What Do Advertisers Look

for in an Agency?

This seems to be a good note o n which to conclude this section on

new business. Certainly if we know what an advertiser is really look-
ing for, we can prepare and deliver our presentations more intelligently.
Recently I was privileged to sit in on a seminar at which a group
of advertising managers told how they had gone about selecting the
agencies to which they had recently shifted their accounts.
The first thing each of them did was draw up a list of criteria
applicable to his or her particular situation. Three were used by all of
them. First, size in relation to his own advertising budget. Each of
them was concerned that the agency neither be so large that his or
her account would be lost in the shuffle nor so small that his or her
account would put a severe strain on the agency's facilities and per-
sonnel. It's important to note that no client wants to be the largest
account or the smallest account in your agency.
Second, location was a factor in all cases except one, which was
located in a small city with no agencies of any size. All the ad man-
agers wanted to be sure of getting service when they needed it.
However, E-mail, faxes, overnight deliveries, and the like have made
this criterion much less important.
The third common criterion was the experience of the agency.
It needn't be in the advertiser's specific industry but should be related.
For instance, a manufacturer of snack foods was interested in any kind
248 The Advertising Agency Busines.~
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of packaged goods background; a bank looked for experience with

financial institutions other than banks; a manufacturer of products for
the automotive aftermarket wanted experience in marketing brand
name merchandise of any sort.
Information of this kind is pretty easy to come by from published
sources and was used to narrow down to a manageable number the
agencies to be considered.
Some agencies on the final lists may have been known to the
advertiser from previous contacts, others by reputation only, but every
one of them seemed able to provide what was wanted.
Interesting, isn't it, how these list-building criteria parallel almost
exactly the considerations the agency uses in building its own file of
likely prospects?
Thus, after narrowing the list of agencies to those he or she
believes can do the job, the advertiser sets up a series of more or less
formal presentations from each of them. Then he or she makes a
choice, which has to be pretty subjective.
Whatever the rationale used by individual advertisers, I think the
essential qualities of an agency on which the final selection is based
are brain power, good judgment, experience, and intellectual honesty.
What tests can the advertiser apply that will indicate the presence
or absence of these essentials in an agency under consideration?

The brain power of an agency, or intelligence, will show up in its

type of presentation, its analysis of itself in relation to its future
client, and its tact, foreshadowing happy or difficult personal relations
to come. One of the participants in the seminar I attended put it this
way, "Will this agency-client relationship be a good one four or five
years from now?"
The client's response to evident agency intelligence will be,
"We like these people. They speak our language. They probably will
be able to understand our business. They think about our problems
with good common sense. They are not bluffing. We can under-
stand their reasoning."
Intelligence is most frequently tested by the agency's solutions to
problems. All those indications listed above, when you think about
them, are right or wrong answers to problems.
 W h a t Do Advertisers Look for in a n Agency? 249

Intelligence is of surpassing importance as an agency asset. It

means much more than cleverness, ingenuity, even more than selling
skill. It is, in an individual, the ability to understand and cope with
the difficulties of an environment. Selling is an exercise in under-
standing and coping with the buying environment. This term means
whatever we are surrounded by. In our always expressive slang, what-
ever we are up against.

Let's turn now to good judgment. This depends largely on intelligence,

but it goes further by also involving the understanding of people and
the ability to interpret events. Essentially, in the agency-client rela-
tionship, good judgment will show up in recommendations regarding
business policy. Here the advertiser must beware of the human weak-
ness of considering as correct the judgment with which he or she agrees.
The advertiser must be very open-minded in recognizing and giving
proper consideration to judgments that differ from his or her own.
One of the seminar panelists selected his new agency when he felt
he could answer yes to the question, "Would we have the guts to follow
really significant, substantial, meaty recommendations from this person?"
That the advertiser could even formulate this question to himself demon-
strates clearly his conviction that the agency possessed good judgment.

The next basic quality to look for is experience. By this I mean gen-
eral business experience, not necessarily experience in the prospect's
own business. Much might be said for the uncluttered mind that comes
fresh to a business problem, without preconceived ideas based on "this
is the way we have always done it."
Experience in advertising usually is demonstrated by materials
illustrating what the agency has done for others. Here it is difficult
to segregate the agency's contribution from that which may have come
from the client. A series of case histories of accounts that have shown
increased sales and bigger profits during the agency's tenure is as good
an indication of agency experience as any. Mistrust any case histories
of failures. They may or may not have been the agency's fault. Also
250 The Advertising Agency Business

mistrust the agency that, in its case histories, claims credit for every
success the client ever had. Nobody is that good.

And finally we come to intellectual honesty. Of all the forms of hon-

esty, this is the rarest and most to be desired when one is considering
an adviser. Monetary honesty we expect; individuals and corporations
have learned it is dangerous not to practice it. Intellectual honesty is
the ability to think straight and the courage to say what you think.
It's the integrity to admit, for example, that extra media spending is
not the answer to every problem.
When an agency demonstrates this kind of honesty a whole batch
of possible minor faults can be discounted, for this is the most desir-
able and rarest trait in an adviser. When combined with intelligence
and experience, it's the answer to an advertiser's prayer.
Many readers may accuse me of leaving out the desirable feature
of compatibility. Well, it's nice to be married to a concern you like,
with which you get along, and whose background and experience in
life are akin to yours. It's much more important, however, for the agency
to have the client's respect and to be able to give him or her real help.
What about creativity? Don't prospects look for evidence of that
in an agency? I left it out deliberately because I don't think you can
define creativity in terms that make sense at the time of a presenta-
tion. Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of
creativity is in the results accomplished. And that's mighty hard to
demonstrate in a presentation.
I don't think it's as important for the prospect to look for the abil-
ity to produce good advertising as it is to find the personal charac-
teristics without which good advertising cannot be created. You do
not, says the old English proverb, make silk purses out of sows' ears.
It's quite possible that the client doesn't possess the ability to spot and
appreciate good advertising. As a good businessperson, however, he
or she should possess the ability to evaluate the human powers behind
good advertising. He or she should pick an agency that evidently has
brain power, judgment, experience, and intellectual honesty; he or she
shouldn't try to think for it but leave it alone to give the best it can.
The results of this philosophy should be a satisfying and rewarding
relationship for both parties.