According to a recent survey from the CMO Club in partnership with Globality, nearly a third of head marketing officers are unhappy with their current agency set-up.
Respondents included more than 100 CMOs from both consumer and B2B brands. Roughly 30% indicated they were “not satisfied” with their existing model and 55% reporting they were only “moderately satisfied.”
Only 14% of survey respondents said they were “highly satisfied” with their agency model.
The CMO Club survey comes at a time when marketing chiefs continue to struggle with the traditional “agency of record” (AOR) model and its relevance in modern marketing.
Many brands have chosen to work with smaller, niche marketing shops on a project-by-project basis, while other companies have decided it’s better to have their campaigns run in-house. Verizon and Unilever are two major brands that have recently strengthened their in-house marketing departments.
Almost half of the executives surveyed by CMO Club said they have an AOR, but just 22% said they work with that agency exclusively. The other 25% said they use a combination of AOR and other agencies, depending on the needs of the campaign.
Most of the survey respondents said “lack of innovation/creativity” was the reason they had soured on the AOR arrangement.
“Large agencies can no longer provide all the services that clients need to meet today’s insatiable appetite for content,” the report said. It concluded that, in light of this, it was unsurprising that brands are so unsatisfied with their agency of record model.
