The New Agency Structure

The new agency will emerge from the old agency structure and will be similar, except it won't. Continued consolidation and agency service re-bundling will be driving the charge forward. To a degree agencies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Reinventing yourself takes time and money. In order to prevent an agency's value from being commoditized and to compete against a swarm of small and nimble specialists in the market requires experience and attentive focus on the details and nuances of each channel and discipline. To date most of the major agencies who have accomplished this have done so via acquisition. Some have attempted organic development, but rarely has organic growth in specialized digital marketing proven to be successful (prove me wrong). But for mid-sized agencies, the newer marketing specialties are predominantly outsourced, thus eroding their market potential and margins, and ultimately the perceived strategic value to clients. It is essential for agencies to have a well rounded suite of digital services. As clients become more savvy, and more emphasis shifts to digital over the next several years, this will increasingly be the case. Particularly because of the blurring of once linearly separated disciplines.

Media is changing drastically (I know, a resounding "DUH" is reverberating in your head after reading that statement of the over obvious). But articulating how it has changed and what it means to the development of your agency is the key to successfully changing along with it. Whereas, generally speaking, the application of marketing within media would fall into clearly defined pillars of "advertising" or "PR", each with some subsegments that were somewhat also clearly defined. We are now entering a chaotic era of something beyond fragmentation - it is the splintering of media. A special note for the digirati that read my blog, this pertains to all media, not just what we now refer to as digital channels - ie: there are more out-of-home and broadcast opportunities than ever before, and VOD is bound to become true iTV one day in the future as well. The introduction and mass adoption of social media tools has created a market of engagement and conversation that cuts across the lines of media, creative, technology and PR. Social networking, blogging, microblogging, reblogging, lifestreaming (ok, so some of these activities are not yet "mass" as we would define the term) create the need to monitor not just measure, they create the need to immerse vs. flight campaigns, they ultimately force marketers to participate and actually become consumer centric, finally. Online macro and micro communities that may be relevant to your brand or product will congeal and self perpetuate within the context of a lifestyle or topical interest that can involve your brand or product, positively or negatively, whether you like it or not, with or without your involvement.

Consumers have the ability to interact across platforms and channels (social media, mobile, IM, email, etc) and this has far reaching implications on how agencies need to restructure to assist clients in producing content, distributing marketing experiences, and measuring the return of our collective marketing efforts. The silos are breaking down. "Integration" and being "consumer centric" can no longer be buzzwords, these phrases must be mantras. Agencies must do what it takes to manifest these mantras across all staff and processes. You may need to take a step backwards to take two steps forward, by investing in training and education, and investing in staff or acquisition. The margins and strategic value to clients are worth the investment. Have you focused on the right investments over the last 3 years? Will your business fail without the proper investment and effort? Not yet, but eventually natural selection kicks in.

]]> http://localmn.wordpress.com/?p=462 Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:48:54 +0000 Paul http://localmn.wordpress.com/?p=462 Search Engine Land provides the original post.

40 presenters is really impressive for a local search field that is still (arguably) relatively new.

It's cool to see that the SMX Conference targets ad agencies just as much or even more than search marketers and marketing managers.

It was just a few years ago that there was quite a debate between search marketers and ad agencies. Search marketers offered a cheaper and more of a "pull marketing" alternative to mainstream marketing and advertising, and ad agencies blew search marketing off as a fad or something useless. Now, both large and small agencies hire search marketers on a regular basis to broaden their services.

The SMX conference looks like they're taking this a step further by offering local search strategies to these agencies. It does make sense. We often hear about the large, national agencies such as Fallon and Campbell Mithun, but there are plenty of small agencies around too that primarily have a local client base.

And some of that is true. If we look at Al Ries' book "The fall of advertising, the rise of PR" which was authored around 2000, we can see that the trend was there for many to see. And it is true, that in the type of brand work PR agencies do, they have always focused on the more immediate human opinion and context in which they can positively influence brand opinion. But the thing is: it's not that PR agencies were rising by because their work got better, or their approach drastically different. Isn't it more likely that traditional agencies, which were the main mass media opinion shapers for brands started sucking? Or to be fair: ad agencies were conveniently repressing the fact that mass media started bleeding its effectiveness to digital channels and 1:1 and social media interactions.

What will be interesting for me to observe is: will PR agencies make some of the mistakes that ad agencies made? Like: "Hey, here's an idea, we'll just start an interactive agency that can adapt our stuff online," or will they be less prone to the "channel-adaptation" mistake? I think they might. Why? Well, since the PR guy's job is to influence opinion of people in a way that is different to regular mass media communication (the staple of the ad agency), it has always been about word-of-mouth, even before the web. Think about it: if, on one side, you have an expert of influencer opinion and how to use it to influence others, and, on the other side, an expert on creating single-minded propositions for mass media: who has an advantage in a landscape where single-minded messages are being fragmented, spoofed, barely measureable, and generally ineffective and where everyone can have an opinion, influence product design, brands and author about everything on a free blog? Yes, it's definitely the PR guy, not the ad guy. So this is where they have the leg up, but I think they've had this advantage rather unconsciously. Now that the web is mainstream, even traditional PR (even if it was more modern than the traditional ad business by design), has to think about PR 2.0 just like advertising has to think about advertising 2.0. And they do, and they might want to break some of the negative PR stereotypes as they go along.

Okay, you say, but digital agencies obviously knew before. Yes they did, and if we again look at Al Ries' book, you will notice it doesn't even go into any detail of the potential of how digital channels are changing peoples' behavior. And here is my point: while some PR agencies had started working closer to the context of the people in order to influence human behavior than traditional ad agencies, most of them still did it in a traditional channel mindset. The reevaluation of what a traditional ad agency has to do, or if in fact, it is still advertising it needs to create, is also taking place consciously in the PR world now. In fact, the question is: if the word "advertising agency" is passé, is "public relations" also a bit yesteryear?

The funny thing is, as the process of redefining the ad agency and the PR agency is underway, look at the schools of thought out there on this topic:

• Markets are conversations, not messages
• it's about listening not talking
• Engage people on their level, not as abstract consumers, insulting their intelligence
• and so on and so on...

Doesn't that sound all too familiar? Isn't everyone saying the same thing?

Yeah, again, nothing new to anyone who worked in a digital agency, in, say 1995. The only difference is: now everyone is talking about it and it's mainstream, oh, and bandwidth is better. This is good, mind you, but it also let's me beg EVERYONE who works in this industry, whether they are in ad agencies, PR agencies, media agencies, digital agencies and even marketing people: don't we all say the same thing, no matter who said it first, or who put out the best "integrated" campaign? Can't we just decide that communication is a people business, not a brand business and that therefore everything we do should start with people, not brands, or products or categories or marketing toolkits?

And for chrissakes, can't we stop putting version numbers on our respective displines (advertising 2.0, web2.0, PR2.0 and media 2.0) just because we want to tell everyone that we finally got the fact that people are in control?

Acts, not ads!

PS: I will be off on a vacation, so there will be no posts for a while.. Cheers.

Article Link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9948093-7.html?tag=blog.promos

Posted by Natalie Weinstein 3 comments

Ad giant WPP Group has hired the first CEO for its Dell-only agency, which is taking over the work of about 800 firms that have been coordinating ads and marketing for the PC maker.

Torrence Boone, who is leaving his job as president of the Boston office for digital marketer Digitas, will eventually oversee about 1,000 employees at Project Da Vinci, the temporary name for the ad agency that's been created to serve Dell. So far, the agency has hired about 500 employees.

Torrence Boone,
CEO, Project Da Vinci

(Credit: Business Wire)

Boone, who is 38, is set to start work in June out of the New York headquarters of Project Da Vinci.

"The opportunity to play a leadership role in the creation of a new agency, built-to-spec, with an ambition to redefine the client-agency relationship, comes along perhaps once in a lifetime," Boone said Monday in a statement.

Before working for Digitas, Boone was vice president and general manager at interactive marketer Avenue A.

Last year, Dell signed a three-year, $4.5 billion contract with WPP to consolidate its ad and marketing efforts within one central agency. In addition to the New York headquarters, Project Da Vinci will have offices in Austin, Miami, and San Francisco, and will also work out of London, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Beijing.

WPP signed a deal last week with Yahoo. Under the deal, three WPP subsidiaries--GroupM, 24/7 Real Media, and WPP Digital--will have access to Yahoo-served ad space and work closely with the Right Media ad exchange.

Article Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/technology/16adco.html

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

YAHOO plans to announce Friday that it has formed a partnership with the WPP Group, the advertising holding company, that will give WPP’s clients a broader swath of Web sites where they can aim their messages.

Under the deal, the thousands of Web publishers that use Yahoo’s advertising auction service to sell space on their sites will get more direct access to WPP’s clients. Those clients, in turn, will be able to funnel their messages to Web site visitors who might be particularly receptive, using technology from an ad-targeting division of WPP called 24/7 Real Media.

WPP’s clients will also benefit from the extra information the agency will be able to collect about the behavior and demographic profile of people who visit sites on the Yahoo auction service, which is called Right Media. Those details will enhance the database that GroupM, which is WPP’s flagship planning and buying agency, collects about customer behavior.

The deal is “about enabling WPP’s full range of agencies to buy digital display advertising across the entire Internet in a much more efficient way,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president for global partner solutions at Yahoo. The companies would not disclose the financial terms.

Although the deal is one of many similar partnerships that each side plans to make, it comes at a significant time for Yahoo. Having just rebuffed a takeover bid from Microsoft, the company now faces a proxy battle by Carl C. Icahn, the activist investor who is trying to strong-arm Yahoo into selling itself to Microsoft.

WPP’s chief executive, Martin Sorrell, said in an interview last week that he was disappointed that Microsoft and Yahoo had not reached an agreement.

“Anybody who is a customer in the marketplace likes to see balance in it,” Mr. Sorrell said. “No one likes oligopolies. Search in America is imbalanced. That’s what Yahoo and Microsoft offered, a bit more balance.”

Perhaps Mr. Sorrell and his company are looking forward to a day when WPP’s clients can enjoy the full fruit of not only Yahoo’s sites, but Microsoft’s as well. The idea of the partnership is to combine the technological expertise of 24/7 Real Media, which directs ads to relevant Web pages, with the broad reach of Yahoo’s Right Media advertising exchange.

The bigger the 24/7 network, the more likely it will detect users it recognizes, and will then be able to deliver specific ads to them. Then its sister agency, GroupM, will be able to collect more data about how viewers behave when they see an ad.

“Basically, the network gets smarter and smarter the more data points it gets added to it,” said Rob Norman, the chief executive of GroupM Interaction, which handles GroupM’s online buying. “We believe we’ll be able to do greater customization of campaigns.”

For example, say GroupM is working for a car company, and knows through its research that people who have visited the company’s site are likely to respond to a rebate offer for a car. People who visit the car company’s site are tagged with a cookie, or small piece of code, so that they can be identified by 24/7, which tracks the cookies, when they visit other sites.

Then, after GroupM bids for ads on Yahoo’s exchange on behalf of the car client, 24/7’s targeting technology can show the rebate ads to the appropriate users — people who have visited the car site in the past — as they surf different sites across the Real Media network.

WPP’s digital approach has been threefold. It is trying to add digital abilities to its existing companies, and investing in outside technology companies (GroupM, for example, recently took a minority stake in Invidi Technologies, which targets ads on cable and satellite television). Finally, it has acquired companies like 24/7 Real Media, for which it paid $649 million a year ago.

And WPP already has thought of ways it could work with services that compete with Yahoo’s Right Media — like Microsoft’s DrivePm advertising network.

”It’s not implausible that 24/7 could do a very similar project with DrivePm in the Microsoft world,” Mr. Norman of GroupM said. “Clients need to have access under the best possible circumstances to the best possible range of inventory in the marketplace.”

Here we see, in real time, the inevitable and cataclismic shift in marketing. Are you ready?

Article Link: http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/media-business-report/18901919.html

By Dorian Benkoil and Jack Myers

Eight months after being announced, Nielsen’s TV/Internet Convergence Panel, launched with ESPN, has gathered a large enough sample to track combined TV and digital media consumption for the sports network. The panel of some 1,000 participants is intended to correlate usage across platforms, including TV, the Internet and mobile. The initiative is just one step in networks’ attempts to sell packages to marketers based on branding and engagement that moves well beyond ratings and gross rating points. “I don’t think just impression delivery or ratings delivery is always the perfect indicator of how to move [a client’s] business, so we try to go the extra step,” ESPN EVP of multimedia sales Eric Johnson told JackMyers Media Business Report in an exclusive interview. He says about a third of ESPN’s business now is written as an opportunity for more than one medium. At yesterday's Upfront presentation on a fabricated SportsCenter set at the Nokia Theater, ESPN executives unveiled multiple cross-platform marketing programs and immersive sports initiatives. They also announced Hannah Storm will be joining a new live weekday morning SportsCenter in August. At the same time, The Media Networks division of ESPN - parent The Walt Disney Company announced the creation of an emerging media and advertising research lab "to further explore the connection that viewers of all ages have with our entertainment, news and sports programming," said Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks.

After years of talking about cross-platform sales and the need to move beyond ratings, the mentality is taking hold. NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker proclaimed ahead of this week's Upfront presentations that it’s not “just about the ratings anymore,” and said that NBC is working more closely with advertisers to construct packages in multiple media. Disney executives, too, have talked about the affinity their viewers have with the brand across platforms. MTV executives have been working with research organizations, including Dynamic Logic, Latitude and OTX to, like Nielsen and ESPN, try to understand how exposure to the MTV brand affects messaging across platforms. (They are also working more closely with advertisers to create co-branded content that runs between programming. JackMyers Media Business Report, May 6.) Scripps Networks has worked to engage viewers and users by creating interstitial “vignettes” that wrap advertiser-friendly content around commercial messages for products for its lifestyle channels such as the Food Network, and created complimentary content for the Web. “We’re going to have to become much better at measuring the synergistic effect of what happens when you put a campaign on television, but tie it into a direct link with a Web presence,” Mike Pardee, SVP of research at Scripps told JackMyers Media Business Report in an exclusive interview. “And you might have other tie-ins like print or outdoor or billboard.”

CNN’s sales team is pushing especially hard to extol the brand value of the channel throughout the day, whether at airports, at home or on a cellphone. “That the [broadcast] networks can say they reached this many people on this particular program on this Thursday night is an argument that was valid five years ago, not today,” CNN’s Greg D’Alba, EVP and COO of advertising sales, told JackMyers Media Business Report. D’Alba and Johnson were both quick to say they weren’t talking about simple bundling -- moving repackaged TV content to the Web or onto mobile devices and wrapping those into a packaged media buy. ESPN not only puts SportsCenter on ESPN.com -- a move that despite initial fears has been additive of audience rather than cutting into TV viewing, Johnson says -- but also creates original Web, mobile and digital on-demand programming. CNN has run separate live video programming on the Web and TV for the major Democratic primaries. It’s crucial, says D’Alba, to provide “real utility content that comes in the form of news and or information like a CNN or sports where viewers or consumers are emotionally attached to their specific brand and their content that the message is perceived in a better way and reaching consumers where creative will stand out.”

In a challenged Upfront environment where media buyers are again bristling over perceived increased rates for decreased audience, the sellers are trying to be more creative about explaining the worth of the buys. If the ESPN-Nielsen initiative bears fruit, it will be one of the first sets of quantitative data about media usage of a single media brand across a multiplicity of platforms. They hope to use the panel to tell not only more about the number of people who use the different media, but also their demographic information and whether different markets have different multi-media behaviors. (The initiative is different from Nielsen’s announced Data Fusion service, which combines viewership information from a TV panel of 30,000 and an Internet panel of 27,000.) While Johnson acknowledges that the “bread and butter” for ESPN is still TV buys for clients trying to reach the ESPN audience, he and D’Alba know they and their clients are going to have to follow the consumer’s usage patterns. “At the end of the day you got to figure out how to capture the media consumer’s media consumption and behavioral habits on a 24-hour basis, which is quickly the way people are starting to consume media,” D’Alba says. “They want to define their own prime time.”

To communicate with or to be contacted by the executives and/or companies mentioned in this column, email the JackMyers Connection Hotline.

Dorian Benkoil is a regular contributor to JackMyers Media Business Report.

What is Air2Web ?

Mark : Air2Web is a Mobile Marketing Infrastructure and Solutions firm. Air2Web provides tools to "promote, service and transact" to brands and ad agencies on the mobile phones. 'Promote' means customer acquisition campaigns, promoting products and services using mobile coupons, trivia, polls etc. 'Service' includes services like loyalty management, customer service management, some examples being store locator, account updates/alerts etc. 'Transact' includes purchases by consumers of content like ringtones, games, wallpapers etc.

Air2Web is technology ambivalent and works across all carriers, all devices etc.

Air2Web is not a mobile advertising firm but rather bills itself as a mobile marketing leader. The distinction is important because Air2web works with carriers, brands and agencies for running custom mobile marketing campaigns using its cutting-edge mobile platform. Air2Web does not sell ads or ad space as is the case with classic ad placement firms.

What kind of mobile channels Air2Web uses ?

Mark : Air2Web uses messaging / SMS as the primary platform for mobile marketing but also has done campaigns using WAP site banner ads, J2ME handheld applications etc.

Air2Web specializes in custom marketing campaigns using SMS as underlying technology but has several successful instances of custom WAP sites like Starbucks locator service, live Weather Channel doppler radar tracker etc. Air2Web can further personalize marketing campaigns if users opt-in for location sensitivity using their zip code transmission or via customer preference databases with brands.

What is the customer reaction to Air2Web marketing campaigns ?

Mark : Air2Web has seen very positive feedback from its marketing campaigns, one of the main reasons being that it is an opt-in "conversational" service as opposed to a broadcast platform. All Air2Web campaigns involve customer desire to review certain brand web sites, download specific content like ringtones or wallpapers or participate in promotions like coupons, gaming etc.

Why does Air2Web succeed with so many brands and agencies ?

Mark : Air2Web has a ready-made infrastructure platform with premium carrier partnerships in place. Air2web can launch marketing programs very quickly by sharing its pre-booked SMS shortcodes across a no of campaigns. Air2Web has standard pricing structures and clean packaging for brands and agencies.

How does Air2web measure customer impact for its campaigns ?

Mark : This is an area which is still maturing in mobile marketing world. Air2Web has measured the customer response via print campaigns run by brands like SelectComfort to track user response to various marketing techniques like coupon, shortcodes etc.

Also Air2Web does direct marketing campaigns on demand and on customer opt-in so it can track the profile of its audience and their interest in Air2Web campaigns.

What is the most effective strategy in mobile marketing ?

Mark : Opt-in by customers works best when it comes to consumer effectiveness. This is facilitated by users sending shortcode SMSes, participating in polls or downloading content on demand.

Who are your top competitors ?

Mark : Sybase (Mobile365), ipsh!, The Hyperfactory etc.

(CellStrat note : This market is fragmented. We feel it will consolidate at some point when there is critical mass)

What are some of your clients ?

Mark : Air2Web has a roster of blue chip clients eg AT&T, AmEx, UPS. PGATour, Walmart, FootLocker, Weather Channel, Domino's, eTrade, eVite etc

What are Air2web strategic advantages ?

Mark : Premium partnerships with carriers, robust and ready mobile messaging solutions which scale rapidly, cross-carrier and cross-device support and partnership with agencies are some strategic differentiators for Air2web.

What are future growth areas in mobile marketing ?

Mark : There is blurring of lines from a technology perspective. SMS-based, on-device/J2ME, WAP sites, video streaming are all coming together as a comprehensive marketing strategy in the mobile world.

Thanks Mark for the time spent. Stimulating discussion and great ideas on mobile marketing.

 MT

Our Agency Report Finds the Business in Surprisingly Good Health

By Bradley Johnson

Published: May 05, 2008

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Revenue for U.S. agencies -- advertising, marketing services and media -- jumped 8.6% in 2007 despite a tepid ad market. And for that, you can thank digital.

Ad Age estimates that the Big 4 ad firms -- Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe -- last year generated 12.3% of worldwide revenue from digital services.

Related Resources: Agency Report 2008 Agency Family Trees 2008

While it comes as no surprise that revenue at digital specialty agencies rocketed last year (up 26.8% in the U.S.), it's clear that digital services have become a way of life (or a way to avoid death) for agencies of all disciplines. In fact, U.S. ad agencies reported an average 10.2% of revenue from digital in 2007.

And in some cases, it was a lot more. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners -- Ad Age's 2008 Agency of the Year -- said digital services last year generated 52% of its revenue. The San Francisco agency works for such digitally connected clients as Hewlett-Packard Co.

Of the more than 860 agencies that participated in the 2008 Agency Report, 60% broke out digital revenue.

Digital helps explain the solid growth experienced by major media agencies despite flat spending in traditional media. WPP Group said worldwide digital revenue for media unit Group M last year soared 53% to $238 million. Ad Age DataCenter estimates that digital accounted for more than 11% of 2007 revenue for Group M, the world's largest media-agency group.

Digital has reshaped direct marketing, and that has turned top-tier direct shops such as Rapp Collins and Wunderman into some of the biggest digital agencies.

Ad Age estimates that the Big 4 ad firms -- Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe -- last year generated 12.3% of worldwide revenue from digital services.

Digital is about technology and platforms; it's not a narrowly defined discipline. For the U.S. digital ranking, Ad Age tracked agencies' digital revenue regardless of discipline, resulting in an eclectic list of agencies -- digital pure plays as well as advertising, marketing-services and media shops -- all dialing for digital dollars.

Digitas tops that digital list; Publicis bought Digitas last year and is moving fast to make it a global agency brand. Avenue A/Razorfish, acquired last year by Microsoft Corp., came in second. New to the list: IBM Interactive, a rebranded rollup of IBM's digital-marketing services.

Last year's U.S. revenue growth rate for agencies of all disciplines -- 8.6% -- was slightly below 2006 growth (8.8%). Agency revenue grew 7.2% in 2005 and 8.6% in 2004. Revenue for U.S. ad, marketing-services and media agencies in 2007 reached $31.1 billion, according to Ad Age estimates.

Marketing-services agencies -- direct, promotion, branding, healthcare and public relations as well as digital specialists -- accounted for 47.1% of U.S. revenue for marketing-communications agencies analyzed in this report. The rest came from advertising and media.

Key points from the report:

• Omnicom's BBDO Worldwide topped Ad Age's new ranking of U.S. agencies across disciplines. The ranking shows how agency brands stack up regardless of whether an agency gets revenue from advertising, marketing services, media or a combination of the three.
• WPP's Group M ranks No. 1 in worldwide media revenue. Omnicom's OMD Worldwide is the world's largest media agency, while WPP's MindShare is tops in the U.S., according to Ad Age estimates.
• WPP's CommonHealth leads the ranking of U.S. healthcare agencies. This is Ad Age's first broad ranking of healthcare agencies since major holding companies opted to limit disclosure after passage of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Facts, figures and analysis from Ad Age's 64th annual agency report

Published: May 05, 2008

AGENCY FAMILY TREES 2008
Quick access to agency profiles, data, articles and web links. See what the agencies have to say about themselves.
Ad Age's new interactive AgencyFamilyTrees08
The printed Agency Trees Poster (a PDF file)

ANALYSIS
An industry overview plus profiles on each of the Big Four: Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe.
Revenue grows 8.6%, propelled by digital
DataCenter Analysis: Agencies: Jobs, Stocks
Revenue totals by discipline

The Big Four: Year in Review
Omnicom Group
WPP Group
Interpublic Group of Cos.
Publicis Groupe

Big Four's take of $31.1 billion by discipline (a PDF file)

RANKINGS
Biggest agency companies, worldwide agencies and U.S. agencies. Top shops in digital, direct and other marketing services.
World's Top 50 Agency Companies
Top 25 U.S. Agencies From All Disciplines
Top Consolidated Agency Networks (a PDF file)
Top World and U.S. Media Agencies
U.S. Ad Agencies Ranked by Revenue
U.S. Marketing Services Agencies Ranked by Revenue
World's Largest Ad Agencies
Worldwide Independent Agency Networks

Rankings by Discipline
Top U.S. Digital Agencies
Top U.S. Search Agencies
Top U.S. Direct Marketing Agencies
Top U.S. Promotion Agencies
Top U.S. Healthcare Agencies
Top U.S. Multicultural Agencies
Includes rankings of agencies with revenue from marketing to Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians.
Yellow Pages Agencies

METHODOLOGY & MORE INFO
Methodology

Agency Report Questionnaires
Ad Age's Agency Report Questionnaires are always available here. If you are a new agency or missed our deadline, fill out a form and e-mail it to AgencyReport@AdAge.com. We'll add you to our database. Questionnaires for the spring 2009 report will be posted in January 2009.

To order single copies of the print edition including the Agency Family Trees pullout poster, call 1-888-288-5900 or e-mail Subs@crain.com

John was totally generous in telling me about his business. Which leads to the point of this post: unselfishness and teamwork are damned good values for building a business, especially in the advertising/marketing world.

You undoubtedly have your own examples. Here are a few from my past.

Wieden & Kennedy. An extreme example. Partners who would bleed for their staff. Staff who give up sleep and credit for the sake of the work, the client and and the agency. Staff that supports each other regardless of who gets the credit. To know the people who lead WK is to know why they've met every challenge, keep up the incredible level of their work, and enjoy more success than ever. 

The Martin Agency. Another extreme example. Best known for UPS "What Can Brown Do For You?" and Geico's gecko. But now they're helping WalMart lift its reputation as well as its sales. This may be the greatest achievement in a long history of excellence. (Check this out.)

Again, if you know the people, you know why they succeed. Sure, there's talent. But even more, there's generosity of spirit and effort. Some of the Martin gang have worked there for more than 30 years. They share a vision for the agency and a childlike enthusiasm for the clients and the work. Martin has created an environment of selflessness and dedication that brings its own rewards. 

Hal Riney & Partners. This agency had an incredible roster of talent. But it never had the teamwork of Wieden or Martin. Mr. Riney was a transcendent talent — perhaps the greatest of his generation. But the agency (now "Publicis & Hal Riney") will likely never again rise to its former heights. Their original success simply was built on the monumental talent of the man and his staff. That's not enough to sustain an organization or keep loyal clients. 

Foote, Cone & Belding/SF. Another agency that rode the greatness of a few individual talents. When I was there, the late, great Mike Koelker lifted the agency's reputation almost single-handedly. When Mike passed away, a slew of high-priced creative directors came and left, but couldn't replicate his success. There were a lot of great people at FCB, but many fought over credit and famously failed to work together. A slew of competing personal and departmental agendas does not an agency make. 

Magner Sanborn, Quisenberry and Seven2. Let me be the first to say I don't know all that much about the agencies here in my new hometown, Spokane. I do know great esprit de corps when I see it. These shops have talent, which is a prerequisite. More important, the people work hard for each other. In each case, the staff gives you the feeling that anything is possible. And who can doubt it? If you're looking for an agency, try to learn how hard the staff is willing to work to do a great job. The staff at these Spokane shops will all bleed for their clients. They deserve whatever success they're enjoying. 

* * * 

In spite of the political leanings of most people in this industry, Ronald Reagan has the best advice: "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." A Hollywood guy, but he would have made a great adman. 

Social networking and the means by which digital technology has empowered consumers of media and merchandise alike were the dominant themes at the JackMyers Future of Media discussion earlier this week. The auditorium at the Helen Mills Theater was filled to capacity as Aegis North America’s Sarah Fay, Colgate Palmolive’s Jack Haber, blip.tv's Dina Kaplan, Worldwide Biggies' Albie Hecht and former Coca-Cola executive Shane Steele engagingly discussed the Realities of Dealing with the Changing Media Marketplace with moderator Jack Myers. (When was the last time you found yourself in an auditorium full of media executives and did not see faces all around you unflatteringly illuminated by Blackberries?) The room was largely filled with digital media executives, or at least those who are digitally inclined: When Jack Myers asked audience members how many of them spend 75 percent or more of their time on digital media, almost every hand in the room went up. When he asked how many spend 75 percent or more of their time on traditional media, only a handful of hands were raised.

Myers and his panelists offered fresh and diverse insights into the changes that are sweeping through all areas of media during the digital era, but throughout the session the overall message remained largely the same: consumers are still king, free to devote their time to whatever they desire. But they now hold more power than ever before – including the power to expand a brand.

New Aegis N.A. CEO Fay set the event tone commenting, “The focus is around the consumer. Content is created to be distributed wherever the consumer can be reached.”

Haber, Colgate Palmolive’s Vice President of Global Advertising and eBusiness, said that the new opportunities inherent in digital media “are absolutely terrific for marketers like us. [Digital media] gives us incredible new ways to connect with the consumer; new ways to connect and new ways to advertise. Unlike the mass marketing that our business was built on with lowest common denominator methods, now we can really target messages to people.”

That’s good news but there are concerns, said digital media and marketing consultant and former Director of Emerging Media and Online Advertising at Coca Cola, Shane Steele. “You have to remember that the users are in control and they will figure out ways to get around the advertisement,” she warned.

Advertising today “is about creating great content and great experiences for consumers in a way that you’re not taking away value but adding value,” Steele continued. “[It] is becoming participatory. It isn’t just about creating an ad and putting it out there and people leaning back and watching it. Now people can extend the campaigns within their networks and social media. That social participatory component of what’s happening in digital media is one of the most exciting things happening today.”

Fay reflected on recent successful campaigns that illustrated the power of consumer interaction through digital platforms, among them one for Adidas, in which a community was created on MySpace “because it was right for the brand, not because we understood fully the value of the program,” she explained. “We had creative elements people could take away and put on their own home pages. We would give people a spinning shoe, or a backdrop for their MySpace site. So we could get 600,000 people to the community on a monthly basis, and maybe 75,000 would take something from that and put it on their own site. Not a big number, right? But if you actually added up all the impressions of people who then visited their friends sites with the creative elements it was 21.5 million!

“We think [a] big opportunity [today] is to use offline media to drive toward a more engaging experience,” Fay continued. “We’ve done it with Sony, Reebok, Adidas, brands that are more about someone’s identity -- higher involvement brands where you do have to be focused on building equity over time. It’s been a really phenomenal experience when we’ve been able to make it happen. If you can drive toward something and kick start a community to get involved with a brand you can get your media dollars to carry a lot farther. We built a social networking space for Reebok where you could use Google maps to post your run, connect to iTunes and tell people what you’re playing when you run, and use Flickr to upload photos of yourself during your run. That was [in 2007]. The TV, print and outdoor runs ran from April-June, but the site is still going strong today. There’s more authenticity to that, too, when you get the consumer to talk about your message.”

Are agencies rising to meet the challenges and opportunities inherent in the growth of digital media and the social change it brings? “It’s tempting to sit here and say the agencies don’t get it,” observed blip.tv co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Dina Kaplan. “The digital side is used to buying display ads, which everyone’s eyes just gloss over, and the TV arm is so locked into making 30-second ads and then wanting to stick them before or after a video. The infrastructure to support Web video advertising just is not there yet. We need metrics. We need a way to tell advertisers what they need to know. How many seconds into a video people have watched? How many ad impressions have been watched?”

Worldwide Biggies Chief Executive Officer Albie Hecht agreed. “It’s a challenge to get those metrics out there,” he said. “A lot of it is still voodoo.”

Fay also supported a change in traditional metrics. “You can’t have five different strategies,” she asserted. “We’re still in a phase where a lot of people feel that their campaigns are very integrated as long as everybody is sticking to the same time table and targeting the same audiences. In reality if you want a true holistic strategy that is all about the consumer, somebody has to own the strategy. There is a lot of confusion about who should own the strategy. What is it when you create a community on MySpace? Is that a creative strategy? Is that a media strategy? I would argue that it is both of those things together.”

All of the panelists agreed that the burgeoning growth online of short-form videos, viral or otherwise, is beginning to change the way business is done, and that the full extent of its influence has yet to be felt. “Right now the vast majority of viewing is happening in short form,” Fay noted. “The big opportunity is how do you take advantage of short form? That’s a whole new challenge in how you develop messages.”

There are new challenges in how short-form programming is conceived and developed, as well. “There is a big distinction between redistributing content and taking it from someplace and sticking it someplace else and creating something that’s authentic to the Web and reaching a consumer the way the Web reaches a consumer, which is through an engagement level,” Hecht declared. “You have to be a little bit careful when traditional companies say, ‘we are digital and have multi-platform stuff. That’s like my old colleagues saying SpongeBob is now a podcast for digital. That’s not digital.” [There is a difference between that and what we do] which is purposely create something that is innovative and different and has a different DNA to it, and the way it reaches its audience for advertisers as well as for the consumer.” (Hecht is the former President of Nickelodeon Entertainment.)

“I feel like the networks do have an advantage,” Kaplan admitted. “They have scale and put that behind their content. There are thousands and thousands of people that are creating great shows on the Web, all sorts of production companies coming out of New York, L.A. and San Francisco delivering high quality Web shows. Do they have millions of dollars? No way. I think the networks would be at an advantage if they invested more in their content so that their content is more differentiated rather than less. Whether it’s blip.tv or [somewhere else] we have thousands and thousands of shows that are going to rise and fall. How do you compete against that unless you make a really strong investment in your content?”

Search was also a vital topic for the panelists. “It’s all about making your product or campaign searchable,” Steele said. “Everything is a search engine – YouTube, MySpace. Peer networks are search engines.”

“We use search in a number of ways,” Fay explained. “We have very active search clients that are trying to drive toward an e-commerce solution. Search is a highly efficient way to do that. It is becoming part of the branding campaign. It’s important how you present yourself in a search capacity. You think about your target audience. The center of the target is people who are most interested in your brand or product or surrounding areas of interest. I think search is set to grow consistently probably more than any other medium.

“We believe the brands that will win are the brands whose consumers tell each other the best stories,” she concluded. “There has to be a way to get your brand message out to consumers in a way they care enough about it to talk about it.”

By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 5/3/2008 5:28:00 AM

Cable-network ad-sales executives are bullish about the current selling season. They predict strong revenue growth in spite of national economic woes and due in part to soft ratings for their broadcast-network competitors.

But some ad-agency executives say the prevailing sentiment of the upfront period may be better characterized as “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“The situation will come down to the very last minute,” said Horizon Media executive vice president and chief media negotiations officer Aaron Cohen. Agencies are taking a very cautious approach, he said and it's not “crystal clear that [dollars] will be committed in the levels of last year.”

The wild and woolly ad-sales “scatter” market, in which ads are sold on a spot basis, heartened ad executives with double-digit rate increases in fourth-quarter 2007 and the first quarter of this year. But Cohen said sales growth is slowing at the moment.

FAVORABLE FACTORS
Yet network ad executives cite factors they believe favor strong ad sales in the upfront season, in which media buyers purchase ads for a full season of programming. Last fall's weak broadcast-network entertainment schedule led viewers to sample new (or new to them) fare on cable networks. That trend came in advance of the Writers Guild of America strike, which further weakened broadcast dominance.

Cable has also steadily been adding buzzworthy originals to its lineups, such as AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages, network sales executives said. And unlike the broadcast networks, new fare debuts throughout the year, they noted.

Such executives as FX senior vice president of sales Michael Brochstein and Hallmark Channel executive vice president of ad sales Bill Abbott aren't the only ones predicting ad-sales revenue growth. The annual spending report from Jack Myers Media Business Report predicts national cable sales will increase by 7% for 2008, attracting an estimated $18.9 billion.

By contrast, broadcast ad spending is expected to increase 3.2% to $19.5 billion. The forecaster predicts broadcast market share will decline from the current 8.2% of the national advertising pie to 7.9%. But according to Myers, cable is not picking up share from broadcast: Cable's market share is predicted to remain at its 2007 level of 7.7%.

TNS Media Intelligence is more conservative in its projections for this year. That market-research firm predicts cable's national ad sales growth rate at 5%, with broadcast-network growth at 2.7%.

Ad experts, such as Discovery Networks U.S. ad president Joe Abruzzese, said that in general, the upfront auction generates about 80% of the ad sales for the year for broadcasters and about 50% to 60% of cable's yearly ad sales.

A year ago, Merrill Lynch projected 2007-08 broadcast primetime upfront spending to grow 3% to some $8.7 billion and cable to grow 3% to $7.53 billion.

The overall 2008 projections are in spite of the fact that 2007's biggest spending sector, financial services, is reeling from the home-foreclosure crisis and other signs of a recession. Some of the growth this year predicted by analysts is based on 2008-only factors, such as political- and Olympics-related ad buying.

But buyers and network execs alike said a recession doesn't necessarily mean that ad money will dry up completely.

“In tough economic times, advertisers gravitate to what works for them, and that's television,” said Carat USA director of national broadcast Andy Donchin. “If you cut back, and the competition doesn't, you lose your voice.”

Advertisers may be more conservative in their spending or shift from sales-focused commercials to branding or other tactics, buyers said.

“I've yet to meet an agency saying, 'Budgets are through the roof!' But we're still feeling pretty good,” said FX's Brochstein. Good programming draws advertisers, he said.

“Cadillac sponsored the premiere of Damages. They weren't on our network before,” he said. That drama series, which stars Glenn Close, has been picked up by FX for a second season.

Quality originals draw viewers, and positive feedback to advertisers, Discovery's Abruzzese added. Bank of America actually got letters from viewers of the Emmy- and Peabody-winning Planet Earth, thanking it for bringing the HD miniseries to viewers, he said.

BACKHAND 'COMPLEMENT'?
Despite the positive spin by cable execs, buyers said clients don't look at cable as a broadcast primetime replacement but as a “primetime complement,” according to one buyer who asked not be quoted by name.

But cable could benefit if broadcasters misplay their hand.

“[Advertisers] are still heavily invested in the [broadcasters], but if they are too aggressive in rate inflation, buys could flow to cable, and they'd see more money,” said Donchin.

Cable-network executives noted the efforts they've made to make themselves more attractive to advertisers, including offering multiplatform deals, product integration and experiments in how a commercial pod is presented.

The latter was a necessity after last year's adoption of so-called C3 ratings, which measure viewership when a program debuts, as well as during the subsequent three days of viewing on video-on-demand platforms and digital video recorders. C3 drills down into commercial-minute ratings, so advertisers can compare which networks fare better or worse at retaining audience through commercial breaks.

C3 was a boon for some networks such as Hallmark Channel, with an older demographic less prone to surfing away when commercials come on, which is hurtful to other networks. (See related chart.)

Abruzzese said C3 caused a 7% to 8% drop of in costs per thousand (CPMs) for Discovery Networks.

Executives from competing networks named MTV Networks as the biggest victim of C3 falloff. But the programmer's president of advertising sales, Hank Close, said the networks have altered their advertising methodology to mitigate any losses due to C3 measurement.

MTVN delayed adoption of C3 because the company felt its adoption was “ill-timed,” he said. Once the cable group adopted C3 measurement, it negotiated higher CPMs that accounted for the C3 audience loss during breaks, he said.

MTV Networks and other cable programmers have also stemmed audience loss during commercial pods by experimenting with new ways to present ads. Close said strategies have included a 13-mobisode series for T-Mobile, which extended that advertiser's brand to a new platform, among other digital initiatives. On-air, MTV Networks shifted from two commercial pods per hour to three. Spots in those shorter breaks were designed to “marry an advertiser's brand equity” to the character of the network on which the ad runs.

Such strategies have contributed to a 3% improvement in viewership to VH1 commercial pods, for instance, he said.

Turner Broadcasting System has also been experimenting with “pod-busters,” strategies to retain viewers in the commercial breaks. One method is “bit-coms,” a mini sketch comedy created around a product and designed to look more like entertainment.

His networks have also experimented with where conventional ads get placed in theatrical films they air, to see if first-hour pods get better retention than ads that run later; and with the placement of “funny pods,” which urge viewers to stick around to get the joke.

These strategies have played out across cable networks in response to the new focus on C3 measurements of commercial viewers. It shouldn't have taken that change to happen, Cohen grumbled.

“Damn it, this was stuff they should have been doing all along,” he said.

TURNER STEPS UP
Turner is sufficiently confident in the ratings performance of its suite of networks (TNT, TBS, TruTV) that the group is doing its upfront presentation May 14, the same week as the broadcasters.

“Let [buyers] make decisions, then and there, on an equal-plain basis. The implied message is we have the content … we are a substitute for broadcast,” said Levy.

Comcast Networks, which includes E!, has also added a third commercial pod and shifted national advertisers into the first position in commercial breaks as a response to the C3 ratings. Advertisers are teased within a show, such as a “Dress My Mess” minisode teased within an episode of Clean House, said Comcast Network Advertising Sales president David Cassaro. The networks are creating more pod-buster content for advertisers using an in-house production unit, and saving pods for advertising, not promotions. Crawls and pop-ups during shows are used to promote upcoming content, he said.

Though C3 has provided a more accurate picture of actual commercial viewing, executives predict its use to be short-lived, as networks criticize it as placing too much onus on networks, rather than advertisers, for the performance of a pod.

“We deliver a number of viewers into a break, but if they are met with bad copy, or over-used copy and the viewers turn away, that's our cost now,” noted A&E Television Networks senior vice president of national ad sales Mel Berning. “I think it's right to focus some of the responsibility back to the creative community. It's not just the network putting something on the air.”

Craig Woerz, co-founder and managing partner for MediaStorm, an agency that specializes in placing ads for entertainment brands such as those of movie studios or their individual releases, agreed with Berning.

“There's too much run-of-the-mill creative out there. We need more integrated ad opportunities out there,” he said, suggesting that show talent be utilized, “not a full-fledged endorsement, but some integration.”

But union pacts with talent can complicate such deals. Actors have already asked for possible compensation for revenue they've earned through product integration in shows in which they perform.

Woerz is an enthusiastic backer of what he termed the “stellar” opportunities in cable, though he called this one of the most “complicated media planning seasons ever for us.” His agency, which plans campaigns for theatrical releases, for instance, looks for advertising partners with as many opportunities to integrate ads into programs and platforms as possible.

An “unsung hero,” in his opinion, is the growing base of viewers of free on-demand programming. That viewing, he said, represents 'pure engagement.” Clients are doing some buys of ads on free on-demand shows without also buying ads on the scheduled airing of the program.

BEYOND C3
Some buyers are already moving beyond C3 and want a minute-by-minute or 30-second-by-30-second measurement system to be developed.

“We weren't satisfied with C3 from the beginning,” said Starcom MediaVest Group senior vice president and cable activation director Natalie Conway. That agency pinned 16 of its ad buying deals to minute-by-minute measurements in 2007. She said this year, 25% of the agency's cable investment would have “exact minute guarantees,” with a couple of pacts including second-by-second deals.

Starcom MediaVest has been one of the most aggressive agencies in promoting more intense media monitoring of ad performance. For instance, in April it agreed to participate in a program that will begin in the third quarter and will collect second-by-second viewership data from 100,000 DirecTV set-top boxes.

While more precise data collection is desirable, not everyone in the ad community thinks it will be quick in coming on a commercially practical basis.

“Second-by-second is a long way away,” predicted Cohen. First the technology has to be developed, and then the data must be able to be delivered to third parties for network analysis, he explained.

“If no one has an easy system for us to analyze, well, it won't happen next year,” he said.

But “any medium that can improve accountability will be welcomed,” added Donchin.

Get your creative done and make sure that you have your artwork at the ready. Use a good ad agency and tell them that you only buy late space. When you buy late space you get up to 5 times the value.. Advise your ad agency the publications that you would like to advertise in and wait until they are on deadline.

All sales people, managers and sales directors work on KPI's "Key Perform ace Indicators" and when they are short on their target guess what - you get a deal!  You can stretch a £10k budget and get £40k worth of advertising. I have paid £4500+ Vat for a full page in a major tabloid when list price was circa £20k?

All UK businesses can advertise their business free on Business Sourcer www.businesssourcer.com

It is amazing how much you can stretch a pound when you have to

There is always someone who will have a deal!

Publicis Groupe’s chairman-CEO Maurice Levy says that by the end of the year, 20 percent of the group’s revenues will come from digital operations.

That would make it the most digital-centric of the major holding companies. 18.4 percent of the company’s revenues currently come from digital marketing services. Total digital revenues for the group rose 20 percent in the first quarter, led by Digitas, which was up 23 percent, according to MediaPost. Overall growth for the company was up 8.2 percent.

 By Kim Hart  |  April 30, 2008; 3:10 PM ET  

One of the main challenges for online advertisers is figuring out which Web sites are worth their advertising dollars. How do they know where their competitors are advertising? How do they figure out whether a banner ad would be more effective than a keyword search ad?

A new search engine called Yureekah launched this week to help ad agencies and advertisers find where competitors are advertising and determining the best options for future brand advertising.

Devaraj Southworth, one of its creators, said the idea stemmed from his own company's needs. He runs a small creative agency and a media planning firm, and it often took several weeks to put together an online ad strategy because he had to manually go through Web sites, ad networks and portals to figure out where his client should be visible. Southworth said he's even had to cancel a campaign because finding that information was too labor-intensive to meet the deadline.

He envisions, for example, a small boutique hotel using the service to find out out where Marriott and Hilton are advertising. The small business owner can then determine how best to spend his money to compete for patrons.

"Clients always ask us, 'Where are we and where should we be?'" he said. "This can help level the playing field so everyone can figure that out," not just the advertisers with huge budgets.

The site is currently free to use, but Southworth says more features will be rolled out that have revenue potential. Right now the information is coming from portal sites his firm works with, but he is trying to add information from more ad networks and publishers in the future.

===GREAT IDEA, BUT LIMITED SET OF ADS ON IN THE INDEX. WILL BE INTERESTING TO CHECK BACK IN A FEW MONTHS. MORT-

Tim presented the case for using authentic and compelling stories to connect with your audience, and to develop brand community and culture.

Everything in Tim's talk about storytelling rang true. One of my own favorite campaigns, Burton-Ching, was created with exactly this in mind. The company, though new, had a compelling story based on founder and designer Sen Ching. We recognized Sen's story was the fastest way towards building a powerful brand. 

Tim related some other personalities upon whom brands have been built: Steve Jobs and Apple, Enzo Ferrarri, Yves Saint Laurent, Bill Bowerman and Nike. At Nike, Tim says, the designers to this day say that Bill Bowerman is looking over their shoulders. 

Stories are potent cognitive seeds that plant themselves and grow in your memory, even when you've forgotten some of the details. If you recall an interesting story about someone you meet, you're more likely to remember him than someone with no story. This applies to companies as well as people. 

After Tim's presentation, I'm reminded of how powerful and important storytelling can be to my clients. Over the years, there was See's Candies, Piedmont Airlines (a great regional story in the Southeast), Nike and Bianchi Bicycles. Even Kabira Technologies. (See the promo.) I wonder what true, authentic and compelling stories we can tell for other start-ups and technology companies that will give them an edge over their un-storied competitors.  

What about you? What's your story?

— Barrett J. Rossie

He predicted firms will look to hire new skill sets to maximize the ever growing potential of online marketing and the vast amounts of data that can be collected depending on the client and goal of the campaign. I see this as nothing new, as Curt Hecht made it clear at teh recent ad:tech keynote speach that Starcom has already made the transition to new skill sets and has Ph.D's in their office providing analysis and recommendations for their clients. The money is in the data! No longer can agencies just say they provide creative solutions. They need to understand the data and be able to find interesting tidbits to make actionable suggestions. Clients continue to ask harder and harder questions that agencies must be able to answer.

So even though Eric said it, its nothing new. If this is news to agencies, they are in trouble!

AP
Friday April 25, 5:32 pm ET

WPP Group reports first-quarter organic revenue growth 4.8 percent

Wieden & Kennedy: 2008 Global Agency of the Year

You'd assume the large markets have the talent, the facilities and the sophistication. So if you can afford it, why not?

The counter-intuitive reality

In my experience, small-market shops beat comparable big-market competition in several important areas:

• Outstanding creative that in many cases leaves big-market shops in the dust
• Staff that are more committed to the firm and the client; people are less likely to jump to the shop down the street next month
• Less middle management and more direct lines of responsibility
• Innovation in new media and technology that eliminates geographical disadvantage. (It's good for the client-agency relationship, and good expertise for the client's marketing plan.)
• Fairness in compensation plans
• Genuine appreciation for your business; far less "big-city" self-importance

The president of an international association of independent agencies once told me that small market agencies, by necessity, have always been more buttoned-up than large market shops. To thrive, they must win business from larger markets. To keep the business, they must demonstrate superior performance repeatedly. That's good news for everyone.

Historical precedent

The creative revolution of the 80s and 90s was led by agencies from Portland, Minneapolis, Raleigh, Austin and Richmond. Not New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. 

Look at some of those same shops today. Many of the same people have led Wieden & Kennedy in Portland, The Martin Agency in Richmond and GSD&M in Austin for more than 25 years. These represent particular success stories, true. But the small market environment encourages team members to pull together through crises and work harder, rather than move on to greener pastures. Wieden & Kennedy for example has certainly seen challenges over the years. But they have been forced to reinvent themselves and now reign as 2008 Adweek and Brandweek Global Agency of the Year. 

This is an opportunity. Embrace it. 

It's not that all small-market shops are wonderful and all large market shops suck.

But clients in Spokane and other small- and medium-sized markets need to know that the talent right here in Eastern Washington is often world-class, and the service just might be a bit more attentive than you'd find in LA, Seattle or San Francisco. (That's what Nike once discovered when choosing Wieden over Chiat/Day.) 

And for you in San Francisco and Seattle, the same holds true. The only reason you've never heard of Magner Sanborn, Seven2 (and their sister shop 14Four), Quisenberry and imageworks is that you haven't done your homework. They're viable alternatives and in many cases will deliver better work, more innovation, and a better working relationship than you're used to. 

- Barrett J. Rossie

Part 4: The Breakup

Breaking up is hard to do. Sometimes it happens quick, or even unexpectedly. Sometimes it’s long and slow. It might be a form letter informing us that we were not selected. Or a surprising irate call from a client we thought we knew, but didn’t. Maybe the agency got too big for you – you just weren’t good enough anymore to satisfy their greed. Or maybe you fell in love with a younger agency who knew all the cool new tricks, and your good old partner lost its luster. Sometimes it even makes you cry.

We can usually identify a crucial point of error in our dating stage, or a failure once in the relationship - by not communicating or letting it get stale. Introspection comes in handy at this point. You can assess the relationship, determine where it went wrong, and focus on what you can do to prevent it in the future. Especially in the case of lost bids, I often come right out and ask why we just didn’t work out – most of the times the courted party is gracious and offers some insight.

If all goes well, your relationship CAN last a lifetime. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. But if it doesn’t, take some solace in the fact that not all relationships are meant to be, and sometimes it’s better that way.

It becomes difficult for the advertisers to place their brands in a marketplace that is full of competition. Identifying and targeting the potential buyer becomes the need in such circumstances. Without doing so, the revenue and growth could not be achieved. It means that from day one, the advertisers need to slog for establishing their brands. Smart advertisers use advertising agency well before they are placing the brands in the market. They conduct round of meetings with agency experts and devise strategies to come across their target audience.

Publicizing the product, only with word of mouth, is impossible in this vast world. The publicity is generally done due to various business reasons. So, be it launching new products or achieving market share, the monetization can be easily done by hiring services of an advertising agency.