Listen to Your Enemy

My father always told me that everyone is worth listening to -- even if it's only to learn what not to say. As I grew older and more experienced, especially in the advertising field, I came to truly see the simple wisdom in that piece of advice.

People whom you think are great can clearly show you the best way to do something. And those whom you think aren't as good as you, can show you how not to do something. (Of course, it could be the opposite: people you thought were great really don't know what they're doing, while those with a lesser reputation are the true luminaries.)

What does this have to do with online media? This week, something happened that really blew my mind. We recently lost the online display portion of an account (c'mon, it happens to the best of us), and we learned the new firm isn't delivering the value to the client that we did. In fact, the firm is delivering exactly 66 percent less value. How do we know this? Because some media invoices were accidentally delivered to us. Turns out, the new agency is paying three times the rates we were paying for the same placements!

Labels: ClickZ, Online Media