This is a Member opinion piece by Rasha Rteil, independent marketing advisor and The Marketing Society Member, drawing on two decades on both the client and agency side of the industry. The views expressed are her own.
The agency is driving its own transformation. Unsurprisingly, having been an agency lead myself and a client before to an agency, today, some marketer clients are merely passengers on a ride to Charlie's Chocolate Factory, and nobody has explained what happens at the end.
Most groups have centralized technology, moved production and engineering into global delivery hubs (not all, but most), bought data and audience assets, and have folded artificial intelligence into the operating model by recusing hundreds of ‘future proof’ skillsets from their AI engineering work. While another group has cut close to 11,000 jobs and says more will follow. Each calls it their 'renaissance.'
But now, CMOs are concerned if these changes are ‘driving value’ for their business. The agency transformation story today has been written for the agency’s investors, or for pitch theatre, but what future are the CMOs and their teams being told?
Back in 2022, when I sat on the client side, global, regional, and local agency leads reached out with a transformation story: Outcome-based model, one-stop shop, performance-based model, technology-enabled agency as a platform, glocal hubs, and machine learning measurement models. The whole shebang!
Much was missed across the questions I asked:
- Who owned the audience model my media ran on
- Who pays to measure the success of the inventory bought?
- How can I ensure I keep my audience, the performance, and the learnings?
- Is the fee still buying the seniority and skillset it was quoted against during the account win?
What are 3 agency signals impacting the CMO’s marketing plan?
Every restructure now arrives labelled as an AI transformation and some are. However, when an agency has the below signals, then they are transforming. And the first thing some clients do is open a pitch list. It feels like the responsible move, like you are staying ahead of the change. The harsh truth, you are not staying ahead of anything. The value a client can extract from its agency’s new model, once it knows what that model contains, can outweigh a new agency entirely.
- Technology centralization can impact intelligence ownership
Planning, buying, and optimization increasingly run through group platforms. The intelligence that once sat with a planner now sits in a system the agency did not build, may never see, and cannot take when the contract ends. Precision is the strongest advantage a marketer should not lose, and it is the easiest one to lose to a platform migration.
- Delivery is being offshored, even more
That is a fair move on its own terms, but when locally present manpower on your business is less than 60% physically, this could be impacting your business. I have done it, on both sides, agency and client, sending production, analytics, and engineering into hubs in India and elsewhere. The two issues that follow the offshoring: the fee and the seniority in the market. What moves is the engine room behind this leadership team on the account to hundreds of miles offshore.
- Data and audiences are being bought
Groups are acquiring identity, audience, and commerce data assets and bundling them into their offering or positioning, for better marketing terms. But the client can only surely benefit when the audiences it builds on those assets are portable. When they are locked to the agency’s stack, the agency’s acquisition becomes the client’s dependency, priced into the next fee negotiation. Those are many ‘uncomfortable’ questions and conflating them is expensive.
As a CMO, what can I do instead?
Before fear takes hold, run a plain capability and commercial review across five areas. Hand the following five questions to your agency this Friday afternoon, with a seven-day timeline. The brave move is testing capabilities before the pitch is ever called.
5 question agency audit
People
Has the seniority and quality of the team deteriorated, or has it only changed shape?Capability
Has transformation weakened what the agency can deliver, or only how the work gets made?Ownership
Does the client know what is proprietary, licensed, outsourced, and portable?Economics
Does the fee still match the scope and the capability demanded of it?Results
Is the agency accountable to metrics that connect to business performance, rather than delivery for its own sake?Consider one condition; the diagnosis only works if it is honest. If the agency has not raised it themselves, without being pushed, then asking for one does not change what you will get. You are asking the same people who built the problem to measure it.
What the PepsiCo move proves
Last week, PepsiCo moved its global media account without a pitch. Almost $1.9 billion of media investment lifted out of an incumbent of twenty-five years. The challenger was brought in for a capability review. PepsiCo read what came back, and moved. The interesting part is where that review most likely went: who owns the technology, who runs it, where the data sits, and what can move to the client later. A pitch is not built to answer those questions. Most CMOs never ask them.
What matters is how the decision was made. PepsiCo already had the evidence a pitch exists to produce. Twenty-five years of an incumbent who had helped build the brand - that trust was real, and it had been earned. PepsiCo tested it anyway. A CMO should stop assuming trust and start testing it again. The temptation for others will be to copy the shortcut. That is the wrong lesson.
So what are the lessons for a marketer in MENA?
- It does not take twenty years to commission a diagnosis
- It does not take a pitch to refresh an agency
- It takes a five-area diagnosis, honestly run, to know whether the agency in front of you is the one worth keeping.
