In a buyer's market, it is too easy for clients to drive the agency harder to achieve more coverage, irrespective of how they go about it, and the result is spamming and PROs' reput-ation suffering more damage.
To give you an example, Visit Manchester has put out an invitation to tender, which for an annual budget of £15k specifies that the successful bidder must commit to achieving an AVE (yes, that old crock) of £500k of media coverage - more than 33 times greater than the budget.
How are they to achieve this other than by badgering the media for every last scrap of coverage?
There will be some agency or other that is prepared to take this on in the hope either some miracle of coverage will happen or that there will be enough interns knocking about willing to hit the phones hard enough in the hope of getting a foot in the door.
Can someone tell me who has won in this scenario?
Nigel Sarbutts, founder, BrandAlert (from prweek.com.uk)
