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| For the latest edition of our Marketing Briefing, available exclusively to Digiday+ members, senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos looks at how the pandemic has forced permanent changes on agency office culture. In this week's Media Buying Briefing, another member exclusive, senior editor Michael Bürgi explores the implications of Publicis Groupe's new union with Walmart. You can get a taste below and subscribe to Digiday+ for full access to all briefings as well as original research, reports and guides, tutorials, unlimited stories and much more. By Kristina Monllos Like many marketing organizations and agencies, the team at Rain the Growth Agency was planning for employees to start to return to working at its offices in September. That’s no longer the case due to the delta variant. Uncertainties surrounding school and daycare openings have made it difficult to stick to a return to offices for parents. That’s a stress the Portland-based agency didn’t want to add on for staffers — about a third of the performance marketing agency’s employees are parents. “When people can’t even plan for [childcare in] September it becomes very disruptive,” said Jane Crisan, COO and president of Rain the Growth Agency. Instead the agency is now targeting November, pending the state of the pandemic, for a return of in-office working. That said, while the agency is aiming to sort out a return to office, it’s not requiring people to work at the office once more people return to it. The agency is one of a number of shops and marketing organizations taking a much more flexible approach to requiring people to work in offices now as some organizations are rethinking what offices mean to them. “We’ve created a more permanent model,” said Todd Lombardo, managing director at The Many, adding that while the agency had a soft opening of its office in July to allow a third of employees to work there should they choose to do so, the shop will not require people to work at its offices. Instead, with the new plan factoring in remote work, “everyone is equal in the room regardless of location. There’s always a Zoom. We’re not going to mandate when people have to physically be in an office,” he said Instead of snapping back to the old ways of working, some agencies and marketing execs are rethinking what it means to be in an office and how important that may be. Maintaining flexibility can help attract talent to agencies and marketing organizations that allow for that, according to agency execs. Quote of the Week “It’s harder than I expected. I’m so removed from my routine and needing to get up at a certain time and getting out of the house. It’s very hard to get back into that mode. I thought it would be so fun and a ceremonious moment of everyone reuniting, but barely anyone is going in because everything is still weird.” — A media employee told media reporter Sara Guaglione as part of a confessions interview on what it’s like to transition back to going into an office now. Subscribe to Digiday+ below to access the full briefing. SUBSCRIBEBy Michael Bürgi In the dark of night last Thursday, retail giant Walmart and agency holding company Publicis Groupe announced their desire to reunite, with Publicis picking up $600 million in omnichannel media buying and planning business from Haworth Media, which had run Walmart’s media since 2016. The biggest of the major accounts in the Mediapalooza of the first half of 2021, Walmart returns to where it used to park its media business prior to Haworth. For most of the early 2000s, Walmart’s media business sat within Mediavest (one half of Starcom Mediavest Group), which was owned by Publicis. Though the Mediavest and Starcom Mediavest Group brands names are gone — the result of multiple reorganizations within Publicis Media —Starcom itself remains very much alive, while Mediavest was absorbed into Spark Foundry, the other major brand within Publicis Media. Is Walmart rekindling an old partnership? One longtime media observer who declined to speak for attribution said he believes the relationships from back then also played a hand in luring Walmart back. Though many of the senior executives who led Walmart’s business have moved on (for example, Steven Wolfe Pereira, who was the client lead for Walmart for a period has since started his own education company, Encantos), some of the mid-level people who did much of the grunt work have moved into senior positions — at least those that haven’t moved on. That said, the broader Publicis Groupe is a much different company today than it was a decade ago (full disclosure–I briefly worked for Starcom Mediavest Group in 2011). Besides the media-side reorgs, the company also now owns data giant Epsilon, which not only offers tons of customer-loyalty management expertise, but also can deliver on integrating data from multiple sources, and making use of clean-room technology — an essential ingredient to any data-heavy operation today. A Publicis representative confirmed the media-side relationship with Walmart cuts across all of Publicis, not just media. Besides the other holding companies (Omnicom, Dentsu et. al) that were jockeying to win Walmart, the biggest loser in all this is Haworth Media, the Minneapolis-based media agency that grew around building Target’s retail business, but lost Target in 2016. Why? Well, in 2014, WPP’s GroupM took a 49% stake in Haworth, in part because Haworth was a hot shop at the time based on the award-winning work it was doing for Target. Two years later, GroupM lured Target away to the GroupM mothership two years later. That opened up Haworth’s chance to take what it learned for Target and apply it to Walmart. But even that’s gone now. Haworth did not respond to an email seeking comment. Direct quote “While the ‘solve a problem with me’ during the final pitch is one interesting take – I think if there’s five finalists, that agency comes in second, and the biggest well-known (aka safest) still comes in first. I don’t know a solution to the RFP process, but there’s such a huge need for consultants right now, it’s unreal. We just got another one — not a huge budget at all, but their RFP read like they stole the content off our site. It was media-only — they have design in-house. I just learned last week that the business went to a design agency whose website doesn’t even mention media. I’d love to say that’s the first time it’s happened, but I think what happens with smaller accounts that can’t afford an agency consultant is that they don’t know 100% what they need, but they know they want something. Once they do the RFP, they then realize they need other things as well. And while it all works out for them in the end, it is a complete waste of time for every other agency involved.” — Michael Hubbard, CEO of Media Two Interactive, on the state of RFPs and the need for consultants Subscribe to Digiday+ below to access the full briefing. SUBSCRIBEFurther reading ‘This is the equivalent of free beer’: Confessions of a strategist on how wellness platitudes aren’t enough to curb burnout ‘Employers have a responsibility to be part of the solution’: Why providing childcare is becoming critical in hiring and retaining talent To win over fans who are skeptical of corporate influence, esports organizations and their brand partners are rolling out activations that engage with and directly benefit both their players and fans. SUBSCRIBE Digiday+ can help me do my job better
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