Return on Intention

There has been a lot of debate lately about whether advertising agencies, PR firms, Digital shops or Social Media boutiques should be the first point of client contact to get marketing work done, and some even debate if any or all of the verticals should even exist. I think it stated with an Ad Age article saying the most qualified group to be the “Lead agency” was the digital guys, because they have the data, and the channels where the most people are. This article really got people up in arms as the traditional guys defended their historical turf and the digital guys staking a claim in the new environment.

A similar debate (again started by an advertising magazine article, only this time it was from AdWeek) reared its ugly head on the cross-posted podcast for Jaffe Juice / Six Pixels of Separation. It’s a very good listen, so I encourage you to check it out, but at the end of the show, much like the comment stream on the afore mentioned Ad Age article, there was no real resolution. From my perspective on both debates, what seems to really be the linch pin here is the lack of a standard vocabulary or lexicon to accurately describe this space. If you polled 100 people on what marketing was or meant you would undoubtedly find so many different responses you would wonder where everyone was the day they taught us that in school. Or did they? More on this in a further post, but for now lets get back to idea at hand.

One of the biggest computers of any industry is the ignorance of the market. When the market, or at least portion of it doesn’t know the definitions of all these words then it only makes sense that there will be confusion. Even if the industry gets it, so many people don’t that it all gets confused. Choosing an agency should not be done by what they are called but what they can do for you. Of course every business has different needs, but good agencies that assist in creating a solid strategy and excellent execution have a better chance to get a company where it wants to go than what it says on their business card. So if you don’t know what to call it, how do you find the right agency? Look for results. Ask the agencies on your short list about their past successes and how they reach their decisions. If you don’t have a short list, and don’t know where to start, find work that has achieved good results, call the business owner and ask them who they use. Forget the names and labels and go for results.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Doin' it right, Mar Comm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.