Funny how one gets paid determines so much of one’s behavior. Or that of one’s business. Industry even.

We in the communications planning and delivery business generally get paid in one of two ways. Neither makes much sense, and both lead to bad behavior.

The first is around commissions. In brief, what that means is we are rewarded for spending as much of our clients’ money as we can get away with, ideally while guiding them toward those media with the highest commission rates.

We may talk about free media in the owned and earned, maybe shared arenas, but if we are on commission-based remuneration plans, one would assume we will hope to steer our clients away from such non-lucrative paths.

Or, we get paid based on an FTE (Full Time Equivalent) basis. Basically, a man-hour-based fee. While it certainly has advantages to the previous means of pay, it is fraught with its own set of issues. First, it means our focus now must be on keeping the maximum number of people working on a client’s business. Efficiencies be damned! But worse, it means the client has to manage our business for us, and will be robbed of real innovation. If one is not currently inclined toward a gaming, mobile, or social agenda, there will be no bodies committed to those endeavors. And evolution will be stymied.

A few years ago we blazed a new trail. One that has now fully half of our clients realizing a better result. One that lines up exactly with where their business results fall. It’s a simple notion, called Pay-for-Performance, or “P4P”. Client KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) are our KPI’s. Spend and man hours don’t matter.

Business outcome does.

Because of our move to P4P, we can drive innovation. Not just can, must. And, we can lead the industry to places we all know we need (and want) to go, but have gotten trapped by antiquated payment models.

Take automation for instance. We could have automated the buying (and selling) process years, maybe even decades ago. We still buy media the way we did when social meant only word-of-mouth.

We fax, translate Word into Excel, make mistakes as we translate. And take a whole lot of not very rewarding time in the process. But, as we get paid for our time, no reason to change, right?

My organization has put a big stake in the ground by insisting that 50% of all media, not only the long-tail of digital, be bought through automation by the end of 2015. It is a tall order, but one which we will achieve thanks to the tapping of great partners like A&E, Tribune, AOL, Cablevision, Clear Channel and ESPN. And there are more coming to join these trail-blazers. Which means that together we will create movement. And more opportunities like this for those willing to put their money where their mouths are.


Let us all measure success by the success measure that matters most: how our clients are doing! After all, isn't that why we are hired?

Photo: Michael Denora / Getty Images