Complicated Advertising Business
The complexities and internal politics of this system need not detain us here. It is simply worth nothing that many agencies have in fact begun to charge a service fee, in various forms, for their skilled advice and services, and this practice looks like growing. Both side should gain; the agency because it will not feel itself under pressure to minimize its `free` (non-billing earning) services, and maximized its billing -the client because he can feel free to utilize to the full the high degree of creative and technical skill that certainly the majority of agencies have to offer without feeling that the advice or service he receives is provided in time that he should really be paying for, or that the advice itself has any undue bias.
This point is made merely by way of background, and as guide to making the best use of advertising agency services early as possible in the formulation of marketing planning. One further point might be added, as a warning of a different kind. Glasser Ralph was once told by the chairman of a leading advertising agency, “I am not just interested in creating good advertising.” He said this with a perfectly straight face, and every appearance on conviction.
Now, advertising is a business and people are in business to make money -no doubt to make it in a way they enjoy, but to make money nevertheless. The advertising business no doubt is endowed with its fair share of hypocrites just as any other business -and any businessman who tells you he is not interested in making money but only in offering good service is either deluding himself, in which case he is unreliable, or deliberrately insulting his client`s intelligent, in which case he is even less to be trusted! An advertising agency, like any other business, must compete by offering to promote clients` products (with certain exceptions) better than anyone else can, and in return for this service it must aim -and quite naturally so- to make money. Neither side, client or agency, should be misled into thinking of the relationship in other than these clear business terms.