Networks, Old and New

I39m regularly accused here of being antinetwork Which is ironic as from the early 199039s through to when I left corporate life in 2006 I held international or global positions For example I was one of Crispin Davis39 team at Aegis working on turning a group of disparate but highly successful local media agencies into the Carat network and extending what was a European operation into the US and APACThe international side of agency life is challenging Large clients hire you because you39re a network they assume you work the same way to the same high standards using the same tools and techniques across the world After all that39s what they tend to do with their brandsThey expect you to share experiences and lessons learned To bring the experience working on the client in one market to working on the same client elsewhere To hit the ground running on any new assignment To help the client enter new markets And so onThey also want to be assured that a small piece of business locally benefits from the economy of scale that comes with being part of something far larger and more significant to the agency globallyAll this is easier said than done easier on a spreadsheet than on the groundAgencies are local businesses They39re expected to deliver their numbers locally and they deliver solutions locally to their local clients Asking a local office to resign an important client to help the network win something smaller in the specific market even if bigger and more significant globally is never easyStrategies may be global but executions are local Lessons can be learned globally and distilled into guidelines and norms but still the implementational planning and buying is going to vary place to placeTo deliver a central service agencies need central revenues There are multiple ways of solving this with a central fee from the client obviously the ideal Unfortunately many clients think otherwise after all their revenues are by and large generated locally tooquotYou39re making money out of us in however many markets so sort it out amongst yourselvesquot runs the argumentI39ve been through every internal and external manouver known to man from crosscharging to taxing from moving people around to setting up consultancy arrangements that deliver a chargeable benefit I do know how it works and it39s not an easy dilemma to solveBut times have changed data knows no boundaries and online advertising can be managed from the centerYet the same old problems seem to bug the same old networks Some international HQs are still too internally focused spending too little time on addressing how best to serve their clients internationallyMany are stuck in the old ways with data and systems bolted on to an old operating model based unsurprisingly on how local offices have operated for yearsIt should be easier for the newbies to set up one transparent PampampL per client to pull together the information needed to make the central international case to client management and to deliver visible benefits internationally from the startThe established networks fall prey to the old joke about a tourist stopping to ask a farmer the way to Dublin quotWellquot says the farmer quotIf I was you I wouldn39t start from herequotThe old networks who themselves were let39s remember once the new kids on the block started off as local operations and were acquired by someone who then made a merit out of becoming internationalThe newer guys39 journeys to international network status varies of course but they do have the benefit of learning from others39 mistakesWith data and systems at their heart from the start the newbies will do things differently They39ll change the gameShould be interestingClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Networks, Old and New

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Brian Jacobs

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