The new senior vice president, sales and marketing at Nissan, Christian Meunier, lit a roaring fire under the brand’s agency by publicly shaming it into ditching the “sh _ _” it was pitching and bringing some new and innovative ideas to the table.
It’s a shift in the dynamics between ad agencies and new CMOs, which usually end in a futile, timely and costly pitch by the incumbent, only to be tossed aside in the end.
This Forbes contributor, Will Burns, opines on what this type of action means to, not only agencies, but the brands themselves. It a fresh approach that offers the incumbent a chance to show they deserve the job, even if the process is painful, and to keep a mega account that would cost millions in lost revenue and an untold number of jobs. Plenty of lessons to learn here.