The company has confirmed that, for the duration of their contracts with individual clients, agencies can retain the 15% commission they receive from the publisher.
What this means in practice is that if a contract was signed in, say, August 2004, then the agency will continue to receive a 15% discount until August 2005.
However, if a contract is up this month, then the 10% discount will become effective with the new contract.
When Northcliffe started cutting its rates at the beginning of August, smaller agencies were left seething 鈥 with some claiming that they could lose up to one third of profits. Customers were given just two months鈥 notice.
But Steve Anderson-Dixon, group advertisement director of Northcliffe Newspapers, now claims the company had always planned to honour outstanding contracts.
鈥淲hat happened at the time was that the account manager concerned wanted to let his customers know what was going on,鈥 explained Dixon. 鈥淯nfortunately, he wasn鈥檛 armed with the correct information at the time so the information he gave was very vague 鈥 I understand why he did it, but it did cause confusion.鈥
However, Janice Potter, media director at RH Advertising in Exeter, offers a different view.
She claims it was the negative publicity that Northcliffe generated for itself with the change that prompted the firm to make some sort of concession.
鈥淭here was such an uproar about it all that Northcliffe had to do something. They have sort of relented in a way, but it鈥檚 going to be very messy because there are going to be some agencies on 10% and some on 15%.鈥
June Castle, a director at Harry Stilling Advertising in Exeter, had initially requested that the company allow contracts to end before introducing a new rate.
鈥淚t took Northcliffe a while to get back, but my rep confirmed it all with me. There鈥檚 nothing more we can do about it now, so I have sort of resigned myself to the fact that this is what we are going to have to do.鈥
By Sheelagh Doyle
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