Global Report Card for Corporate Marketers – Wanted: Integration

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Global Report Card for Corporate Marketers – Wanted: Integration

By Sheila Corriveau on April 2nd, 2009

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Is the customer always right? Most client-agency surveys focus on the client’s perspective, but today more clients recognize that they are equally accountable to the partnership and are committed to being better clients to improve their return on investment. In fact, many of our clients admit to us that they are often the cause of problems in client-agency relationships.

In February 2009, AgencyLink conducted a Client Quality Survey: A Global Voice for Marketing Agency Leaders in Canada, as part of its affiliation with SCAN International. We generated participation from 620 marketing agency leaders in the US and Europe and 106 of the leaders were Canadians (42% offered PR and corporate communications services).

The survey results suggest that Canadian client marketers need to improve integration efforts. Canadian agency leaders rate 30% of their clients’ integrated marketing abilities as weak. Home to many of our global brands, the US agency leaders identified 38% of their clients’ as weak, while in Europe only 27% of clients are rated weak on integration.

Corporations are not always structured to leverage integrated marcom initiatives. In a hurry to become “customer-centric”, many companies have decentralized marketing to align with geography and sometimes product sales. That works if you are a multi-brand company, but organizations that speak with one voice to multiple customers need to initiate integration procedures.

If a company is decentralized, they will likely have integration issues. In this case, they may be best served by a multi-disciplinary agency that can spearhead marketing as “the integrator”.
That said, if a client is highly integrated, it may benefit from best-of-breed agencies in diverse disciplines with the client acting as the integrator.

No matter how you slice it, studies suggest that integrated marketing programs are four times more effective than standalone campaigns. When dollars are so tight, stretch them and generate more impact by implementing integration processes that work best for your client-agency relationship, but most importantly your business.

Complete details of the Canadian survey with global comparison highlights and AgencyLink’s assessment of the results are available in PDF for downloading at AgencyLink’s Client Quality Survey.

Sheila Corriveau is a Partner in AgencyLink Inc. (www.agencylink.ca). The marketing consultancy conducts agency searches, consults and delivers workshops to improve client-agency relationships and performance. She can be reached at sheila@agencylink.ca.