Agencies, Call in the Surgeon

Agencies have completely lost their way. I don’t think time needs to be spent debating that point. What I haven’t seen yet is a cohesive plan to restore the true agency business model.

Let’s take a look at history. Ad agencies were started by newspaper executives, who realized that by “priming the pump” and delivering better ad creative, publishers would ultimately sell more ad inventory.

At their peak, agencies were hired for their ability to create big ideas—business-building ideas. I’m not saying you don’t need execution, process, traffic, operations and the rest. But I am saying I’ve never met a client who wants to give an agency a substantial account because of any of these things.

Agencies win on million dollar ideas (I do realize there are specialized agencies that focus on SEO, SEM, etc., but I’m talking about the truly big agencies here). You can’t pitch a Fortune 50 account and say “I have great process, I compensate my people correctly, my production is pristine” and so on. You have to go to them and say “I won client XYZ and they were floundering. With our help, they advanced from #6 in the category to #2, and are seriously competing to be #1″ (or something similar). Everything else you might say is a rabbit hole. You can spend all the time you want in it, but you won’t significantly advance your business.

How do you get to this point? Read more of this post