Marketing Agency

3 Key excerpts on "Marketing Agency"

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  eBook - PDF

  Business and Management Practices in Greece

  A Comparative Context

  • R. Prouska, M. Kapsali, R. Prouska, M. Kapsali(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Of course agents are careful about the extent to which they reveal their ideas to companies. Marketing agencies are for-profit organizations that aim to sell their services to clients and, of course, get paid for it. They know that SMEs do not have the expertise to implement the marketing activities they propose, and this is where they come in. What marketing agents also do in order to attract customers is to pro- pose ‘safe’ solutions, that is, solutions with the lowest risks as perceived by clients. This strategy gives marketing agents an alibi in case some- thing goes wrong. If a marketing agent proposed an innovative market- ing activity to promote a product or service and it did not perform as expected, he/she would be heavily criticized for selecting such a ‘high- risk’ solution. A TV advertisement, on the other hand, is regarded as a less risky (although expensive) solution, limiting the scope for major criticism by the client. It is not surprising that around 32 per cent of advertising expenditure goes on TV, which is characteristic of a country that is underdeveloped in terms of media. Nowadays, major potential target groups do not watch TV enough to justify such high spending (the young, for example, watch less TV than the old), but there is still quite a high level of expenditure on TV advertising, because it leaves both marketers and their clients satisfied. Marketing agencies in Greece mainly deal with promotion strategies. In very few cases do clients ask for an integrated marketing strategy plan, and they are usually large companies. The SMEs that form the vast majority of companies in Greece tend to evaluate any marketing action taken on the basis of its short-term profit. In some sectors, entre- preneurs’ marketing decisions are significantly influenced by what the competitions is doing, with SME owners feeling they have no option but to copy without actually knowing if the practices in question are suitable for them.

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  Practice of Advertising

  • Adrian Mackay(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5   The Advertising Agency

  Richard Mayer

  Learning outcomes

  By the end of this chapter you will:

  •  Understand the nature and role of the advertising agency. •  Appreciate the importance of client and agency relationships. •  Understand the structure of a modern advertising agency. •  Develop an awareness of the key factors impacting upon the advertising agency business.

  5.1 Introduction

  Few major organisations design their own adverts. Most rely upon the services of an agency. The services provided by an advertising agency include market research, message development, advertising copy and creativity, media planning and scheduling and production. The range of services provided is dependent upon the size of the agency and its level of expertise in each area. Many agencies will provide a ‘full service’ that will incorporate alongside advertising other promotional areas such as direct marketing, sales promotion and public relations. Others will specialise in specific aspects of advertising such as creativity, production or copy writing. Most marketers choose to enlist the services of an advertising agency. The agency will provide creative and business services to clients in planning, preparing and placing advertisements. The agency offers a professional service with specialised talents, expertise and experience that in most cases cannot be matched by in-house employees.

  5.2 The origin of the advertising agency

  Early advertising agents were exactly that: they were selling agents for newspapers, receiving commission from those newspapers on the amount of advertising space they could sell to advertisers. Often they would act as media brokers by buying space in quantity and then retailing it to advertisers in smaller portions: the main point to grasp is that their income came from the media, much as it does today – despite the number of changes that have occurred within the industry.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Advertising

  • Gerard J Tellis, Tim Ambler, Gerard J Tellis, Tim Ambler, Author(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  From the agency perspective there is now a more profound change afoot, which gathered momentum in the early 1990s. Everything increasingly has a short-term focus, driven by the finance function, revolving around increasing revenue and tightening margins. Furthermore, agencies continue to lose influence. Dauer (2005) points out that the strength of agencies within the relationship in the 1960s and 1970s was based on the fact that they did far more than just develop and place advertising. They were marketing partners, brand guardians, marketing strategists, marketing researchers, media pioneers, media planners and masters of sales promotion, merchandising, publicity and PR. But today, the client is the brand guardian and there exists a plethora of specialist marketing strategists, researchers, planners, and communications experts. This changed role is exemplified by the move to fees (being paid on a transactional basis for work done) from the commission system (deriving income from a percentage of media spend) as shall be discussed at the end of this chapter.

  SELECTING AND EVALUATING AN ADVERTISING AGENCY

   

  Businesses are not totally self-sufficient (Weilbacher, 1991). As Bullmore (1991: 141) stated, “advertising agencies are paid by clients to think of things,” thus offering the client a specific skill which is unlikely to be found within the company. Often it is too expensive to employ these top professionals because they command high salaries and prefer to work for specialised firms in order to gain broader experience. But it is useful for the client to be able to hire them on a needs-basis and tap into this breadth of experience. Often this guarantees better solutions to advertising problems than advertisers are likely to get from their own advertising employees.

  Research has highlighted several factors that impact on the client’s choice of agency. Most are related to the strength of the agency’s employees, since an agency is only as good as its people. Cagley and Roberts (1984) highlighted the importance of the quality of people managing the account, the requirement of agency staff to understand the client’s business, and the agency’s reputation for integrity. White and Dawson (2004) found that advertisers look for a combination of individual and team professionalism, insight (understanding their consumers not just the sector), affinity with the client (enthusiasm, motivation and passion), innovation (ideas the client has not seen before) and dependability. Indeed, personal relationships, compatibility of staff, and the ability for the two teams to work together are very important (Michell, 1988; Verbeke, 1989; Fam and Waller, 2000).

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