17611: On Annual Hispanic Heritage Month Pleas.

Advertising Age published the obligatory annual Hispanic Heritage Month perspective titled, “Hispanic growth is reshaping America—is your brand keeping up?”

Answer: ¡No!

Hispanic growth is reshaping America—is your brand keeping up?

By Flor Leibaschoff

This Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re happy to report that the stereotypes are finally moving out. We’re not just your gardener anymore. We’re your next-door neighbor now, too.

In 2025, Hispanic households accounted for essentially all of the net homeownership growth in the U.S. And a handful of brands have already figured out what that means for them.

Census data compiled by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals shows Hispanic households added 441,000 net new owner-households last year, the largest single-year gain on record. Strip out Hispanic buyers and the country ends 2025 with roughly 125,000 fewer homeowners than it started with. Hispanics now represent 10.2 million homeowners nationally, an all-time high, and drove 92.6% of all new household formation.

The other half of the story is who’s building the homes: 18.8% of Hispanic-owned businesses are construction businesses, more than any other industry. Those businesses have grown by 75% in five years, while Hispanic-owned employer businesses overall grew 44.4%. That’s compared to 0.46% for all U.S. employer businesses.

The Home Depot, a brand I had the honor of working with for over eight years, already built its playbook around that overlap: Hispanics make up roughly 30% of the construction workforce and a “good majority” of its pro customer base, per the company. Its “Latina Doers” campaign and 15 years investing in this audience just earned The Home Depot the 2026 HMC Marketer of the Year. Molly Battin, chief marketing officer, put it plainly: “The Hispanic customer is not a segment for us; it’s central to how we think about growth.”

Ikea also moved on the Hispanic buyer. It launched a full Spanish-language e-commerce experience in the U.S. in July 2024, not as a campaign moment but as a permanent shopping infrastructure, with bilingual customer service built in. That’s a global furniture brand betting on Latino household formation well before this year’s numbers confirmed it was right to.

On the building side of the business, CertainTeed, a Saint-Gobain brand, runs a national program that provides Hispanic contractors with bilingual business training, credentialing and warranty benefits, helping the pros keep building, not just houses but their legacy. “We love helping our contractors build more than trust with homeowners; we help them build their legacy,” says Ana María Pulido, senior manager of CertainTeed, who leads the company’s Latino contractor initiative.

Sherwin-Williams is doing something similar for painters: its 2026 Leagues Cup push, “Gana con los Pros,” pairs sweepstakes and in-store activation with an existing platform, Acá Entre Pros, built specifically for Hispanic paint professionals.

That’s four categories moving forward:

• General retail

• Furniture

• Roofing and building materials

• Paint

Someone, please tell the Wayfairs of the world, they’re leaving money on the table.

Speaking of money, banks and mortgage lenders should be paying attention, too. Hispanic buyers are twice as likely as non-Hispanic buyers to use FHA financing, the exact product D.R. Horton, Lennar, Rocket Mortgage and United Wholesale Mortgage all sell at scale.

The data’s out there: Brands treating this as core infrastructure are naming it as their growth strategy in public, and watching their ROI move because of it. The ones still treating it as a seasonal moment are standing next to competitors who already made their move.

Speaking of moving, it’s time to move on this trend and start investing in the Hispanic market, vecino.

17567: On The Exclusivity Of Outcomes-Based Remuneration.

 

Advertising Age published lengthy, laborious content on outcomes-based remuneration. Hopefully, the reporter is paid by the word—because if compensation is based on views and website engagement (i.e., outcomes), he probably owes money to Ad Age.

Ruminating on remuneration reflects White holding companies’ impact on the industry. Fueling the commoditization of Adland—whereby people, places, and practices are repetitive, redundant, and replaceable—has made most offerings generic. And that’s just one point in a long list of reasons why outcomes-based remuneration won’t work across the advertising and media landscape.

Of course, the discussions have not included non-White advertising agencies. As such shops are relegated to lesser positions in the hierarchy—often forced to deliver translated versions or adaptations of mass market campaign platforms—how might they be identified and rewarded for positive outcomes?

In short, non-White advertising agencies can expect outcomes-based crumbs—or nothing at all.

Agencies want to get paid for outcomes—here’s what’s standing in the way

By Ewan Larkin

As agency leaders scamper to move away from hourly billing, outcomes-based pricing has seemingly become all the rage. In reality, rewriting the industry’s long-standing compensation model is a tricky proposition, complicated by everything from attribution disputes to the real financial risk agencies and marketers face.

A June study from Mediasense found that 85% of agency leaders expect to increase their usage of outcomes-based pricing over the next two years, and WPP has touted a deal with Jaguar Land Rover that ties fees to measurable sales and outcomes rather than hours worked. Dentsu media agency iProspect, meanwhile, is pushing to make outcomes the center of its reworked operating model.

The shift is being driven in part by AI and automation, which are reducing the time needed to plan and execute campaigns, undercutting the logic of a model built around billing by the hour. But as much as agencies long to do away with the time-and-materials model, adoption isn’t moving that quickly. For more than half of agencies, outcome-based arrangements still make up less than 30% of their client relationships, per the Mediasense report.

The reality is, most clients—and their procurement teams—are still defaulting to models they know and understand, dipping their toes in only modestly when they do experiment. For example, while iProspect is “very open” to putting its “entire fee at risk,” the agency has no clients on a fully outcomes-based model, executives said in a June interview.

Below, the core challenges around outcomes-based pricing and how agencies are attempting to navigate them.

A definition problem

There appears to be some confusion around what exactly outcomes-based pricing is, with different agencies defining it their own way.

What WPP and iProspect are referring to is a model in which a portion of agency compensation is tied to pre-agreed media or business outcomes, with clients essentially paying for performance. In general, if agencies exceed their targets, they can earn more than their baseline fee; if they fall short, that portion of the fee is reduced. This isn’t new; agencies have long tied portions of their fees to outcomes, but many are now trying to increase the percentage.

For other agencies, what gets labeled an “outcome” is really an output, a fixed fee tied to a defined scope of deliverables.

“There is absolutely a definition problem,” said Tracey Shirtcliff, CEO of Scope Better, which helps professional services businesses manage pricing. When agencies say “outcomes-based pricing,” what they’re usually landing on, she said, is a hybrid arrangement, meaning an output-based fee with a performance measure layered on top.

“I’ve almost never seen anything that is purely outcomes-based,” Shirtcliff added, describing a pattern the Mediasense report backs up. Pure outcomes-based remuneration, the consultancy found, is “exceedingly rare.”

The sphere of influence

WPP’s contract with JLR, focused on tying fees to measurable sales, appears to be a rarity. Tying compensation to business outcomes is difficult for any agency, given factors outside its control, and it’s especially challenging for agencies that only manage one piece of a client’s marketing, whether that’s creative, media, commerce or social. (WPP’s remit with JLR is comprehensive, spanning creative, media, production, customer experience and strategic counsel.)

As a media-only performance shop, iProspect is focused on outcomes including lead-quality metrics in pilots with e-commerce and business-to-business clients, executives said. Minneapolis independent agency Broadhead has one contract tied to performance, for a direct-to-consumer client, with 15% of fees at risk based on how many people the shop can drive to the client’s website, said CEO Dean Broadhead.

The agency—which is handling the client’s creative and media duties—avoided tying compensation to sales because it didn’t design the site, Broadhead added.

Working with a DTC client helps with measurement, Broadhead said, since “you can track the breadcrumbs a lot easier.” The Mediasense report supports that notion, finding that retail and e-commerce brands are best positioned for outcomes-based models, thanks to a high volume of digital transactions, clear conversion points and few intermediaries between an ad and a sale. Sectors such as healthcare and automotive, meanwhile, are seen as less suited to the model, hampered by regulation and longer purchase cycles.

It’s much easier for media agencies to dabble in outcomes-based pricing, Shirtcliff said, as media performance is seen as more measurable and less subjective than creative work.

One creative agency executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their shop sometimes forgoes 10% to 20% of its fee for the first few months of a new client relationship, money it doesn’t get back if it misses agreed-upon KPIs, such as lifting brand performance, but which comes back with a bonus if it hits them. The client tracks the metrics and shares them with the agency, this person said.

This executive described taking the risk as more a way to show “skin in the game” against competing agencies in a close pitch, rather than a genuine embrace of outcomes-based pricing.

Data and attribution standoffs

Coming to a mutual agreement on the outcomes is “probably the hardest piece to do,” Shirtcliff said, “because there’s so many things that can be measured.” Sales and revenue are the metrics most tied to business outcomes but hardest for agencies to control, while media metrics are easier to influence but don’t always reflect the results clients want.

It’s especially difficult to isolate an agency’s exact role in achieving a business outcome like sales, which is influenced by factors including pricing. Sixty-nine percent of agencies surveyed for the Mediasense report said difficulty agreeing on an attribution methodology was a critical or strong barrier to adoption, and 68% cited insufficient access to client data.

 

Before signing up for a percentage-of-revenue deal, Jared Belsky, CEO of independent media agency Acadia, asks new clients to share a year’s worth of data to model against—whatever metric the deal is priced on, whether that’s revenue, margin or something else. Some marketers are hesitant to share those insights until a contract is signed, creating a “chicken-or-egg problem,” Belsky said.

“The hard question isn’t what data do you need to model,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just availability; you don’t always get it.”

IProspect leans on its own tools for measurement, including incrementality testing, experimentation and what executives call a “more modern” approach to marketing mix modeling. The agency has also built force majeure clauses into its contracts that extend beyond typical service-delivery provisions to cover compensation, protecting against unforeseen shocks like tariffs, war or a pandemic.

There’s a case for third-party oversight, with a neutral party responsible for measurement, rather than agencies grading their own homework. But an independent process has its own drawbacks, too. Measurement approaches like marketing mix modeling and multi-touch attribution “are too slow,” said Ryan Kangisser, chief strategy officer at Mediasense, which is why agencies often fall back on proxy metrics instead.

Managing risk

In its contract with JLR, the majority of WPP’s fees are at risk based on performance, Ad Age has learned. That’s seemingly a suitable arrangement for JLR, which is looking to rebuild profitability and cut costs, but how can WPP—working through a turnaround—afford such risk?

In a June interview with Campaign, WPP CEO Cindy Rose said the company would not lose money by focusing on outcomes, explaining there are “ceilings and floors” in the JLR deal. WPP is also allowed to buy a share of JLR’s media on a principal basis—a practice in which an agency purchases and resells inventory, often at a markup—according to a person familiar with the matter.

WPP declined to comment and JLR did not return requests for comment, but their contract illustrates a broader reality of outcomes-based pricing models: agencies need predictable compensation to fund their operating costs. By leaning further into principal inventory with JLR, WPP is effectively hedging against the risk it is taking on.

Ultimately, it “has to be a two-way thing,” said Kangisser. “If the agency is taking risk, then the client needs to be comfortable that they are going to do whatever they need to do to deliver against those business outcomes. And so, if it does mean participating in some of those areas to supplement the fee, then I think that’s perfectly reasonable.”

Pushback from marketers and procurement

There are risks for marketers with outcomes-based pricing, too. A company may, for example, have budgeted $1 million, only to find it owes $1.5 million once an agency clears its performance targets.

“It’s a variable cost,” said Broadhead, and clients “don’t love that.”

Procurement teams apparently don’t either, with 69% of agencies surveyed for the Mediasense report calling them a critical or strong barrier to adoption. Procurement’s current approach relies on comparing proposals against legacy full-time equivalent models, making it hard to prove a cost saving when the two aren’t directly comparable.

Even when outcomes-based pricing does make it into the conversation, the report noted, it often gets “diluted until they fundamentally resemble more traditional fee structures.”

Success with outcomes can be a slippery slope, said Wesley ter Haar, chief AI and revenue officer at S4 Capital’s Monks. If an agency performs really well and gets paid more, “a procurement team or new leader will come in and go, ‘Hey, this agency is really expensive. We can get cheaper agencies,’” said ter Haar.

“I had [a client] who was honest with me. They said, ‘You’re just making too much money, and you didn’t spot it in advance and tell me,’” Belsky added, recalling a deal from his time as CEO of Dentsu’s 360i in which 100% of the agency’s fee was tied to a percentage of a car rental client’s revenue.

Acadia’s founders have built in caps on how much the agency can earn on performance-based deals, along with a “reverse tiering” structure, where the shop’s percentage rate declines as performance climbs higher.

What’s next?

Broadhead is candid about his limits with outcomes-based pricing and tying compensation to performance. “For any agency to go much over 20 to 30% would be crazy,” he said. Of course, agencies’ appetite for risk will depend on various factors, including how much control they are given over an account, but Broadhead seems to be onto something.

A hybrid approach, with inch-by-inch gains rather than a full shift, appears to be the most likely path forward. WPP’s Rose acknowledged as much while speaking to press last week following the company’s latest earnings report, saying that widespread adoption of outcomes-based pricing will “take a few years.”

Mediasense’s forecast is even less rosy. A full transformation, the report concluded, “still seems to be in the distant future, if it is to happen at all.”

17554: Adland Hospitality Is A Nauseating Notion.

Advertising Age published a perspective opining Adland could enhance its value to clients by embracing restaurant-style hospitality.

It’s an odd notion, as most restaurants—especially in the QSR category—struggle mightily to survive.

The holding companies complicate matters by presenting similar menus and serving bland offerings.

What’s more, White advertising agencies are unhospitable to anyone who isn’t a White man or White woman.

And non-White advertising agencies must cook with crumbs.

Why hospitality is advertising’s most human competitive advantage

By Heather Freiser

Coming out of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, one message was impossible to ignore: in the age of AI, human connection matters more than ever.

Across stages and conversations, industry leaders debated how artificial intelligence will reshape creativity, productivity, and the future of agency work. That question has only grown louder as industry leaders debate AI’s impact on agencies.

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that AI could eventually reduce brands’ need for agencies, it sparked plenty of debate. Regardless of whether you agree with him, it raises an important question: what value can’t be commoditized?

I think we’ve been overlooking one answer: hospitality.

In advertising, we celebrate strategic thinking, creative excellence, and operational rigor. We rarely celebrate hospitality.

We should.

Hospitality is one of the most overlooked strategic capabilities an agency can develop. It’s not soft. It’s not a personality trait. It’s the ability to make people feel seen, supported, and genuinely cared for while you’re doing the work. And in an industry built on relationships, that capability compounds over time.

I didn’t learn that in advertising. I learned it in restaurants.

Before joining the agency world, I spent years working in—and eventually owning—restaurants. The restaurant business teaches you something agencies often forget: people don’t just remember what you delivered. They remember how you made them feel.

Restaurateur Will Guidara captures this perfectly in Unreasonable Hospitality: “Service is black and white. Hospitality is color.”

Service is delivering what’s promised. Hospitality is how you make someone feel while you deliver it.

Agencies have become incredibly good at service. We deliver on time, on budget, and on brief. We optimize workflows, build airtight processes, and obsess over execution. Those things matter. They’re the cost of entry.

But they’re rarely what people remember.

A few years ago, I was in New York during a production shoot with my kids. After a long day, they desperately wanted to visit the M&M’s store in Times Square. I kept saying, “Maybe tomorrow.”

While we were eating dinner at the hotel, the front desk manager walked over carrying a giant bowl of M&M’s.

“I heard someone was hoping to make it to the M&M’s store tonight,” he said. “Here’s your amuse-bouche.”

My kids were ecstatic. My stress disappeared. In one thoughtful gesture, he solved a problem I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.

Years later, I still remember his name.

That’s hospitality.

Guidara encourages restaurants to reserve a small portion of their time and budget for creating moments guests never expect. He calls it “the 5%.”

The 5% isn’t where the margin is. It’s where the memory is.

What would happen if agencies adopted the same philosophy?

Maybe it’s remembering something a client mentioned months ago. Making an introduction without expecting anything in return. Anticipating a problem before it becomes an email chain. Creating meetings that leave people energized instead of exhausted. Finding small ways to reduce someone else’s stress simply because you can.

None of those gestures appear in a statement of work.

All of them build trust. And trust builds loyalty.

As AI makes execution faster and more accessible, agencies will increasingly compete with firms using the same tools, the same models, and many of the same strategic frameworks. The gap between capabilities is shrinking.

The experience of working together isn’t.

AI can generate ideas. It can build decks. It can accelerate production.

It can’t notice that your client hasn’t eaten all day. It can’t remember the story they shared six months ago about their daughter’s graduation. It can’t create the small, thoughtful moments that transform a transactional relationship into a lasting one.

That’s hospitality.

If Cannes reminded us of anything this year, it’s that our industry’s future won’t be determined solely by the technology we adopt. It will also be shaped by the humanity we choose to preserve.

Great work will always matter.

But in a business where AI is rapidly commoditizing execution, hospitality may become the most valuable competitive advantage agencies have left.

17517: On The Challenges For Gaining Entry To Cannes.

 

Advertising Age reported entries dropped over 25% for Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

 

There’s no data to indicate how the value of creativity has globally dropped in Adland—but the figure probably far exceeds 25%.

 

Of course, Ad Age’s examination doesn’t highlight the exclusivity of Cannes, whereby a limited community of privileged advertising agencies participate in a closed popularity contest.

 

A stricter submission process likely had 0% impact on Cannes cliquishness.

 

However, the revised requirements surely adversely affected the underrepresentation of non-White advertising agencies—but don’t expect Cannes to offer percentages and/or confirmation data.

 

Cannes Lions entries drop more than 25% as stricter rules kick in

 

By Tim Nudd

 

Award submissions to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity dropped more than 25% this year, a decrease due at least in part to the introduction of stricter eligibility and verification rules for entrants in the wake of last year’s cheating scandal.

 

The festival received 20,050 entries from 92 countries this year, down from 26,900 from 96 countries in 2025, organizers said Saturday. That is nearly a 25.5% drop.

 

In releasing the numbers, festival leaders pointed to a stricter entry process aimed at rebuilding confidence in the awards process. The festival introduced various measures this year to strengthen oversight and ensure submitted work can withstand greater scrutiny. The new rules include a new fact-checking process, stricter client sign-off and bans on agencies that submit fake or manipulated work.

 

The new process makes entering more challenging and time-consuming, according to agencies. The changes were instituted after the festival was rocked last year when multiple award-winning campaigns came under fire for AI-manipulated case studies, unverifiable campaign results and more.

 

“We have been working closely with our international community over the last year on what are considered and significant steps,” Simon Cook, CEO of Lions, said in a statement. “Together, we understand that these strengthened standards are not designed to restrict creativity, but to fortify it—ensuring breakthrough work gets the recognition it deserves, while preserving the integrity that makes the recognition meaningful and enduring.”

 

Other factors are likely at play in the decrease as well, such as entry fees becoming more prohibitive at agencies that are trying to contain costs and even having layoffs.

 

The festival released other entry data as well. Work submitted by brands accounted for 10% of entries this year, up from 8% last year. Independent agencies made up almost one-third of all entries, the festival said.

17490: US Navy RFP WTF BS.

 

MediaPost reported the US Navy issued an RFP, launching a mission to identify its next White advertising agency.

 

Given President Donald J. Trump’s administration opposes DEIBA+—and Trump declared, “We ended DEI in America!”—will non-White advertising agencies play any role in the account review?

 

At least non-White advertising agencies might be relieved of facing the indignities associated with Prime Redlining and crumbs.

 

Expect competing White advertising agencies to be MIA on DEIBA+ too.

 

Incumbent VML spent many years churning out performative PR, erecting heat shields, and even gaining certification for DEIBA+ political propaganda. Time to admit it was all White lies.

 

In this scenario, RFP stands for Racism Fortification Proposal.

 

Navy Issues RFP For New Ad Contract

 

By Steve McClellan

 

The US Navy has issued a request for proposal for a new advertising recruitment contract.   

 

The initial contract period is for one year and would start in January of 2027. If all extensions are executed, the contract would expire in July of 2032, according to the RFP.  

 

WPP’s VML is the current incumbent, having won the last contract in 2021 (when the agency was known as VMLY&R). It also won the previous contract in 2015.   

 

The total value of the current contract is estimated at $460 million.   

 

The remit includes creative, media, strategy, research, field marketing and more.   

 

The Navy RFP follows word in March that the US Army is in the early stages of picking an agency for its new recruitment contract. It has issued a request for information in advance of a formal competitive bidding process that could kick off in the spring of 2027 and take effect in 2028.   

 

The army values the current 10-year contract, won by DDB in 2018, at $4 billion. DDB was folded into TBWA as part of the reorganization related to Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic. 

 

The Navy RFP was reported on earlier this week by the Ratti Report, an industry newsletter focused on new business leads.

17416: ICYMI US Army RFI BS.

 

Advertising Age reported the US Army launched an RFI, moving in advance of an official account review process projected to start in spring 2027.

 

Given the anti-DEIBA+ positions of the White House and White advertising agencies, will multicrumbtual shops be denied the opportunity to participate and experience Prime Redlining?

 

US Army launches RFI for its $4 billion account, which is currently with Omnicom

 

By Brian Bonilla

 

The U.S. Army has begun laying the groundwork for a review of its multibillion-dollar marketing and advertising business, signaling a potential shake-up for one of the industry’s largest government accounts.

 

The government launched a “sources sought” and RFI on March 12, which is the first step leading up to an official review process slated to begin in late spring 2027.

 

The account was originally with DDB Chicago since 2018, before the agency was folded into TBWA after Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG.

 

The current contract is valued at up to $4 billion, which would seem to make the Army one of the agency’s largest accounts. The current contract is worth about $40 million annually in agency revenue for Omnicom, according to a person familiar with the contract, which is similar to what was reported when DDB initially won the business.

 

DDB’s contract included a five-year base period and “two award-term option periods,” for a total potential 10-year ordering period. It’s not known whether Omnicom is planning to defend the account. The contract is expected to conclude in 2028.

 

TBWA and the U.S. Army weren’t immediately available for comment.

 

The winning agency or agencies will be tasked with driving enlistment and retention across a broad set of audiences at a time when military recruitment has faced sustained challenges.

 

However, there have been recent signs of a turnaround. In January 2025, the U.S. Army had its best recruiting numbers in 15 years, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated last year. After missing its recruitment goals in 2022 and 2023 by 15,000 troops a year, the government entity revised downward its goals and has since reached or exceeded them. In 2025, the U.S. Army surpassed its 60,000 recruit target by more than 1,000 recruits.

 

The RFI details wanting help to target high school and college students, working professionals under 35, specialized talent such as medical and legal professionals, as well as “influencers” such as parents, family members, high school counselors and coaches. It also includes a need for messaging aimed at veterans and recruits to fill civilian workforce positions.

 

The RFI implies that the U.S. Army is open to a one-agency solution or multiple agency partners, which is significant, according to Mike Kapetanovic, a business development consultant at GrowthLab, that is focused on supporting advertising and marketing agencies that work in the public sector.

 

Kapetanovic said there have been growing conversations around government entities pushing for a multiple-agency approach, which could be beneficial for mid-size and independent agencies and less so for holding companies such as Omnicom.

 

“Just the notion that the Army has gone on public record through this RFI exercise, it is contemplating a decentralization of this contract, has massive implications for both the incumbent as well as the future competitive set,” he said. “[If that’s done] there’s a very good chance that that $4 billion contract quickly becomes $50 million to $1 billion contracts in which Omnicom will not retain all of it. Right there, Omnicom gets an immediate hit.”

 

The selected partner or partners will be expected to handle a full suite of services, including creative development, media planning and buying, production, CRM, digital and website management, public relations, events, sponsorships and advanced analytics.

 

The value in winning a contract like this is not only its massive size, but its stability in an increasingly project-based and roster-first industry.

 

MullenLowe, which has been folded into TBWA as well, continues to do work for the government’s Joint Advertising, Market Research & Studies program (JAMRS), which is focused on recruiting volunteers for all branches of the military. MullenLowe retained the account in 2023 and launched a campaign last year called “You Have a Calling, We have an Answer.”

 

In 2024, WPP retained its Marine Corps account, which was previously with Wunderman Thompson before it was merged into VML.

 

Contributing: Ewan Larkin

17331: Expelling Excrement On The CMOs’ Expectations Study.

 

More About Advertising reported on the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) CMOs’ Expectations Study, which revealed what CMOs really want from White advertising agencies.

 

The study spotlighted an obvious contradiction. Specifically, CMOs are seeking relationships built on trust and deep business involvement—yet they prevent the possibilities via constant pitching and switching.

 

Not mentioned in the study is how CMOs perpetuate systemic racism in Adland by pursuing partnerships from an exclusive pool of White advertising agencies.

 

What’s more, CMOs comprise an exclusive, predominately White group themselves.

 

After all, there’s plenty of data showing non-White advertising agencies are underrepresented, underutilized, and underpaid by clients. The few shops receiving assignments are compensated with crumbs.

 

Sorry, the CMOs’ Expectation Study shows CMOs can be expected to deliver deliberate discrimination, disinterest, and disrespect.

 

EACA report: do clients actually want real agency partners?

 

By Stephen Foster

 

A new report from the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) with Kantar, reveals the contradiction at the heart of what clients want from their agencies.

 

The CMOs’ Expectations Study reveals that nearly all (94%) clients believe agencies can be true partners they can trust but they continue to undermine the process of building trust by constantly holding pitches and changing partners.

 

Nearly half of those questioned ran a pitch within the last year, and 65% of those resulted in an agency change. Such constant turnover makes it harder to agencies to behave as true partners and produce more effective communications. Research into Effie Europe 2025 entries reveals that partnerships that have lasted five years or longer are far more effective and successful than those that have shorter tenures.

 

The report, designed to help agencies understand how they can better meet client needs, is the most comprehensive European study to date on what CMOs expect from their agencies, based on responses from 141 different companies in 22 European markets, with 95% of respondents in marketing/communication or top management roles across a broad range of brand-driven sectors such as consumer goods, banking, insurance, energy, tech and services.

 

EACA worked closely with Kantar to analyse responses, using both closed-question analytics and open-ended semantic analysis, delivering both a clear ranking of CMO priorities and a deeper understanding of the emotional and cultural expectations shaping today’s client–agency relationships.

 

The result is a clear hierarchy of what truly convinces CMOs when choosing an agency, or to continue to work with an existing partner. Trust (49% first choice) and deep business involvement (41%) emerge well ahead of creativity. However, both can only really develop over time and are constantly undermined by inefficient repitching, where six out of 10 winning ideas are never even implemented.

 

Creative excellence remains important (it’s a Top Three factor for 72% of respondents), but only when paired with strategic intelligence, operational reliability and strong brand stewardship.

 

“This report confirms the anecdotal evidence from the industry that the agency remit is continuing to expand, with client expectations at an all-time high, while output timelines are shrinking,” says Charley Stoney, CEO of EACA. “It is critical that the industry tackles these expectations and work with advertisers to help them flex remuneration models that pay for this expanded remit, included technology investment. It supports the EACAs opinion that agencies need to move away from the time-based payment structure towards an agile model that works with a blend of human and artificial intelligence services.”