It seems that the market is no longer popular with leading agencies.
01. The traditional 4A focuses on branding
Ogilvy entered China in 1991, Taobao was launched in 2003, and JD.com only entered the e-commerce field in 2004 as an IT product self-operated model. From the timeline, we can get a glimpse of it: 4A companies don't have so many "effect" genes.
The business model of 4A companies is relatively fixed, focusing on advertising creativity and media delivery. "Achieve the goal of building a brand for customers through creativity" is the core value of 4A's profession. Looking at the customers of 4A services, most of them are internationally renowned brands or relatively mature domestic brands, and they need to continue to consolidate their brand power to occupy the market. So most of the 4A are actually better at how to do brands.
However, the current media environment and technological means are changing rapidly, consumers have more choices, and the decision-making chain is shortened. In the past, the means of promoting consumer purchases and generating premiums through brand preference can still be fought at present, but it cannot cope with all scenarios. Party A's demand for agency companies is no longer limited to "branding", so it may be more and more difficult for 4A companies to be paid for as leading agencies.
02. The effect agent does not understand the brand enough
With the improvement of marketing technology and the beginning of e-commerce, data-based and effect-based major media, there are many effective agents in the industry who can operate, understand data, and can achieve high ROI. It seems that the brand does not lose money by choosing this kind of agency, but it is easy to have a bottleneck in performance marketing. Because the logic of performance advertising is to continuously reach out to people who are likely to convert in the user pool of "existing brand awareness", if the upper funnel is not expanded in time, it is easy for performance advertising to enter the bottleneck and fail to run out. So "branding" is still important!
But doing effect and doing brand are completely two logics, and more than 95% of the effect agents in the industry don't know how to do branding.
Here's the simplest example: creative.
"The creative materials of performance advertising agencies lack brand tonality, and it is difficult to get into the hall of elegance", is the evaluation of many Party A to performance agencies. Because the effect agent only looks at the indicators of post-link ROI and CPA, regardless of the brand tonality. They don't understand creativity, they don't understand branding, or in other words, they don't identify with "brand" in their bones. Naturally, this kind of company will not be selected by Party A as a leading agency.
03. Vertical suppliers are emerging
I don't know if you have noticed that there are fewer and fewer "big and complete" advertising companies now, but those suppliers who only do a good job in a certain field are becoming more and more popular. On the one hand, the current marketing environment is becoming more and more complex, and more and more refined management is required, and it is difficult for a company to be proficient in all chains; On the other hand, it is because Party A's ability is getting stronger and stronger, and the marketing strategy is basically in the hands of Party A, and the supplier needs to help Party A do refined execution and output in a certain field.
The madman heard that there are thousands of suppliers in the library of Xiaohongshu Ali Byte, each of which undertakes different jobs. At present, the more popular subdivision track suppliers are divided into the following categories:
1) A creative hot store that is good at content planning
Take the recent popular cases as an example, Station B's May Fourth Youth Day, Baidu Lao Du, etc., are all produced by hot store advertising companies, and most of their founders are from 4A creative directors to start a business, with the ultimate pursuit of creativity, and there are also works that can be taken very well.
2) A social company that is good at communication planning
In the past, the routine of filming a TVC and relying on big media to spread it no longer worked, but it needs those social companies who understand Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin social platforms, and Internet memes, they are basically composed of post-95s and post-00s, with strong flexibility, network sense, good at Weibo hot searches, on the Douyin hot list, and tens of thousands of likes notes.
3) Media companies with cost advantages
This kind of company specializes in talent procurement, docking customers and MCN, and helping Party A save marketing budget through scale advantages.
4) Single-platform marketing vendors
It is more popular in the head media, such as Xiaohongshu/Byte/Tencent, and these big media have begun to launch their own gold agents, marketing agency qualifications, etc. As the leading media is building their own data fence garden, single-platform marketing providers are more sophisticated, and they are good at analyzing the brand's crowd, competing products, core selling points, etc. on the media, so as to help the brand more efficiently use a variety of means on the platform to communicate and carry out combined marketing and improve efficiency.
They are very strong in subdivision, but their integration and strategic capabilities are always a little lacking, and they may not have much opportunity to become Party A's leading agency.
In fact, the general trend of the world will be divided for a long time, and it will be divided for a long time. The same is true of Party A's supplier pattern, from the very beginning of TV, Internet, newspaper advertising agencies to perform their duties, to the popular "integrated marketing agency", and then to today's differentiation into a subdivided agency pattern.
(Source: Mad Men)