Why would a company need an advertising agency?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 30, 2014
Do companies still need advertising agencies? Especially the big corporations, which these days control most of the food we buy in a packet, the supermarkets we shop in, the cars and petrol - just about everything we consume.

Each has a big staff of marketing people, and PR divisions, all very bright and qualified and highly paid. So why bother with an agency at all?

Modern computer graphics mean after a few months' training a bright secretary can produce an acceptable looking ad. Even TV commercials are easy - hire a freelance cameraman, pick presenters from staff, maybe even run an office competition for ad ideas.

The advertisements have already been written - by the company's sales and marketing teams during their goal-setting bonding weekend at a resort in Queensland or Bali.

You know what you want to say because you spent a whole day developing your mission statement, and that covers it all.

Your marketing manager gives the campaign to a media placement company which negotiates excellent spots on the top-rating TV shows and in the best pages in magazines and newspapers.

Just name the date, everything is done, didn't need an agency at all, it's launching on Sunday.

And the world is exposed to yet another meaningless, excruciatingly boring, totally mis-directed advertising campaign, of which we are seeing so many these days.

The trouble is that companies, with a few notable exceptions, do not understand advertising. In fact some of the big ones scarcely understand marketing. Yet they believe they can develop an advertising campaign.

Well it's all laid out for them. In the world of the board room it all comes down to the share price and stock holders' returns. If a product is doing poorly it will be axed or retired to the back of the stock cupboard.

If an innovative competitor is making inroads into their market, that's great. They buy it, making the inventor happy and rich, and add it to their stock list. They already know that the public wants the product, so they don't have to create anything new.

The alternative is to bring in a favourite from an overseas division. "This sweet is a huge hit in Brazil and taste tests show Aussie kids will love it too." And the work is done. Marketing with your eyes shut.

But those of us who aren't giants, still have to market the old fashioned way. Develop a product, cultivate a market, generate consumer desire, find distribution and sell furiously.

Here companies face a problem. Their marketing people know the product too well, they see it with all its history and problems, talking to the same people about it every day, they lose the big picture.

This is why they still need agencies. Ignorant of the history, agencies are outsiders - a team who don't know your product intimately, but they do know what the public is searching for, they know the consumer's heart.

The company knows where the product fits in their manufacturing and financial mix. But a good agency can identify a product's consumer market position. Their objective view is not always the same as the client's.

Then the agency, if it's any good and the creative process is allowed to run freely - can add that sprinkle of magic dust. The creative campaign, which will get the product noticed, tried, talked about. It has to make the product exciting, desirable. The client has lived with it for several years. The agency should see it with fresh eyes and present it as new and sexy.