Michael Farmer – författare

In August 2021, author Michael Farmer was invited by Mat Baxter, the new CEO of Huge, the global digital agency owned by Interpublic, to become an independent "fly on the wall" observer to record the strategic and operational transformation of Huge. Baxter was Huge's fifth CEO in four years. Huge had had a history of slow growth, client churn and marginal profitability. This book is the riveting story of Huge's journey through its transformation effort - from its initiation in 2021 to a rethink of the transformation in May 2022 to a revised structure and plan that put the program back on course - with some significant delays. "It's one thing to organize a change plan that assigns responsibilities to senior executives," mused Baxter, "and another thing to have the sum of their efforts add up to something greater." Madison Avenue Makeover provides a unique insight into how one company changed in order to survive, and at the same time, redefined the advertising agency business.

The advertising industry has reached a critical and dangerous point in its development - agencies destroy themselves by doing increased work for declining fees. So what are the logical consequences of the failure to act? Growing workloads and declining fees have created a "recipe for disaster." For the first time, Michael Farmer offers a solution to avoid this seemingly inevitable disaster. This book offers the world's first effective definition of "the real agency problem." Once the problem is understood, the author offers corrective solutions. Now in its third edition, Madison Avenue Manslaughter has been updated to include industry developments from 2017-2018, plus new material and chapters. This book is a call to action for the 21st-century breed of "mad men," which outlines the industry problems and encourages agencies and their clients to take management actions to keep this disaster at bay. These actions form the basis of a strategic response by agency CEOs as well as corporate chief marketing officers.