Review is Good, Yet Purchasing It Will Kill Your Creativity

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Reviews
Review keeps your customers informed about your business.

Recently, “premium” review has gained more popularity from certain businesses. However, it remains a serious issue and is being brought into focus by the popularity of global media.

Many media experts state premium reviews are murdering creativity. Channel integration is a difficult thing to do in practice, because it’s complex and very time-based. The similar thing is true in media. CEO of independent media agency Slingshot, Simon Rutherford, agreed that slashing costs to scoop business is not a wise move.

“Reducing your prices just to win pitches isn’t sustainable, and just puts your agency and staff into a bad position, because you have to start looking where you can recoup dollars before you even start,” Rutherford said. “We’re in the service industry, so it’s important that our clients value the service we provide and the agency can afford to provide a great service. No-one wins in a price war –not the client, not the agency and certainly not staff.”

The number of brands here and abroad that have called media reviews over the last few months has sparked waves of rumors as to why. However, announcements of such reviews keep on coming.

Some commentators speculate that many businesses won’t even result in accounts moving, yet will largely drive prices down. First dubbed as the “media-palooza” by overseas media and adopted by some here, local billings for media accounts up for grabs are said to be up to the $250 million mark. On the larger scale, this runs into billions, with estimates hovering around US$10 billion.

However, CEO of Match Media, John Preston, said many of these global clients haven’t reviewed for quite some time – firstly due to efficiency and secondly because the market has experienced immense change.

“They are spending an enormous amount of money on a global level, and can one agency partnership derive more financial return back to their business? That would be the procurement component” said Preston. “The second part is because the market has changed so much over the past three years and will continue to change, quite dramatically. I think what they [clients] are seeing is quite a significant volume of dollars shifting to digital, and specifically into programmatic, and that area of digital, data, technology, programmatic buying all wrapped into one, I believe, is confusing to a lot of the major clients around the world, in the sense that it’s not 100% transparent to them, in some cases.”

Preston said it’s something clients need more education around, adding that brands have to reignite trust with their agencies to ensure they are getting the best advice.

“So, probably what’s driving this is just a look around to see if there is a better informed agency, a better approach to technology, data and programmatic.”