I recently read an article on Adweek.com that reported on a speech given by Cone & Belding’s CEO, Steve Blamer. His message was centered around the idea that ad agencies should put their money where their mouth is and create a compensation structure based on the results of the campaigns they create for their clients.

We all know that this isn’t a new idea by any means. And I wonder why no one has tried it yet (maybe they have and I just don’t know about it). I do know that Brains on Fire has bought the stock of some of our clients in the past…

But I think the problem with this concept is that, if my paycheck was to be based on the naming and identity that we do for a client, then there would have to be some ground rules centered around control. A good chunk of our business is project-based. And once we create that name and/or identity for a company, we hand it over to them and that’s it. We have no control whether they decide to fully implement all of our recommendations or to do their own thing. (It happens. And it happens to all of us.) Sure, we make very strong and specific recommendations (must do’s and must never-do’s) from everything to language to uniforms to WOMM…but we are no longer in the driver’s seat. So they can listen or not. We’ve seen the ones that take our words to heart do extremely well. But that’s up to them. Like I said, it’s happened to all of us at one point or another.

And I think that’s the gaping flaw in the performance-based compensation theory.

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