Jupiter Research: CMO’s Unhappy with Agencies

A recent Jupiter report finds that CMO’s are increasingly dissatisfied with their agencies and are spending more time managing them. Is this just a case of CMO’s looking for someone else to blame for the economy and increasing pressures to demonstrate ROI? Perhaps, but the reality is that agency dissatisfaction has been building for some time. Reardon Smith Whittaker found last year that only 41% of marketers gave their agencies good to excellent ratings. The study also found growing skepticism among marketers about what they could expect from their agencies.

Good agencies do exist. At Serengeti, we know this to be true because we see it, time and again, in the process of conducting digital marketing audits for our clients. The reality is that an agency is only a partner — and as such, only as good as the client (see this concise, although somewhat acerbic post on this topic).

Maria Botta argues that part of the problem is agency structure and predicts that clients may begin to invest more in developing in house capabilities “in order to excercise more control and cut significant expenses related to hiring a full service agency.” Those are certainly good reasons for building an in house program, provided that savings will indeed be realized (which isn’t always the case).

One thing is certain: If CMO’s are spending more time managing agencies, then the cost of the agency relationship has risen (time is money). Why wouldn’t a CMO at least consider the cost/benefit of in house if time spent managing advertising and marketing is going up anyway?