Until a couple of years ago, Campaign had a long history of
treating the direct marketing industry disgracefully. We sniggered about
shelf-wobblers, junk mail and pedestrian creative standards. When we
could be bothered to acknowledge their existence, we referred to its
famous exponents in sneering tones. We bemoaned the diversion of
once-plump advertising budgets into direct marketing and sales
promotion. Why, only five years ago we devoted a whole column to the
theory that the search for marketing tools other than advertising was
solely driven by the need to cut costs.
Still, direct marketing agencies are a resourceful lot, and they’ve
extracted their lucrative revenge in various ways. By having more
information at their fingertips than ad agencies. By perfecting the
marriage of hard
data (prospect and customer transactions over time segmented by a host
of variables) with soft data (teasing out motivations and
attitudes).
By singing the client mantra of return on investment and
accountability.
But most of all by making a fortune from a sector that continues to be a
higher-yield business than advertising.
All this explains why last week’s news that Bartle Bogle Hegarty is to
close its ten-year-old direct marketing operation, Limbo, to bring the
staff and some clients in-house to form a new division of the agency
makes good, if somewhat belated, sense. Limbo has a sparkling creative
reputation but has not been a serious new-business contender for some
time. It has been kept at arm’s length from BBH for too long, despite
having shared clients such as Audi and Swinton. It has skills which the
main agency lacks - specifically, a proven understanding of businesses
where the customer interfaces with the business at the point of sale. In
turn, being closer to BBH should encourage the new outfit, which has yet
to be named, to develop more fee, rather than project-based,
relationships - leading to greater financial stability.
The big question is whether with the requisite abilities now under one
roof rather than merely in the same group, BBH will be able to crack and
pitch for serious retail accounts (Selfridges and Wallis
notwithstanding).
After all, competitors have always argued, and with some reason given
its history with Asda and W. H. Smith, that BBH lacks the ability to do
the kind of ’top to bottom’ dirty work that retail clients require.
I’ll bet some old-school types will mutter that the move signals an end
to BBH’s almost maniacal single-mindedness about creating effective and
award-winning advertising, but - and you could take NatWest as a prime
and painful example here - that’s tantamount to ignoring what many major
clients want these days. Tantamount to suicide, in other words, for any
company that makes its living in the service business.
