Simon Sinek published this article dissing ad agencies in BrandWeek:
IF ADVERTISING is so effective, why don’t ad agencies advertise? PR firms tout themselves in releases. Event planners throw their own parties. E-marketers use the Internet. These folks all believe in the effectiveness of their disciplines. Do ad agencies disagree?
Read the rest of it to really get the sense of what he’s saying: that ad agencies know that most advertising simply does not work.
OK. I mostly agree with him. I think it’s a cluetrain thing. A pinko marketing, (or conversational marketing) thing.
But here’s one thing I’d say in ad agencies defense: their product is their ad.
In other words, the work that they do for existing clients is a powerful marketing branding and marketing campaign for their company … for good or ill.
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Just found your site via a comment you left at “horsepigcow”. Happy I did. I plan to dig in a bit more later this week.
The tension regarding ad agencies is an interesting one. My background is non-traditional for business; pastor with formal studies in history, classical Greek and ancient Hebrew (I’ve got answers to questions people won’t ask!).
For the last 10 years I have been working in the business world and I would say we are between two worlds; the broadcast world of mass media and the narrowcast world of conversational media.
I expect the tension to continue…there are interesting times.
Thanks for extending the conversation!
Interesting!
I think a lot of us in this space are ‘tweeners’ … generalists rather than specialists. Sounds like you’ve had a more diverse background than most!
I wonder how hard it was to learn Hebrew and Greek?