Advertising Age published a report titled, “P&G Cuts Agencies 40% in First Wave of Consolidation Drive.” The mega-client’s minority advertising agencies probably didn’t even notice, as consolidating and cutting crumbs is like burglarizing the homeless. Hey, in the advertising industry, it’s not unheard of or uncommon to undercut, underfund and underappreciate the underrepresented—in fact, it’s understood.
Over the last few years P&G cut their ethnic partners down from crumbs, to a diet of wisps and memories of crumbs.
ReplyDeleteThen to make matters worse they started pitting the remaining ethnic agencies and vendors against each other (but never against General Market partners), so what you had the equivalent of starving mice battling it out to see who could be the cheapest.
THEN, once the ethnic mice were starved and weak, P&G let the General Market swoop in and gobble up the crumbs that were left. They switched to a "Total Market" strategy and let the GM shops and vendors double-dip into ethnic (but miraculously gave the General Market teams MORE money than the ethnic ones ever got, imagine that). So the few minorities that remained standing just got shoved to the side and locked out entirely.
So P&G's demise couldn't have happened to a nicer group of shortsighted assholes.
way too much food on that plate to illustrate what P&G gives to minority ad agencies
ReplyDeletetake 3/4 off the plate, especially the biggest crumbs, redistribute to a white agency on a platter inscribed Total Market & you’ll be solid