I’m just back from New York where a mammoth global pitch is at the chemistry stage. We’re recruiting a global agency for a global client and had chemistry meetings with eight networks. That’s about as much as I can say in detail.
But there are general observations to be made:
1. The US is on the brink of emerging from its 18-month-long recession according to the International Monetary Fund. It shows. Things are pretty bullish over there.
2. There’s little to distinguish between large and small agencies, US or UK based, when it comes to chemistry meetings. An agency from Bristol and a global group headquartered in Manhattan are just as likely, or unlikely, to hit it off with a client.
3. Chemistry meetings have the same format in the US as we do in the UK. That’s the whole point - it doesn’t matter where the agencies hail from or their size – the good ones hit the same right buttons.
4. In terms of waffle quotient, US agencies are neck-and-neck with those in the UK. I was half hoping I’d find otherwise.
I hear so many agencies trot out the old industry clichés at chemistry meetings – ‘our mantra is the same as your mantra’ or ‘we share similar cultures’.
What a load of twaddle. Oh, and don’t waste 20 minutes giving the client’s brief back to the client – tell them what you can actually do to make it happen.
5. From a global client’s perspective, the good news is, from what we witnessed in New York, there’s strong differentiation between the global groups, while within each network there’s a real uniformity of product and services.
It’s a benefit to the client that they get the same product wherever they go in the world – service levels, look and feel, personalities and the approach and methodologies on how to deconstruct a brand and rebuild it.
TBWA’s Disruption and Ogilvy’s The Big Ideal - these are global/local problem-solving approaches that make the client’s face light up. You can almost hear the client thinking, ‘I can sell that into the board’.
It makes you feel there are global DM agencies for a global marketplace.
New York agencies are highly multicultural. As well as the Americans, we met people from South Africa, Asians, quite a lot of Indians and Australians.
6. Are US agencies more sophisticated than those here? Not really, but dealing with the size of the United States means by necessity, it’s on a different scale.