Publicis Groupe awards pull-out: profound statement or cynical cost-cutting effort?
The chief executive officer of Publicis Groupe, Arthur Sadoun, “made a profound statement” against the “profit-making” Cannes Lions festival by banning its agencies from entering, the global CEO of marketing consultancy TrinityP3 has claimed.
Darren Woolley, who was formerly a creative director at J. Walter Thompson Melbourne, claimed the French holding company’s surprise decision to stop all marketing and awards efforts for a year was a “sign of the times” following Cannes Lions’ decision to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Speaking to Mumbrella Asia, Woolley said that while the move risked Publicis Groupe losing some of its to creative talent, it would ultimately allow them to “stop wasting money and focus on transforming the business”.
He added: “This is the biggest statement made on this issue and I think some of it really comes down to Cannes Lions’ decision to float on the London Stock Exchange. This really showed that Cannes is a business that is run to make profit for shareholders. The floatation sent a clear message to the holding companies that award shows are being run to make money.
“In the last 12 months, this has been rubbed in the faces of holding companies. This, plus the number of scam ads, seem to have come together to make Sadoun say ‘enough is enough’. This is a very profound statement.”
Although Sadoun’s decision stretches across all awards and events, Woolley said it was significant that his announcement was timed for when Cannes was actually taking place. “The festival is the pinnacle of global creativity,” he explained. “There are an increasing number of clients going there every year. [Sadoun] made the announcement for maximum impact and this was the place to do it.”
However, D. Sriram, the founder of Shanghai-based digital agency DROIDD and former Starcom APAC CEO, said Publicis Groupe’s move spoke more of cost-saving than making a genuine statement about awards.
He said: “Given that there is a handful of global media agencies and creative agencies, and far more awards shows than there are holding companies, everyone wins something somewhere these days.
“In that context, if Publicis Groupe were making a statement about fewer awards shows and more meaningful evaluation of good work – like choosing a few awards shows to participate in as a symbol – that would make a lot of sense.
“However, from all the press surrounding this announcement, it seems like the decision is driven by cost saving imperatives. There’s nothing wrong with that, inherently, but it’s clearly not intended as a stance about awards, the industry or anything like that. At best, it says that awards don’t add enough value for Publicis Groupe to justify spend the money on participating in them – which is perhaps a bit of an extreme view.”
After the news about Publicis Groupe, Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of rival holding company WPP, said “jury was still out” on whether he would follow Sadoun’s lead.
Speaking at Cannes, Sorrell said: “There is gouging that goes on and there is peak time pricing. Cannes in June is not the cheapest place in the world to be,” according to The Drum.
However, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, WPP has already cut its awards budget down by 25 per cent, while Dentsu Aegis was reportedly attempting to “mitigate against market weakness”.
Commenting on the holding groups’ spending cuts, Woolley added; “One of the biggest issues for agencies is remuneration: advertisers and clients often will not cover award costs. When they are looking for an agency, they don’t put a lot of credence on the awards an agency has won – and they are not the reason they will choose an agency. Clients are now asking whether they are really worth it.”
Woolleys’ views on client spending were echoed by Shufen Goh, the founder and principal of pitch consultancy R3. “The whole Cannes expenditure is prohibitive for most companies,” she said. “And we’ve never had a client insist on an agency being on a shortlist because they won a Cannes Lion.”
However, she argued that Publicis Groupe’s choice to impose a “blanket ban” on all award shows entirely could be damaging for the company in the long-term. “We have clients who care about effectiveness awards. A blanket ban for all awards clearly helps to grab headlines, but it may hurt Publicis ability to benchmark themselves against their competitors on their effectiveness.”
Yesterday Cannes Lions managing director of Jose Papa said “there were a lot of misconceptions” about the festival’s expense. Speaking to The Drum, he said: “Look, we know that depending on where you are in the world, to come all the way to the south of France can be a big commitment. It’s why we put so much focus on value for money, to make sure it’s accessible to as many people as possible. We have passes which start at €1,595 (S$2,472) for two days, and attendees under 30 can save up to 45 per cent.”
Another profound insight by rent a quote Wooley:
“The floatation sent a clear message to the holding companies that award shows are being run to make money.”
And there was me thinking there was 50 categories because they wanted everyone to have a medal.
ReplyI’ve read this news with disappointment. It is a missed opportunity to be the change they want to be.
(1) The pain of agencies are dwindling margins, this will not address this financial reality. Even in the long-term, it is not an engine for revenue growth. If anything there will be ongoing costs in maintaining this. One year’s awards budget won’t last the lifetime cost of this tool.
(2) Agencies need to rethink how they are structured from the ground up. It needs to focus on skill sets, renumeration and rewards, process, team structures, and client fees. The goal needs to be productivity gains not cost savings. Productivity is the viable long-term solution.
(3) This tool does not enable collaboration, at best it facilitates. But if you want to enable cross-disciplinary collaboration, agencies are better off focusing on closing the knowledge gaps between disciplines. The promise of integration is still intangible for most. If you’ve ever being in meetings between creative, digital/social, media, and PR teams then you know how big this gap is. Questions like ‘what do you do?’ and ‘how do I work with you?’ need to be something in the past.
(4) The timeline of 1 year to develop and launch this just isn’t realistic. Most agencies take at least year for a complex digital build, let alone a fully functioning machine learning program. Let’s not forget that data will not exist in the same form across all offices, so that will be a giant leap on its own.
(5) Sadly as a communications company, this has caught a lot of internal staff off guard. Read the story of Leo Burnett Chicago as an example. It is ironic that this has been communicated in a way that some are calling ‘tone-deaf’.
Reply“..while the move risked Publicis Groupe losing some of its to creative talent….”
let those scammers go…i find it laughable that a bunch of mature creatives would need awards assistance to tell if their work is creative.
ReplyThe market decides these things.
This move will certainly weed out scammers within Publicis but the introduction of Marcel will cause the more responsible creatives to think twice about staying at Publicis.
ReplyIt’s one thing to deny creatives from their 15 seconds of fame.
But to allow an AI to pump your ideas to a nameless & faceless fellow network sibling is another.
You have no idea who from where and when else feels it’s within their job discription to copy, appropriate or repurpose something you’ve created for a brief they have.
This cuts at the soul of a true creative.
No true creative will stand for it.
Imagine one’s idea for a car launch in Glasgow is repurposed for a sanitary napkin for an EDM in Taiwan.
(It’s possible and not far fetched if one knows how the tangential the creative process can be.)
Or a idea from 2001, suddenly reappears in 2020.
All without the coutesy of asking the original creatives for permission. Or giving due credit to the creators.
Why?
AI doesn’t care or understand about the soul of creativity or the preciousness of originality.
And because you once drew a Publicis paycheck, your ideas no longer are yours for perpetuity.
Worrying!
Mark my words.
It’s neither: it’s just traditional ad agency bollocks.
1. The announce comes BEFORE actually do anything
2. The announce comes DURING Cannes to hijack the attention
3. The announce comes AFTER Maurice Levy said that Viva Technology – his conference that happens at the same time as Cannes – is not a competitor to the festival.
Fuck’em.
ReplyFor a bunch of savvy media people there seems to be no understanding of how PR works, Hegarty said it best. Practice what you preach, very few do so join the ones that do or set up your own shop.
The derision from me should be about how sterile the announcement was, for a global communications network it was so flat and wooden. Where was the youth in the group of management, the sparky tone, demonstration of the product and its benefits for clients, not very convincing on any fronts.
If you spend all day spinning stuff for clients how can you not understand this piece of PR. Tapping into a global talent pool sounds great, and being able to check in on real time for updates, in reality this is a cluster f%@k and a new generic stock library advertising service.
ReplyLoved what Publicis did. About time someone realised that all this money spent on awards shows would be better off utilised elsewhere …like bonuses and salary reviews. Or just saving money so jobs don’t need to get cut. Clients don’t care about awards, they care about results. And creatives still stuck in the dark ages of needing a bunch of peers to tell them that their work is good enough are long overdue for a wake up call. Cannes is just an expensive excuse to go get drunk, get laid, spend the company’s money and lord over each other. Oh and pick up a fancy prize or two. How about we all focus on the real job at hand – making our clients happy by doing work that produces REAL results?
ReplyI don’t even like Publicis but kudos to them for having the balls.
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