Someone gets an idea to harness the power of new technology/thinking to drive NEW sources of revenue to add to the shrinking pie from traditional means. In this great example of getting it backward, Mindshare Interactive is no more.
From last week's AdWeek: "The reorganization eliminated the shop's digital operation, MindShare Interaction, as a separate unit and dispersed its staff throughout the agency as a whole. It also established four key areas of service: client leadership; business planning; 'invention,' including branded content and other creative disciplines; and 'the exchange,' including buying and activation."
Building a dedicated team with specific skills is a critical part of meeting and exceeding the changing needs of our clients. This group was assembled as a stand-alone business unit in order to clearly define an offering and differentiate it for the go to market strategy. You can point to it, rent separate office space for it, give it is own “i logo” and start the ball rolling.
Too often the upstart does not achieve its expected penetration into the agency system’s existing client base, at least initially. Whether that’s a product of disconnected incentive plans for the “family’s” general shop’s management team, unrealistic time frames for success or a lack of real value add from a client’s perspective, the answer is not to blow it up and disperse the skills across the system.
While false starts and/or uncooperative sibling shops may be in play, trying to gain revenue from the disbanded discipline is difficult if not unachievable. A focused business unit is clear on its charge to achieve its goals. Additionally, you dilute the value of the new thinkers and higher margin revenue by moving them into a service area that is being commoditized. The temptation for this dispersed group to become a free value-add service to the general agency’s clients is too appealing for most client service groups to turn away from. A new capability to help foster the client/agency dependency is the first place these folks go. So in the end you have real value add efforts being marginalized and lost.
How is an agency going to get paid for this new cost being added to the mix? Certainly not with its shrinking percentage on media spend. Also, a related pitfall is the fact that the talent pool is being dismantled and moved. They originally joined a dedicated group focused solely on their particular skill set. Surrounded by people just like themselves, it was the perfect place to be. Now they become part of a larger office not having anything to do with their unique skill set. They become a small part of a client team already in place trying to have its voice heard.
Give the new offering time to mature, set realistic goals, align incentive plans or don’t act surprised by the jobing.com postings. And we all know what blowing up and dispersing leads to: Next time, the reorganization will flow in the other direction. Is this like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?