What marketers can learn from Howard Webb - yellow carding your agency

Howard Webb is considered by those with knowledge of the game of football to be the best referee this country has ever produced. During his career as a Premier League referee, he officiated all the major domestic matches and knockout finals as well as being the first person to referee the UEFA Champions League Final and FIFA World Cup Final in the same year (2010).

He understood that the best matches were those that flowed freely where the players were the stars, not the referee. But he also recognised that, for the football to be as entertaining and attractive as fans hoped for, he needed to ensure the right level of refereeing was applied to each game.

A red card early on would put a very different complexion on the remainder of the tie and could kill it as a spectacle, with the depleted team having to play out of position to accommodate being a man down. Whereas an early yellow card was a demonstration that the referee was in charge and a warning to players that ungentlemanly behaviour was not going to be tolerated.

Across 13 years of topflight refereeing, Webb showed the yellow card on average three times per game and the red card 0.1 times per game. The vast majority of games refereed by Webb ensured that the players could shine, and if they did, deliver an entertaining match for the fans.

You might be forgiven for thinking what all this has to do with the daily grind facing today’s marketers.

At AAR, we have observed over many years that the circumstances in which the best work produced by marketers and their agency partners has common traits; respect for each other’s point of view, clarity, a shared ambition, honesty (especially when things are not going so well), remuneration that rewards success and excellent service to merit it, along with a long-term commitment to each other.

But, as we all know, business is hard and great business is really hard. Sometimes agencies can fail to deliver against their clients’ high expectations of them. The result of which can be a straight red - translated this means a pitch being called or the outright loss of business.

This is where Howard comes in…

In such circumstances, a more beneficial approach would be to issue the agency with a yellow card, clearly raised for all to see, brand and agency team alike. Call out the issue, discuss it amongst the marketing and agency teams, being honest about the reasons and, most importantly, giving the agency the opportunity to address the concerns raised.

And if your game is baseball rather than football, you can apply the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach.

But delivering bad news is not something with which many people are comfortable, they will skirt round the matter, making inferences and alluding to the issue rather than addressing it head on with clarity and an absence of emotion. This is where AAR can help.

Having a 360° business review like AAR's 100-day Health Check or Reset programme baked into the relationship offers a natural opportunity for such concerns to be raised and yellow card issued, should it be necessary.

Alternatively we have been called in to support CMOs with what are clearly sensitive conversations, as an outside party trusted by the marketer and agency alike, with no agenda other than to do what’s right by everyone involved.

It’s simple and obvious, but not applied as much as it should be, resulting in a pitch being called when it so easily could have been avoided.

Next week VAR!