies had a better view of their actual workloads they generally lack the tools discipline and practices to effectively match and manage their talent pool to the workamp160 A century of laidback management practices meant to create and cultivate the storied amp8220creativeamp8221 environment have resulted in an industry that today generally lacks the technology workflow management systems project management practices and the sheer will to create and sustain a culture of accountabilityamp160A former management consultant himself Mike Farmer offers one of the clearest explanations of why and how the management consultancies stole the strategic high ground from agenciesamp160 The booming postwar decades of the 1950s60s were perfectly suited for enterprises like agencies that were working directly alongside the chieftains of business helping to create and build mass markets for goods and services But the late 1980s ushered in the imperative of amp8220shareholder valueamp8221 in boardrooms across the globe and CEOs turned their attention to initiatives designed to improve efficiencies and cut costs giving rise to todayamp8217s version of procurement professionals and explaining in large part why finance gained Csuite influence at the expense of marketing which CEOs increasingly came to view as an expense instead of an investmentIllsuited to counsel CEOs in concrete ways to create amp8220shareholder valueamp8221 agency leaders began to lose their access to the highest levels of their client companies and were relegated to instead deal almost exclusively with an increasing demoted marketing team amp160Enter the management consultants who not only helped CEOs engineer new businessbuilding initiatives but also helped procurement pioneer new costcutting initiatives as wellThis context is important Farmer argues because it explains the state of the advertising business in 2015 Compared to years past agencies are much more factories than gardens largely responding to client requests and fulfilling orders on flow charts instead of helping to guide the marketing program in the classical sense as in all the amp82204 Psamp8221 of marketing Pushed down the value chain and beat down by procurement departments agencies continued to react to buyer demands to provide their services and competencies in a commoditized way bundle them up as amp8220inputsamp8221 of roughly equal value based on the suboptimal concept of hourly rates which were then compared against somewhat suspect amp8220industryamp8221 salary and overhead benchmark dataamp160 Using this system that agencies themselves unwittingly created procurement negotiates rates and staffing plans largely independent of the actual Scopes of Work that are assigned by marketing amp160As a result agencies make resource commitments to clients without a clear view of the actual workload then execute the workload without the benefit of the sophisticated tools technology and workflow management techniques employed by other more buttonedup industries This is Farmer says a recipe for disaster and a disaster it has becomeEach chapter heaps fuel onto the argument that the current ways agencies and clients work together is economically unsustainable and both parties including the big agency holding companies know it The publicly traded agency groups have been able to turn in acceptable margins only by cutting costs in unsustainable ways reducing head counts slashing training budgets trading out experienced senior talent for juniors and generally doing more for less resulting in an exodus of overworked ad people who are headed for the greener salaries of marketing technologyThe remedies prescribed for this situation amount to some tough medicineamp160 But for this you39ll need to peruse Madison Avenue Manslaughter yourself bloodstained pages and allThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageMyersBizNet management or associated bloggersamp160amp160

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Michael Farmer’s “Madison Avenue Manslaughter” -- Book Review

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Michael Farmer’s “Madison Avenue Manslaughter” -- Book Review

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