Gone are the days of siloed marketing structures

Adapting to the increasingly complex commerce landscape, The Mars Agency utilizes a streamlined approach for growth opportunities

出自 India Fizer , AdForum

The Mars Agency
营销/创意服务
Southfield, 美国
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The Mars Agency Global CEO, Rob Rivenburgh, chimes in on what strategies provide growth potential and long-term value: flexibility, a connected ecosystem, and expanding their capabilities into new markets. 

 

When searching for growth opportunities, how do you determine what is the right fit for the agency?

Finding the right strategic fit is imperative to the health of our agency, our Martians and, of course, our clients. We consider ourselves to be an extension of the client, so we work hard to ensure that the expertise we’ll bring to the partnership aligns with their own skill sets and capabilities. While the immediate “size of the prize” is a consideration, it’s more important to find opportunities with growth potential that can deliver long-term value for both sides.

We look for clients who are passionate about transforming how they go to market. About innovating, testing, learning, and optimizing. Providing solutions for this type of strategic mindset is where we thrive. It also keeps our teams challenged, engaged, and proud of the work they’re creating and the impact they’re having.

 

What does exponential growth look like for your agency? For example, project work vs AOR pitches, geographic, interdisciplinary, etc.

We excel as a connected commerce agency, and the work we’ve done for our full-service clients illustrates the benefits that can be gained from having an end-to-end partner: more efficient processes, more effective planning and execution, stronger business results. So expanding our existing client relationships to add broader responsibilities across our key practices — media, ecommerce, customer intelligence, analytics, content — is a key focus.

We’ve been building up our global footprint across Europe and Asia-Pacific, so exporting our core U.S. capabilities into new markets, both to help existing clients and attract new ones, is another priority. We’re also looking to move beyond our traditional CPG client base to bring our expertise to new product verticals around the world.

 

What are the key challenges and / or opportunities for brands in today’s marketing economy?

The commerce landscape is becoming more and more fragmented, making shopper conversion an increasingly complex task. Companies are overwhelmed by the speed of change and struggling to keep pace. But the siloed structure of most marketing organizations makes it almost impossible to address this complexity; most also don’t have the bandwidth to add the skill sets now needed, especially since the required talent is so hard to find these days. The outcome of all this is poor business results.

In response, many companies have turned to specialist agencies in areas like commerce media, ecommerce and search to fill their skill gaps. But this strategy only adds to the massive inefficiencies that have long existed in the traditional IAT model of having distinct brand, pr, experiential, and commerce agencies at the table. You can’t alleviate complexity with more complexity.  

The opportunity, then, is for marketing organizations to capitalize on current marketplace conditions and eliminate complexity by finally eliminating internal siloes and consolidating external partners to better align their commerce practices and drive stronger results. The opportunity for The Mars Agency specifically is to use our connected commerce ecosystem to help provide that alignment and deliver those results.

 

Given the uncertainty of the past couple of years, are there any trend predictions you have about where the ad and media industries are headed?

The emergence of retail media has clarified what we’ve seen happening for a long time: the classic marketing funnel has collapsed as the opportunity for consumers to make a purchase has become ubiquitous. 

The ad and media industries will need to continue adapting to this new reality by better aligning, and even uniting, the traditional marketing functions that were established to work within that funnel. Digitally native DTC brands have proven that you can effectively build a brand and drive commerce at the same time. More and more brand leaders will wake up to this reality and adjust their practices — and their agency partners — accordingly.