I attended the Kingston Smith W1 seminar last night where I was presenting my view on 'Is the price right?'. The other presenters were Esther and Mandy from Kingston Smith W1 - superb as ever, plus Mark Lund with his perspective of the COI and Payment by Results, and Paul Graham from Anomaly on the way that they work with clients in terms of their fees. Despite feeling under the weather, I really enjoyed the event and found the other presentations really interesting. Worth attending next year if you are interested in the financial study that Kingston Smith W1 produce every year.
Just seen this about the new initiative that the IPA ans ISBA are working on - in looking at the process of ‘reforming’ pitching to save time and money. It is good to see them working together but wonder if they will make contact with CIPS (the Purchasing body) to see if they want a procurement perspective. Click here for more details on the IPA website - The-need-for-a-new-pitch-process
Showing posts with label Kingston Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kingston Smith. Show all posts
01 December 2010
15 November 2010
Kingston Smith Annual Survey
This is always a good read as it reports back on the top agencies by sector in terms of their financial performance. This year they are celebrating their 20 years and have a great panel of speakers - Mark Lund, Paul Graham from Anomaly, Esther Carder from Kingston Smith and.....me.
If you are interested in buying the survey (and you get 2 free tickets for the presentation), further details can be find via the following link- kingstonsmith survey_2010.
I may see you there (and no heckling from the front row please!).
If you are interested in buying the survey (and you get 2 free tickets for the presentation), further details can be find via the following link- kingstonsmith survey_2010.
I may see you there (and no heckling from the front row please!).
30 May 2010
Are agency proft margins too high?
is the headline on an article on page 19 of this week's Campaign.
It is about the ISBA Paying for Advertising report which came out this week and is always worth a read (along with the Kingston Smith report that I mentioned a few blog postings back). As the article says "The good news is that agency profit margins remain "remarkable resilient". The bad news being that advertisers seem to resent the fact".
It is a hard one to comment on as we all want to make sure that the agency is making a decent profit, on the right things and is treating the agency in an open, honest and transparent way. Still to this day there are agencies making revenue on areas such as production costs and annual insurance premiums. This often support the fact that the scope of work has increased, the resource on the account has increased but yet there has not been an conversation with the client (marketing and procurement) on making sure that the fees match the work and that everyone is happy with all the ancillary costs.
It is up to all of us to make sure that those regular conversations happen, and we aim to work in a partnership way of working.
I am working with a great client at the moment who really wants to make sure that they are getting a 'good deal' by looking at the way that they work with their main agencies first. By then looking at the marketing and admin processes, we can then look at the commercial construct of the relationship.
It is about the ISBA Paying for Advertising report which came out this week and is always worth a read (along with the Kingston Smith report that I mentioned a few blog postings back). As the article says "The good news is that agency profit margins remain "remarkable resilient". The bad news being that advertisers seem to resent the fact".
It is a hard one to comment on as we all want to make sure that the agency is making a decent profit, on the right things and is treating the agency in an open, honest and transparent way. Still to this day there are agencies making revenue on areas such as production costs and annual insurance premiums. This often support the fact that the scope of work has increased, the resource on the account has increased but yet there has not been an conversation with the client (marketing and procurement) on making sure that the fees match the work and that everyone is happy with all the ancillary costs.
It is up to all of us to make sure that those regular conversations happen, and we aim to work in a partnership way of working.
I am working with a great client at the moment who really wants to make sure that they are getting a 'good deal' by looking at the way that they work with their main agencies first. By then looking at the marketing and admin processes, we can then look at the commercial construct of the relationship.
22 January 2010
Tomorrow's World
Last night I attended the presentation of the annual financial survey by Kingston Smith W1. The report is called 'Financial Performance of marketing services companies'. This is for figures published for 2008 and from what they are predicting, the 2009 report (published this time next year) will make very different reading.
The whole report is 161 pages in total. They survey the top 50 independent UK marketing groups and also UK Quoted Groups and then analysis their financial standing by discipline (Digital, Advertising, Media Buying etc).
It is really interesting reading (it is too heavy to carry and read on the train !) and covers areas such as turnover, employment costs, operating profit, the key ratios that we like to look at such as employment costs: gross income, and the favourite bit - the Director's salaries (the highest one being paid £1.5m).
The sector by sector review is also really interesting. Media Buying and PR come out as doing well (in terms of profit margins) with direct marketing and digitial (surprisingly) have low returns of their margins.
Well worth the investment and a good source of data in terms of finanical status of some key agencies. I am not sure if you can buy it directly now, but here is a link to it on the KS website. Click here.
P.S. Just seen that Campaign have a four page spread on the report (page 24 - 22 January issue)
The whole report is 161 pages in total. They survey the top 50 independent UK marketing groups and also UK Quoted Groups and then analysis their financial standing by discipline (Digital, Advertising, Media Buying etc).
It is really interesting reading (it is too heavy to carry and read on the train !) and covers areas such as turnover, employment costs, operating profit, the key ratios that we like to look at such as employment costs: gross income, and the favourite bit - the Director's salaries (the highest one being paid £1.5m).
The sector by sector review is also really interesting. Media Buying and PR come out as doing well (in terms of profit margins) with direct marketing and digitial (surprisingly) have low returns of their margins.
Well worth the investment and a good source of data in terms of finanical status of some key agencies. I am not sure if you can buy it directly now, but here is a link to it on the KS website. Click here.
P.S. Just seen that Campaign have a four page spread on the report (page 24 - 22 January issue)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)