Reactions trail Adam&EveDDB’s John Lewis ouster
By Felicia Nwosu
Global reactions have continued trail the actions of Adam&EveDDB on LinkedIn platform as it shunned John Lewis pitch as an incumbent agency. It became more shocking to professionals in the advertising landscape to hear that the 14 year old well-nourished and cherished relationship between the agency and its client came to an abrupt end recently despite being the agency’s flagship client.
In reaction to the development, some professionals have penned down their comments on their LinkedIn handles.
Ekeno Eyo, Chief Operating Officer Noah’s Ark communications said, “Last week, the industry was shocked when John Lewis put its creative up for review and the incumbent Adam&EveDDB decided not to re-pitch. For a lot of Agencies, this was a truly bold step by the Agency. Most incumbent Agencies especially the ones who are and have been doing great work for their clients (like A&E has been doing) generally feel there is an Agenda by a new team or that the client might just be trying to get a “cheaper” Agency when a pitch is called. In the case of John Lewis The group posted nearly £100m loss in the first half of 2022, compared with a £52m loss in the same period the year before. Did the guys at John Lewis feel their ads weren’t working or the brand just has not gotten its strategy right? I would like for clients to share their views and Agencies to do likewise.”
Fanen Acho an Entrepreneur noted that agencies assume that almost all business issues can be solved with marketing or even more specifically advertising.
“I once had a client whose conversion was extremely poor despite heavy traffic that our ads were funneling to their app. Upon request for customer journey data (which took forever to be released) we found out that the drop-off rate at just the second milestone on the journey (a journey of just 5 milestones) was almost 80%. Apparently Ad was doing its job, but app was faulty. It could also be some bigger business issues around opex, CX or even skew capex repayment arrangements.”
Arobieke Tolulope, a data driven catalyst at Hera Marketing, advised the agency to remain indifferent to the pitch.
“A&E should use their current insights and access to reposition their client using data analytics while showing documented outcomes on past ad scenarios against what an ideal outcome should be. A strong recommendation would do the trick.”
Daniel Udoh, Lead Strategist at LUGAD Group commented that, “I think the incumbent has more insights into why it would not repitch. Maybe the agency and client are not on the same page in some aspects, needless to repitch. Just my thoughts, though.”
Recall that the partnership between Adam&Eve and John Lewis kicked off 13 months after the latter was launch in 2009. Since then, these two brands have become like Siamese twins, notably with Christmas advertising in Britain, waving flags together in collaboration of the season and their solid relationship.
Some hints about the sudden breakdown of relationship revealed that, behind the scenes, all was not as it seemed. According to the sources, the agency was tasked with creating bigger and bolder campaigns on a stricter budget and for an ’under-baked’ fee, though another source familiar with negotiations dispute these accounts. They added that as a new set of marketers arrived at the brand, production budgets came under heightened scrutiny.
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