NEW YORK There's no shortage of major marketers taking a hard look at agency compensation. InBev Anheuser-Busch has shifted away from retainer relationships and extended the time it takes to pay agencies. Coca-Cola has made agency profitability solely contingent on meeting performance metrics.
Now, Unilever is asking roster shops to accept less profitability up front, and questioning the hourly rates that agencies charge and whether it should extend the time it takes to pay its bills, according to sources. Some of the terms, such as payment timing -- currently at 30 days -- are negotiable. But Unilever, which last year spent $7.2 billion worldwide on advertising and promotions according to its annual report, has told its agencies that the new upfront profit margin of 5 percent is not, said sources.
Previously, the base margin was 10 percent, with the opportunity to earn more via a bonus if certain performance metrics were met. Now, roster shops will have to hit such performance measures just to maintain their previous margin. As such, Unilever, like Coke, though not as acutely, is shifting more toward performance-based compensation. Unilever's major creative agencies were notified of the margin change in March, and it was retroactive to Jan. 1, according to sources.
Given that Unilever's creative shops cut across four holding companies -- WPP Group, Interpublic Group, Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe -- the impact of the margin change alone is significant. What's more, sources describe the cut as "structural" and therefore unlikely to revert to the previous percentage even when the economy -- and Unilever's business results -- rebounds. As one agency CEO put it, "Once things go this way, they tend not to come back again."
While Unilever's drive to slash agency costs comes during a downturn, that's not necessarily the driving force. Rather, sources point to the influence of new Unilever CEO Paul Polman, a former CFO at Nestlé who replaced Patrick Cescau as the packaged-goods giant's top gun this year. Before Nestlé, Polman spent 27 years at Procter & Gamble, originally in finance roles and lastly as group president for Europe.
"He's there to shake up Unilever and to shake up the status quo," said one source.
Said another: "He took a look at the overall marketing costs and believes that too much is being spent on fees and production" costs. "He has got benchmarks from Nestlé and P&G."
When contacted about the rationale for changing aspects of its agency compensation, a Unilever rep said only, "We don't usually comment on our remuneration policies." Likewise, affected agencies including Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe, DDB, JWT and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, declined to comment.
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