Simon Francis, Executive Chairman of Flock Associates is a veteran of the advertising industry, with over three decades in media and creative leadership roles at OMD, Dentsu, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He sat down with Marketing Procurement iQ magazine magazine to share how his observations on the evolution of marketing prompted the genesis of Flock Associates, and what he sees as the biggest challenges facing Marketing Procurement professionals in 2025.
A birds-eye view of the advertising landscape
Francis began his career as a media buyer at Zenith in 1991. Over the next three decades, he progressed through roles in both media planning and creative account direction, honing an in-depth knowledge of both disciplines and their intersection points.
As CEO, EMEA at first Saatchi & Saatchi and then Dentsu’s Aegis Media, Francis took the helm of multi-award-winning creative full service and media agencies, gaining an enviable multi-disciplinary birds-eye view of the evolving advertising landscape across a global roster of clients.
Tackling the ‘how’ of marketing in an ever-changing world
Reflecting on his 25+ years agency-side, Francis observes that the world of the marketer is becoming ever more complex:
“The ‘What’ of marketing has always been hard. But it hasn’t got any harder. What’s my brand? What’s my idea? But the ‘How’ of marketing has become very much harder in this ever-changing world. How do I get the right people? How do I organise my people? How do I get them the right skills? How do I get them all to work together? And how do I get the right agency? How do I get the agencies to work together? And how do I get the right technology and the data to work?”
In Francis’ view, agencies and traditional marketing consultancies can provide only partial answers to these questions, having, respectively, a vested interest in the status quo, and a lack of deep practitioner-level marketing subject matter expertise. Specialist media, pitch and technology agencies may offer tailored solutions to a single pain point but lack the cross-disciplinary muscle to tackle the interconnected nature of marketing transformation.
As Francis states, “you can’t change the agency ecosystem without looking inside at the client and saying, well, what roles need to change? What’s the process that’s going to change? And what’s the technology needed to manage this?”
Bringing a flock mentality to marketing transformation
Seeing an opportunity to bring a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary approach to marketing transformation, Francis founded Flock in 2013. The marketing consultancy of “compulsive fixers” solves big strategic problems for some of the world’s biggest brands, blending subject matter expertise in strategy, media, creative, and marketing procurement.
With solution offerings in Marketing People and Skills, Marketing Processes, Marketing Procurement and Agency Partners and Technology, Flock has guided the marketing transformation for the likes of Mars, Pepsi, Meta, Spotify, McD’s, Unilever, Warner Bros. Blackrock.
The name Flock comes from a murmuration of starlings, which Francis explains symbolizes the orchestrated marketing dynamic that clients need. “Flock is a metaphor for what modern marketing is. These beautiful, seamless patterns that are ever- changing in the sky.” The flock metaphor extends deeply into the company’s culture too, “For every client project we assemble a team of SMEs, a flock, so that we’ve got exactly the right skills to meet the needs of the client perfectly.”
The agile, sprint-based working style also draws on the behaviour of a murmuration, as Francis explains, “the way that starlings works is that they’re constantly referencing six other birds around them by constantly communicating backwards and forwards. They react to what’s required.”
The bionic agency ecosystem as an industry disruptor
Alongside tackling deeply impactful strategic change programs, the team at Flock also generates a wealth of data and insights through their benchmarking work, proprietary tools, and breadth of client portfolio. These insights are distilled in Flock’s flagship thought leadership report, The Great Balancing Act: Marketing Procurement Trends and Insights, published in late 2024.
Here Francis and team predicted several of the key Marketing Procurement trends that have been playing out in early 2025, including ongoing shifts in agency models, remuneration structures, agency performance management approaches, and marketing procurement skills requirements.
Perhaps most interesting is the evolution of what Flock terms the “Bionic Ecosystem” as a major disruptor of traditional agency models, which can be seen influencing the ongoing tectonic shifts in the agencies landscape.
Within the Bionic Ecosystem concept, the balance of talent resources, (both internal and external), and technological resources in play is entirely determined by the advertiser, based on where each resource type can add most value. This is a marked shift from an agency ecosystem, where the resource mix and value- add are controlled agency-side and driven by agency profit models.
In the Bionic Ecosystem, talent will offer the most value for disruptive original thinking, (assisted by smart tech like Brand Brains), whereas the power of automation and data processing can drive more value from technology in production, transcreation and media personalisation.
And as this model is highly dynamic, emerging new technologies can be adopted at speed. The agency ecosystem is effectively replaced by tech and talent ecosystems, allowing “advanced clients to … purposefully decide what technologies they wish to use, for what, and what they want humans to do. They will be clear on what they want to do in-house, and what they want the agency to do.”
2025 media procurement trends
When asked what’s keeping Media Procurement leaders awake right now, Francis responds succinctly, giving three instances where advertisers need to take charge of their own destinies.
Firstly, Francis asserts that brands need to know exactly what they are investing in, particularly given the changing ownership and governance stance of some social media channels. Advertisers seeking to control their brands need to be highly aware of what their content is associated with, and conscious of what their media investment is sponsoring. “I think every leading advertiser has a responsibility to think and act on behalf of their customers” he adds.
Secondly, Francis exhorts all Media Procurement professionals to be very clear about the long-term sustainability of their balance of agency and inhouse capabilities. With new technologies it’s possible to bring certain functions inhouse, but to do so requires investments in skills and capabilities for longer term success. Making smart choices about the components of the Bionic Ecosystem should be a thoughtful, deliberate exercise, taken with the brand’s long term business objectives in mind.
Thirdly, Francis is clear that the selection and careful management of the right agency partners is mission critical. A great agency partnership requires a high-performing agency. But it also needs the client to set the tone for how the partnership should operate: “Have you got appropriate governance? Have you got appropriate management, the right sort of contract and have you got the right measures for the value that [the agency] can create?
Agencies are great, they’ve got their own great people doing great things. There’s a lot of agency-bashing around, but as an advertiser it’s your responsibility to say what you want, how you want it, and how you’re going to measure it.”