Statistically speaking, the concept of “average” means that you fall right in the middle of the bell curve. No company wants to be thought of as just average, yet that is precisely where their undifferentiated business strategy places them—in the center of the curve. The most interesting and powerful brands are at the edges of the bell curve, because they’re doing things differently …

To understand what’s happened to the perception of agency value, look no further than the invasive involvement of procurement in the agency selection process. Rest assured that procurement does not hire a company’s management consulting firm. How did this happen to agencies?

Although most organizations don’t like to admit it, the way most business models are hatched is by copying the “success” of another organization. By definition, copying means you’ll never really be innovating, just following. And by the time you finally do successfully copy the features of another company’s business model, they’ll be onto something else …

One of the things that leads brands to look and sound alike is the tendency to define the brand’s value proposition solely in terms of product or service attributes. Believing that the more attributes a brand can claim, the more valuable it will be to the customer, brands continue to add more and more features until they appear to be “all-in-one solutions” …

Most managers invest their time and energy in trying to make their brands better, when in fact they should be working to make their brands different. Better isn’t necessarily always better; different is better. Behind the scenes, American Airlines may be working hard to recruit the best people, deliver the most efficient service, and build the best maintenance record.

Advertising Age recently observed, “The list of great brands that have been damaged, even ruined, as they’ve been milked for growth rather than managed for profit is a long one — and it grows every year” …

Despite some recent reports about the small percentage of marketers who currently have a value-based compensation arrangement with their agencies, the move to a value-based approach will very soon become an imperative for agencies rather than an option.

Besides being an ineffective way for agencies to capture the tremendous value they create for their clients, the billable time system actually inhibits agencies from internal collaboration, professional development, and innovation. It creates a system where efficiency reigns at the expense of effectiveness.

The vast majority of agencies are mostly engaged in “costing” instead of pricing. When your production manager walks around asking team members how many hours they expect to spend on a project, that is essentially an exercise in determining your costs.

Logic says your agency will grow faster by targeting the “general market.” But some of the largest and fastest-growing agency brands are squarely focused on a particular type of client, not every type of client …

Agencies, like most businesses in today’s economy, are going to great lengths to avoid risk. It’s easy to assume that the least risky path is to pull in your horns and keep plowing forward with your current business model. This is essentially the strategy of “just try harder.”

Executing your strategy isn’t just an important thing; it’s the only thing. Unless you actually put your initiatives into action, nothing will have been accomplished. Without execution, there is no strategy. And if you really analyze the agency landscape you’ll realize that the main difference between mediocre agencies and great ones is not vision, but execution …

Most of these financial reports are merely a summary of lagging indicators; they are like looking in the rear view mirror. They give you an understanding only of what has happened, but very little understanding of what is likely to happen in the months and years to come.

Ignition has come to believe that the only way to answer these questions effectively is to first find the answer to a much bigger question: What is our positioning? Unless you know what the agency stands for, how can you possibly make effective decisions about how to run it?

Perhaps one of the reasons for the use of these demeaning words is agency managers do not understand the worth of their people because they cannot be measured as exactly as accountants record assets and other tangible resources …

It surprises most agency professionals to learn that many clients are intensely interested in exploring a value-based compensation arrangement with their agencies. A recent position paper from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) states it clearly: “Traditional metrics used in today’s cost-plus compensation agreements (usually based on time) have no relationship with the external value created for the client in today’s intellectual capital economy.

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