Honda Australia’s CMO Eva Barrett has highlighted the success of its recent shift to an “agency village” is a result of wanting to keep agencies accountable, which in turn avoids conflict between agencies.
Speaking with B&T, the general manager of brand, marketing and customer experience said the new structure has helped Honda “create stronger campaigns” as a result of bringing all agencies into the same room from the beginning, rather than briefing them separately.
It comes after the car brand recently formalised its agency village setup, appointing Zenith for media and Special for creative, alongside PR agency Burson and social agency Wired.
For Barrett, the current model “works better because every agency contributes to the same idea instead of operating independently”.
“We brief fully integrated, so all the agencies are in the room together with my team,” she said. “If you have separate briefs, you have separate ideas and agencies working in silos.”
She said, that doesn’t work well for a brand like Honda.
However, under the new model, Barrett said agencies are regularly meeting together before presenting work back to Honda, with creative, media, PR and social all building from the same strategy.
“Usually the creative agency comes up with the big idea, and then everyone builds off that,” she explained.
“What does this mean for media? What does this mean for PR? What does this mean for social? Everyone works from the same direction.”
Barrett said that collaborative approach helps avoid one of the biggest criticisms of multi-agency structures – conflict and competing priorities.
“How do you avoid the silos and turf wars? By briefing integrated,” she said. “That way we’re all one team.”
She also argued that having multiple specialist agencies creates accountability that does not exist when one agency controls everything.
“The benefit of having multiple agencies is they keep each other honest,” Barrett said.
“If you have all your eggs in one basket, it’s difficult to keep one agency accountable for all of those different strengths.”
While many agencies increasingly promote themselves as “full-service”, Barrett said she believes specialist agencies still deliver stronger outcomes in their individual areas.
“A lot of agencies have tried to sell creative and media together because it benefits agencies,” she said.
“But often you’re still working with different teams anyway.”
She added that smaller agencies claiming to offer media services often lack the scale and planning tools of dedicated media agencies.
“You want a media agency that is a specialist and has all the tools,” she said. “A small creative agency that says they do a bit of media is never going to be able to afford the best planning tools.”
Barrett said the village model reflects broader changes happening across the automotive industry, where brands are under pressure to stand out in what she described as a “sea of sameness”.
“We are absolutely bombarded with car advertising right now,” she said. “How we cut through is by having really great creative and telling great brand stories.”
Honda recently applied the integrated structure to its launch campaign for the new Honda CR-V hybrid SUV, centred around the idea of “smooth”. Smooth cocktails, a smooth venue and a smooth selection of music from Sydney-based singer Don West.
The campaign included a one-take ad featuring a vinyl record player mounted to the roof of the car, before expanding into events, PR and social executions built around the same theme.
“Everything is integrated,” Barrett said. “That’s what gets you to the best work.”
Barrett said integrated agency villages have long been standard in her previous global roles across brands including Adidas and Philips, and believes more marketers are beginning to adopt the approach.
“I think strong consumer marketers understand the benefit of an agency village,” she said.
