Those Coca-Cola Connections

According to Advertising Age Ogilvy has been shortlisted for what Coke calls its quotConnectionsquot assignment This is I imagine what most of the rest of us would call strategic communications planning the bit that sits happiest alongside a close knowledge of the creative process and the bit that media agencies love to talk about in the trades and on conference platformsClearly all the rhetoric hasnamp8217t entirely convinced Coke amp8211 which has decided to add a creative agency to the US media shortlistThere are several interesting things hereFirst Ogilvy like many other ad agencies boasts many excellent account planners By definition their skills would seem to be highly relevant to advertisers seeking a modern creatively driven strategic approach to their communications planning The pitch process will unearth just how relevant Plus Coke is also conducting a global review in which Ogilvy a Coke roster agency is participating as a creative shopSecond Why not The media agencies have for years spun the story that they can create along with the best of their ad agency siblings Why shouldnamp8217t a creative agency do the same in reverse and propose a service based around their inhouse skillsThird The Cog Blog along with many other commentators has pointed to the current unfortunate not to mention lessthanhonest practice of having traders dictate planning decisions by doing whatamp8217s best for their business as opposed to recommending whatamp8217s best for their clients One way out of that hole is to take the responsibility for the strategic planning away from those connected to the tradersFourth The Coke spokesman is Ivan Pollard a media man and planner of considerable reputation and skill who moved clientside comparatively recently He knows what heamp8217s doing and what heamp8217s doing to quote him directly is amp8220amp8230 not only reviewing our agencies but also our agency modelquotFifth Coke is a leader client Others follow its lead Some years ago Coke was in the news as it introduced a new agency payment model subsequently copied by many Expect others to follow this leadSixth As Ad Age pointed out Coke for one would seem prepared to pay for strategic planning Thatamp8217s one in the eye for all those agency CEOs who moan that clients wonamp8217t pay for the planning part of what they do so who can blame them if they have to make their fees up in other rather less transparent waysNext Carat the US incumbent is not participating Coke is a prize client so why would you not want to compete unless of course you had been advised that certain conditions were in place that might make it difficult for you to winFinally Ogilvy will compete against WPP sibling MediaCom as well as Mediavest and maybe some others which should lead to a few interesting conversations within WPPI have two predictions Others will follow this Coke initiative and look outside the traditional media agency structures for aspects of their media assignments And the large media agencies will be the losers in these giant reviews as clients seek more genuinely innovative strategic advice and more transparent behavioursThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Media Village management or associated bloggers Image at top courtesy of freedigitalphotosnet

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Those Coca-Cola Connections

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Those Coca-Cola Connections

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