Why advertising agencies don’t advertise
May 4th, 2006Re:Focus: Why Don’t Ad Agencies Advertise?
I love this; it really is a good question. Seth Godin highlighted this article from April 17, 2006 issue of BrandWeek written by SinekPartners CEO, Simon Sinek.
So why don’t they advertise? The article notes that advertising agencies find PR much more effective than simply advertising. Why don’t they practice what they preach?
Maybe because they know that just advertising your brand is ineffective and inefficient.
Because starting an advertising campaign in isolation is not marketing. the real question is not if you should advertise, but how you should advertise.
My question is how many advertising agencies actually have a marketing strategy. If they did, they would use a mix of media in a coordinated campaign, not just an advertising campaign using the most expensive media available.
Imagine this; advertising agency wants to gain customers in IT industry, determine that an online, interactive presentation of their work is a great way to communicate with this tech savvy audience. They use a combination of offline and online media to drive traffic to this dedicated website through curiosity inspiring creative. The online presentation is so good that it starts buzz in blogs which is in turn picked up on by their PR people…and so on.
The problem in the marketing services industry is that everyone is trying to sell their solution as the answer to clients marketing needs. And that simply doesn’t make sense.
May 6th, 2006 at 5:14 am
Interesting topic and I believe that many advertising agencies do not advertise precisely because they know *exactly* what results they would expect based upon the results they get for their clients. Can you really think of any other excuse?
I started commenting on this months ago when Al Ries made similar statements in AdWeeek
http://davedolak.blogspot.com/2005/08/ad-agencies-dont-worship-at-their-own.htmll
and believe that agencies would rather focus on “creative” that wins awards and dazzles clients rather than effectively and measurably building brand equity.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:14 am
This makes sense from the view of the SME sector. Many of these small businesses are reluctant to spend on marketing and PR as budgets are tight. They are looking for real benefits for their investment. In particular, my experience is that they avoid PR companies at all cost (I’m yet to hear a SME praise a PR company). A savvy marketing campaign would actually benefit many SME’s without the huge cost that they believe it would entail.
May 6th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Thanks Dave and Philip; Dave’s comment regarding agency focus on “creative” to win awards is valid. Here is a thought: What actually motivates people to choose a certain line of work? Creative people want to do wonderful creative things; they are not really motivated by sales figures. So they want to dazzle.Account Directors are motivated by selling the product(s) they have for sale, and are often attracted by the image and status of the Advertising world. Too many large corporates have budgets that are big enough to allow for this sort of stuff to go on. Not SME’s. They turn over every penny they spend on marketing. As everyone should.
May 18th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
David I don’t disagree with your post on this topic, but I do feel a need to also point out that there are other market forces at work here. Namely marketplace conditioning of the sales process.
By that I mean purchasers of services from advertising firms don’t seek to find such services by looking at ads. The marketplace conditioning has formed in such a way that advertising is not how you get customers for these types of services. In that regard firms not advertising are practicing savvy marketing.
The true test of an advertising firm’s worth is if they recommend ads for every business problem or if they are smart and bold enough to tell clients when ads are not the right answer…and can work with them to find the right marketing mix for that marketplace’s conditioning.
Keep up the good work.
May 19th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
thanks Mike; that’s an interesting point. I think your assertion that customers don’t look for ad agencies through ads is true. It is also true for most other businesses, but they are still advised to advertise in the right media, as part of an integrated campaign etc. There is no getting away from the fact that there is an inconsistency between their advice and their behaviour. Thanks for your comments and I had a good look at Arketi too. Interesting business.
June 16th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Great post, and very true. On a related topic, don’t you agree that the “Big Business Branding” school of marketing has done incalculable damage to SME’s? (e.g. advertising to “build a brand”, “generating awareness” and running ads multiple times “to let the message sink in”.)
All of these methods are a great way to go broke fast. I even wonder if they work for big businesses. Big businesses often don’t know how poorly their marketing is performing because they don’t test and track.