OUR SERVICES
All Yardstick services and solutions are designed and developed in-house.
Whether you need professional assistance with the entire marketing value chain, or help with a single item from our menu, the Yardstick team is ready to share our insider knowledge of industry challenges and how best to tackle them.
STRATEGIC MARKETING MANAGEMENT
Which of your marketing strategies, structures and ways of working are optimal, and which need to be re-developed, refined or future-proofed? Which of your processes and procedures are best-practice, and which need to change? Yardstick has specialist knowledge and experience in this dynamic and complex area.
Yardstick examines marketing strategies, core capabilities and structures.
We review current marketing operations, develop new operating models, build capability maps, re-design structure, and come up with ways of working that ensure a future-fit marketing and communication function.
Yardstick evaluates marketing workflow processes and practices.
We review marketing processes, forums, approval committees, technologies and practices, and we recommend what to change or adapt for better effectiveness.
Yardstick optimises enterprise-wide marketing and communication investment.
We help your company to rationalise agency and supplier categories.
AGENCY MANAGEMENT SERVICES
Do you have the optimal agency ecosystem that is future-fit and will help you to achieve your marketing objectives? Are you working with the best agencies across all disciplines? What are the most effective ways to appoint new agencies and to transition accounts from incumbents with the minimal business disruption? Allow Yardstick to step in and help.
Yardstick examines marketing agency portfolio models and agency ecosystems.
Does your portfolio allow for consolidation of advertising agencies, or does it require more agency specialisation? We review your current marketing and communication agency ecosystem and recommend a portfolio with the right number and the right mix of agencies to meet your future needs.
Yardstick helps with the in-sourcing of marketing capabilities.
Bringing marketing capability in-house? We develop a comprehensive plan, from receiving scope requirements and categorising jobs, to reviewing factors that could affect costs and/or resource utilisation and applying industry benchmarks.
Yardstick manages agency-search-and-selection processes (agency pitch process).
We confirm company requirements and expectations, assist you in developing a profile of the ideal agency, and help you shortlist those that present the best fit. We will also facilitate the pitch process for you. Our leading pitch process is unique in that it includes a detailed commercial evaluation of all shortlisted agencies and the early ‘establishment’ of the foundation of your future commercial relationship.
Yardstick handles agency account transitions.
Do you know what materials belong to you when an advertising agency contract terminates? We wind up the commercial relationship with the incumbent agency and manage the transition to the new agency. Our priorities are protecting and securing your valuable intellectual property, reconciling and settling financial matters, and mitigating all possible risks – now and into the future.
Yardstick manages onboarding and expectation-setting.
How do you create a solid foundation for a newly-formed relationship? When a new agency is appointed, we help you to minimise business disruption. This includes fast-tracking the onboarding of the new agency, so they can deliver great work that meets your standards and expectations.
Yardstick maps ways of working that are win-win for agency and client.
We create a common understanding of what the agency needs to deliver, and how you want the account managed. This is recorded in service level agreements that are regularly updated, to reflect evolving ways of working.
COMMERCIAL & ASSURANCE SERVICES
Ideally, your company enters into exceptional relationships. But how can you tell if there’s wastage in your marketing or advertising spend, if your remuneration methodologies are optimal, and if contracts are compliant? What are the best ways to review your traditional and digital media and to mitigate risk? Yardstick has a superb reputation for assisting with all this and more.
Yardstick benchmarks marketing costs.
We conduct a full review of your company’s marketing spend, producing in-depth cost analyses that identify opportunities for immediate savings and highlight inefficiencies and non-competitive input costs.
Yardstick assesses remuneration methodologies and models.
Does your agency remuneration model match the dynamics of your business? We examine how your business currently remunerates, so we can advise you on more appropriate or innovative methodologies – output-, value-, resource-, performance-, or extraction-based - for driving effectiveness and efficiency.
Yardstick benchmarks agency costs and fees.
Are you using normalised costs when comparing your agency’s fees to others’? We analyse your agency spend - including agency fees, production mark-ups and studio costs - to identify areas of wastage.
Yardstick reviews the fine print in contracts.
Do your existing agency contracts lock you into terms and conditions that don’t serve you? Are they sufficiently clear on what has been agreed? We put agency contracts under a microscope, to ensure they reflect the latest commercial clauses and adequately protect all your rights and interests.
Yardstick ensures contract compliance and management.
Are your agencies operating in accordance with the agreed terms of the agreement and do they pass discounts, credits and rebates back to you? To test compliance and ensure clearing of suspense accounts and accruals, we regularly reconcile budgets, remuneration, third-party costs, and scope of work.
Yardstick conducts traditional and digital media reviews.
Yardstick offers traditional and digital media reviews that include financial, contractual and process reviews.
MARKETING MEASUREMENT & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
How do you analyse marketing, evaluate performance, and track improvement? What are the metrics for optimally managing collateral, resources, and automation? And, once you have gathered data, how do you translate it into the business intelligence needed to improve your marketing efforts? Yardstick will guide you.
Yardstick develops marketing performance bonus and incentive schemes.
Are you sharing risk and reward with your agency? We develop the measurement frameworks and metrics needed to track campaign performance and to inform Agency Bonus Calculators (ABC™) and incentive programmes.
Yardstick facilitates agency evaluation and improvement sessions.
Yardstick’s proprietary agency performance evaluation solution, Y-CARE™ (the Yardstick Client Agency Relationship Evaluation), is a smart offering designed to identify and address the root causes of poor performance.
Yardstick offers ongoing commercial management.
Some of South Africa’s leading company outsource their marketing operations to Yardstick. This includes the management of scope-of-work templates, deliverables menus, rate cards, and the classification and tracking of invoices and credit notes. We also automate resource planning and spend tracking.
Yardstick provides in-depth business intelligence and reporting.
An in-depth understanding of your current spend is the precursor to efficiencies and improvements. We collate and categorise spend information that comes from the source; reporting marketing spend against scope of work and budgets, and providing actionable insights for tactical and strategic decision-making.
