At the Thursday keynote address to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Masters of Marketing Conference
Marc Pritchard (Chief Brand Officer at Procter & Gamble Co.) addressed issues with creative agencies in his talk on “Raising the Creative Bar.” But he said it’s time to lower pressure on agencies – which has included P&G cutting its agency and production fees the past two year by $570 million to $1.4 billion.
Doing good creative work requires time, he said. “And we have a problem, because we’re spending too much of our time on measurement of advertising vs. the quality. We’re fiddling with measurement debates while consumers are blocking our ads. Measurement is not going to make crappy advertising better.”
On creative measurement, while P&G certainly hasn’t abandoned copy testing, Mr. Pritchard said he favors a different test for deciding to proceed with work, which is “whether it makes my spine tingle.” If it does, it should at least get further development, he said.