Trust issues

It’s no secret that media agencies are starting to lose the trust of media owners and marketers. But as Trade Me head of advertising Josh Borthwick tells us, that trust can easily be won back with sound business practices.

Why do you think marketers and media owners are losing trust? What does FCB do to win your trust?

FCB are transparent with us about their fee structures to clients and share more information to increase insight to client needs. Obviously they take necessary precautions like NDAS, but I think that level of frankness encourages us to be more forthcoming too. Ultimately, I think this fosters better outcomes for marketers. They also understand that the value they deliver to clients is not just in negotiating media costs, but working with a client brief and publisher to deliver innovation. For us that has been both creatively driven, as seen recently with their work with us for NZ Fire Service, and purely data driven, as demonstrated by their award winning Flight Centre campaign. Both those examples are a win for all three partners: client, agency and publisher.

What role do you see media agencies playing in the future? How will this differ from what we have today?

I think there'll be a continued push towards transparency, driven by clients, particularly around programmatic media buying and data. Agencies can add a huge amount of value to data driven insights and how they form creative and media decisions, particularly in New Zealand where marketing teams are smaller and less resourced than their overseas counterparts. Programmatic provides huge efficiency to digital media buying and it's becoming increasingly important for media agencies to understand "path to purchase". Continued fragmentation of media and technology means agencies will continue to play a key part in helping clients navigate the best opportunities for their objectives.