Ad Agencies: Strategic Partners or Commodity Suppliers?

A commodity item is often defined as a good or service that is perceived to be of value, widely available, and bought / sold primarily based on price, with little to no difference made based on where it comes from.

I am wondering if advertising agency business has fallen squarely into this definition? Is "good creative" a commodity that can be bought on price along?

Used to be that ad agencies were viewed as important strategic partners and brand champions.They offered invaluable objective perspectives, were sources of business building ideas and advocates of their clients' business from front to back including customer service, distribution, pricing and new product development. They actually used the clients' products and understood them.

Working in both large and small agencies over the years I can recall making board level presentations on important branding and strategic direction issues, stepping in to act as a brand manager for new product launches and spending time in the field with sales people to better understand how our clients products went to market through various distribution channels. 

We spend countless hours analyzing data of all sorts and championed consumer-focused research to better understand our target audiences. Agencies also were experts in the competitive landscape and were excellent at spotting trends of all sorts that might impact our clients' businesses.

Seems these days lots of agencies just want to produce traditional and digital advertising. They have taken on a project management mentality, focused more on delivering the marketing communications programs on time and on budget and avoiding "scope creep."

Not long ago at a leading digital agency - I asked our account team to get on a plane with me to go visit our clients' office. The response I got was "Why should we do that?" They went on "We can just use Skype or set up an online meeting." During the interview process I was asked "Can you turn our client facing staff into real account people?" This turned out to be a significant challenge.

1990 United Spot: Still Relevant

 

 

 

Brings to mind a classic 1990 United Airlines Commercial "Speech" from Leo Burnett that showed a manager talking to his staff about a long-time client that had just fired them. He gives his team members airline tickets to go out and visit every one of their remaining clients.

I am all for new technology, but some of the old ways of doing business - face to face with vested concern in a positive strategic outcome still seem to make sense today.