Case study · Saatchi & Saatchi · 2014

Publishing prices and lead times, in an agency, in 2014

Communications agency · productising the offer and industrialising delivery · Indian Ocean · 2014

Illustration: an open catalogue whose pages turn into aligned product blocks, one of them in orange with a price tag

An agency sells bespoke work. That is its pride and its ceiling. Every quote is rebuilt, every price renegotiated, every lead time improvised, and the client leaves without knowing what they are buying until it arrives.

In 2014 we went the other way. A 76-page digital catalogue, structured into product lines, with a published price and a committed delivery time for every service. Ad-server campaign management by the month, display formats by price band, campaign management with retargeting at a fixed fee, and so on.

Behind it, the machine that made it credible: a six-figure annual paid social budget and a five-figure search budget, over 1.2 billion impressions a year, 18 brands and over 245,000 followers managed. You do not productise an offer you cannot produce at scale.

01 · Context

In 2014, in an island market, digital was still sold by the project and by the relationship. Advertisers did not know what a display campaign cost, and agencies had no interest in telling them. The outcome was predictable: long sales cycles, quotes rebuilt ten times, and a conversation about price rather than results. We also had a production volume that let us know our real costs, which is the precondition for daring to publish a price.

The constraint

Publishing your prices inside an agency means giving up three things. Giving up charging more to the client who does not know the market. Giving up hiding a lead time you will not meet. And giving up the bespoke argument, which is the comfortable refuge of every service business. Internally, the resistance does not come from sales, it comes from production, which knows a published lead time becomes an enforceable commitment. That is why it has to be done.

03 · The system

1 · Cut the trade into product lines.

Not into skills, into products. An advertiser does not buy community management, it buys a presence held over the year with a set number of posts. The product line is what makes comparison possible, and so a quick decision.

2 · Show a price, which means knowing your cost.

A price is not set by guesswork. It is calculated on the real time spent, measured on campaigns already produced. The catalogue was only possible because the production volume already existed, and so did the time tracking.

3 · Commit to a lead time, and keep it.

Every service carries a delivery time. It is the part that frightens people inside and reassures them outside. A committed lead time turns an agency into a reliable supplier, which is worth more than a brilliant and unpredictable agency.

4 · Industrialise first, sell second.

The volume made the catalogue credible: more than a billion impressions a year, eighteen brands followed, two media buying channels run. A productised offer without the capacity to produce in series is a promise you will not keep by the second client.

5 · Prepare the next move.

The same business plan put the development of a real-time bidding offer in my name: meet the ad networks, build the offer, present it. It is the direct root of the bidding engine I later built in my own company. The skill runs from 2014 to 2021 without a break.

04 · Results

2014 financial year, offer and production volume.

A 76-page digital catalogue, offer structured into product lines, published price and committed lead time per service
Six-figure annual paid social budget, five-figure search budget
Over 1.2 billion ad impressions a year
18 brands and over 245,000 followers managed, including monitoring and crisis handling on those brands
Real-time bidding offer written into the business plan, the direct root of the engine built in the following years

05 · What it proves

Productising a service offer makes it buyable. The client stops negotiating a price they do not understand and starts choosing between products they do. Which requires knowing your production cost, and therefore having measured it. If you cannot publish a price, you do not know what your trade costs you.