Continued from part 4 ....
The clients expectation pentagon!!!
2.Chronicles
The annals from the history of an agency speak volumes. A JWT doesn’t have to claim and prove again and again that the oldest one is one of the best, still. The accounts that they have made in the past, speaks. The brands, the building of which they have contributed, the number of pitches they have attended and the hit rates, no of accounts gained and more importantly, lost.
Clients, at least some of them believe that nothing can replace experience. Some others but ask for results, measurable results, the logic being no machinery bought or no human resource employed would be exempted if it weren’t productive and just looks good like a piece of antique, then why advertising should be?
The tragedy but, is that in the long duration of their existence, “most agencies, instead of keeping focused on their clients and their consumers, fell in love with themselves. Instead of boosting their clients’ sales, they hid behind their creativity; shrouding themselves in mystery and concentrating just on award winning spectacular works of art” said Sergio Zyman and that holds to be true...
For the agencies, practitioners have set guidelines, ever since agencies became professional. Treat your clients’ money as your own, thundered Subhas Ghosal but many agencies do not heed to such words of wisdom. The result – bad ads and “the backlash of silly ads is the waste of millions and the agencies and advertisers are sabotaged by their own fatuity and self indulgence. People, who buy such products don’t know what these ads are trying to say and they care less. The advertiser simply has wasted his money on frivolous profitless spasm” .
Some ad men aim the Cannes, than contributing to the clients cash register and worse, most of them try to impress other admen, or to deride and scoff them, reducing the average audience to a knuckle head, nincompoop or a clod as per Baker who exposed the then ad world in his "the permissible lie".
3.Culture
The agency culture is the same for every agency at least for outsiders. The founding fathers’ legacy is carried down through generations as the culture of the agency. Ogilvy & Mather bears the Oglivy touch in whatever they do and so do JWT. Bill Bern Bach’s simple yet piercing narrative style is professed as a religion by the agency still. JWT until the WPP take over boasted of its New England Chamber indicating the founders’ Yale roots .The first thing which the new management after the hostile takeover at 1987,was to dismantle the room, in what the industry up roared as an attack on Thomson culture says Rothenberg in the classic "where the suckers moon"...
Of course there are compromises, which make academic authors comment satirically about the different cultures of different agencies. “Like the brands they sell, agencies also usually don’t have much difference. They essentially offer the same menu to clients, and if at all some one brings in some difference, others copy just as fast” ....Ad gurus have often disputed such arguments and have projected different creative strategy and execution cultures. Peter Head of AMV said, “Our aim is to destroy that view that advertising is a commodity. It is the creation of an elusive spark of originality, which can fundamentally enhance a clients business.” .......
Even in Media part of advertising, (Media planning and buying – even though these days Media planning are handled by separate agencies under the same global communication giants) the agencies mess up, putting the clients to depths of displeasure. “Agencies supposed to represent the clients interests, instead represented the Media owners, like for instance they would block large spaces in magazines & news papers at special discounts and later filling those spaces with their numerous clients, and in the process making lot of money” .Bad culture or pedigree is what clients see in seen supposititious acts. Likewise, late payment and improper / unclear billing is a symptom of wrong genes in the agency chromosome. The longer the agency hangs on to the money that the clients give to the media via the agency, the far reaching will be the caustic effects on the CAR.
The symptoms of bad culture are many but lack of cost consciousness and an inability to handle the clients’ money as its own and wisely spend it, in many a cases forms the immediate spark leading to a divorce ...
To be continued >>>>>>>>>
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