A Direct Marketing Agency - Helping Brands Acquire and Retain Customers

We're hearing this from all sides these days. While this isn't measurable in any fact-based way, there are signs of big problems for the big holding companies and their agencies. With the changing media scene, the huge agencies that have historically centered their work on TV campaigns, are finding it difficult to adapt. They are being called out for an inability to plan and execute online.

A Forrester research report titled "Help Wanted: 21^st Century Agency" surveyed both client-side marketers and ad agencies to measure attitudes toward agency effectiveness. The marketers gave their agencies a Net Promoter rating of 21%. This means 79% of marketers would not recommend their agency to a colleague! Another study, from Evalueserve for Sapient, found that only 10% of more than 100 companies surveyed in the United Kingdom and the U.S. "seek to partner with large ad agencies for their online marketing".

One problem is that for the biggest agencies of today, the revenue goals come from a holding company that is not likely to fund risky new projects. Trying to coordinate TV production (big revenue demanded by revenue goals) with interactive and new media creative (small revenue) is very difficult for these agencies. Small agencies are built for smaller revenue projects and are more efficient and nimble in handling them. A sign that huge agencies and their holding companies are beginning to understand that big isn't always best is their growing investment in small, one-stop shops.

The second problem is the age of accountability we live in today. Traditional agencies still speak the old metrics language of overall sales lift and gross rating points (GRPs). The things that matter today: brand loyalty, and engagement metrics (Net Promoter Scores, reputation scores, blog metrics) are a new language that the traditional agencies need to learn.

The agencies that survive will be those who change their direction from "create a 30-second spot for a new product launch" to"create a solution to drive more frequent purchases". When they understand that they need to do a 180 and let the ideas drive the media and let the customer drive the ideas, they will have found the key to survival.