Will Ad Agencies in the U.K. revolt against Anheuser-Busch? Nah!

Let's just start with the "Executive Summary" - No. No big agency in the U.K., in the U.S.or in any other part of the world is going to "revolt" against Anheuser-Busch or any advertiser that size. No one has the guts. Actually, unless you have a solid business case on your side, truth be told, you'd have to have a real death wish to look at your CEO eye to eye and say "yeah, I told AB to take a hike, not interested".

So, what brought that on? This recent article on MediaPost: Anheuser-Busch Answers to Accusations of 'Despicable' Agency Relations in which some agencies in the UK seem to be up in arms about a few of AB's corporate practices: requiring agencies to cut rates, offer free work and accept payments in 120 days.

Your can read more about it here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/246052/anheuser-busch-answers-to-accusations-of-despicab.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=81187

Having been through a lot of those pitches in my 25 years at international ad agencies, I can only commiserate with these poor agencies. It is not a pleasant experience.

It is also a very expensive experience and some pitches quickly climb into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in soft and hard costs.

The agency pitch model is broken --everyone knows that. Yet, few companies seem to want to move away from it, subjecting their future partners to mental and financial torture.

I think that there is a better way and wrote about it in these two articles published in Latin Business Today:

http://www.marcelosalup.com/critical-media-thinking---the-blog/how-to-choose-the-right-ad-agency

http://www.marcelosalup.com/critical-media-thinking---the-blog/choosing-the-right-ad-agency-part-3

If you are an advertiser and would like to maybe ratchet it down a couple of notches, perform a more effective and friendly agency search and wind up with an agency that actually loves you, contact me. It would be a pleasure to change the ad world to a happier place one pitch at a time.