#MediaSnack Ep. 32: Media agencies & auditors go to war - a podcast by ID Comms

On this week’s rather meaty #MediaSnack we review 3 big stories each likely to have a significant impact on the global media industry.

First off we can't escape the Brexit UK referendum decision and its potential impact on the UK marketing scene and how it might affect marketers behaviours in the coming months. We try not to get caught up in the general negativity and whilst managing Brexit certainly has its challenges from a political perspective, if its going ahead then agile and ambitious companies will already be figuring out their best next moves to make the most of the opportunities. Those opportunities in media are likely to be significant, the rejection of the political status quo by UK citizens could set some precedent for marketers’ rejection of the status quo when it comes to the current media landscape and ways of working. There was already some appetite for change and re-invention in the media industry, which we have discussed before, but perhaps this may accelerate somewhat with the referendum decision. David and Tom consider how different kinds of marketers might react and hope their reaction will be largely proactive, optimistic and brave. This is the time to adopt a challenger mindset, think in leaner and more agile ways and consider how positive disruption might benefit your marketing organisation. Things are going to be tough, we all need to plan to survive and then flourish, to make change and innovation better than the status quo.

Next we report on a fascinating story coming out of the US, the Chase retail bank has launched a deep audit of their media agency Zenith in the US and have hired corporate investigations firm K2 Intelligence and media auditor Ebiquity Firm Decisions to execute this. You will recall that these are the same two firms who have also provided the analysis for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recent investigation into media rebate practice in the US. The fact that the CMO of Chase sits on the board of the ANA could suggest that this might be just the tip of the iceberg and we may see other ANA members follow suit with big audits of their media agency practices.

Finally, Firm Decisions is in the news again, this time they are being taken to the High Court by the world’s biggest media buyer GroupM. The claim lodged by the agency group accuses Firm Decisions of potentially misusing privileged data sent to them by mistake. Firm Decisions is yet to respond to the claim. We have reviewed the court papers and GroupM’s requests seem logical and reasonable, to request Firm Decisions prove they have deleted materials and account for how they came into possession of them. The alarming element is that this has ended up in court in public view, its very rare for agency and auditor to end up in court and is not reassuring for advertisers at a time of uncertainty to have the integrity of a leading auditor called into question. All at the same time Ebiquity Firm Decision are imminently about to publish their part of the ANA report into media rebate practices in the US….

All of today’s stories are just the beginning, all will run much further so we will keep an eye on their progress in the coming weeks.

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