As mass advertising agencies struggle to find their new business model, one brave company is blazing new ground in the world of integrated advertising. Using a bottom up approach powered by good old elbow grease, it seems Anomaly, Madison Avenue’s newest rock-stars, may be setting the trend by offering much more than just ads. What makes them such an “Anomaly”? They take a share in the risk for a cut of the profit.
The atmosphere as described in AdAge:
“Forget above the line and below the line. Forget lines. Forget silos. Forget competing disciplines and the eternal scrap for what the view as their rightful share of the almighty dollar… to truly move forward, many of those models will have to be torn down and rebuilt.”
The introduction to Anomaly, as read in the NY Times:
“Anomaly have started to capitalize on the desire among marketers to do things differently – and the inability of many bigger agencies to accomplish that.”
The followup, as covered in Creative Review:
“Anomaly is defiantly not an “Ad Agency”. The company sets store by developing its own intellectual property which it can license to clients in return for share in revenues. Their aspiration is to be a product developing IP company, marketing their own portfolio of IP as well as doing that for major brands.”
In a business structure more resembling a partnership than an agency model, Anomaly has taken the ad world by storm since beating out several advertising heavyweights, such as Crispin Porter and Goodby Silverstein, to claim the Virgin America account as their own. And they did it without a single ad idea in their pitch.
According to Business 2.0, Anomaly’s pitch sounded more like a “takeover bid”, complete with interior designs for the planes, uniform ideas for the flight crew and programing outlines for the inflight pay-per-view entertainment systems.
For Anomaly, the concept of integration goes way beyond the campaign idea – extending to product design, strategic consulting and technology licensing. The two year old company may have cracked the egg in the client/agency partnership omelette. They’ve dumped the time and materials approach all-together, and along with that goes the “kill it and bill it” attitude that some agencies have been reduced to. Flat rate fees and profit share is the new model, great creative and a holistic brand is the product.There’s great incentive to do results driven work, as opposed to awkwardly filling out time-sheets, but there are two concerns that jump out straight away.
#1 If the partnership between the client and agency is paid out by a results-driven, profit-share system, then agencies need a lot more say in the actual creative that gets produced. Very often clients revise great creative into the ground and agencies let this happen for the better good of the relationship, sometimes sacrificing the product. This new partnership model will require a new understanding over who gets final say over what the consumer ends up seeing.
#2 Speaking of the consumer, where are they in all of this? The trend in marketing right now is about empowering the consumer to create their own brand experience. This new structure, although tempting for the client and agency, seems to neglect the customer’s input beyond the basic purchase decision. This may be the fatal flaw in a great plan, if it has not already been considered.
By all indications, this model on the surface appears to be the holy grail we’ve all been waiting for. Close observation is required to see how long this type of business relationship will last and how it will evolve to give the consumer a stake before I take a drink.
A radical maybe, but radical nonetheless…
Kudos for the effort Anomaly.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to catch up on my time-sheets…
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February 11th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Anatomy of the new Anomaly…
As mass advertising agencies struggle to find their new business model, one brave company is blazing new ground in the world of integrated advertising. Using a bottom up approach powered by good old elbow grease, it seems Anomaly, Madison Avenues newes…
March 5th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
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