With the needs of clients and agencies changing in a fragmented world of media, Schweppes has overhauled its agency model, eyeing a “sustainable” way of working for both parties.
Schweppes general manger of marketing Troy McKinna told AdNews that the brand, which pitched out its creative earlier this year, has switched up the way it partners with creative agencies, to build a leaner process that is worth an agency's time.
The company has narrowed down its partner agencies from a dozen interested parties to seven. Although McKinna wouldn't be drawn on which agencies, he wants to cut that roster down to two or three at most. He noted that having too many agencies on a roster makes it too big for a brand to manage, and not worth an agency’s time in terms of revenue.
To narrow the list down, Schweppes has put out a live brief for its Real Ice Tea company brand to agencies, but said it is paying each of those agencies a concept fee.
“We want it to be sustainable for agencies and we're trying to build a sustainable model for us to get better ideas,” McKinna said.
“What's interesting in the industry is a lot of agencies do a hell of a lot of work for no money – a pitching process with no retainer at the end.
“The projects and brands that we need support on change every year so there isn't much point in us having a retainer, so we decided we'll pay agencies up front for their time.”
He also said it is trying to run the process as lean as possible, only requiring a small group on the agency side and having all the key decision-makers in the room during the process.
“A lot of agencies will spend a lot of money pitching for an idea to make it look as slick as possible,” McKinna said. “We've been really clear as well that we're looking for rough ideas, hand-sketched stuff. We're trying to find a way that makes it equitable for them so they'll want to work with us more,” McKinna said.
He hopes by making the process easier on agencies, senior people in agencies will be less likely to delegate Schweppes work to junior staff.
He said Schweppes has changed the way it works internally to match the way it is trying to work with agency partners. In the last six months it developed a brand DNA tool to build consistency of voice. It has also changed how early it gets agencies involved in the process, handing clients a brief with a “key challenge” written in, rather than a tight proposition that agencies need to follow.
He said that allowing the planning and strategies teams to interrogate a brief alleviates a lot of frustration on agency side, and can also bring a lot of value to the process.
The other thing it's changing, is the type of work it briefs out now that it won't have a retained agency.
“We're getting more disciplined and saying let's get fewer briefs in, put bigger budgets behind them, and we'll have a bigger idea to cut through,” McKinna said. “So it's changing on a number of fronts how we operate.”
But it's not there yet. The first work from the experiment won't come out until next year and Schweppes is still yet to narrow down its booming agency roster.
McKinna also said the other query is how do you pay for a good idea – something which Schweppes is yet to determine.
“Most retainers are all head hours based but head hours don't necessarily add to a good idea,”he added.
“So it's been interesting to work out what is the value of a good idea.”
The new model, he revealed, is a process and that a lot of questions will be figured out along the way.
“We've changed a lot as we've gone through this exercise and we've been learning how to get the best out of our agencies partners.
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