The contemporary mantra for a successful advertising agency is win accounts for beer, a bank and a car, and you're set for life.
Get one or more of those on board, and the agency is free to enhance its reputation by taking on smaller clients and doing what the creative people describe as brave work. That's ad-speak for a high-risk campaign that might win an award, but can be dropped at a moment's notice if the client objects or stops signing cheques.
Agencies refer to these clients as hero accounts. The most famous example of this was work done by agency TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris for the Nando's chicken brand.
That notion seems to be fading now, as all brands have to be hero clients. With an increase in commercial clutter in the market, established brands have little choice but to take a risk.
This trend is set to increase as commercial volume is pumped up. We receive more than 3 000 pieces of commercial communication a day and no place is safe from advertising penetration.
Ad agencies are now schooling more conservative marketers into taking more risks. The formula is: try something new with a smaller or challenger brand, and if the agency gets it right, give them a little more rope.
Even the more conservative ad agencies in SA, such as J Walter Thompson , are telling their clients that they are not competing with other marketing messages any more, but for people's time in terms of their engagement with an advert.
That puts pressure on media owners to be more accommodating when it comes to requests. Traditionalists balked 18 months ago when ThisDay dyed itself yellow to support a lucrative MTN promotion, but media buyers say more and more unusual requests will be made. The question is how far are editors and publishers prepared to push the envelope to maximise revenue?
It would seem that most corporate entities in SA employ an ad agency for one purpose or another. One has to ask whether they're there because they always have been or because they are adding real value to brand development.
The advertising landscape in SA is dominated by Unilever, which spends R26m more than government, the country's second-biggest advertiser. Shoprite Checkers is in third place, followed by MTN, Pick 'n Pay and Vodacom. These brands are so dominant that many smaller advertisers are drowned out when a newspaper or magazine is opened.
Corporate advertisers should be testing their agencies on the medium that has been used, and on whether the ad has any impact. Ad agencies hate market research, saying it crushes creativity and leads to overcautious advertising. But a company that has an advertising budget of R15m has the right to make sure the ad tests well and yields tangible results.
Another dilemma facing ad agencies is making sure the size of the account yields profit in terms of the energy and resources expended. Many smaller clients gravitate towards larger agencies because of past campaign reputation, review credentials (including the FM's AdFocus) and word of mouth. Agencies that live in perpetual fear of losing big contracts always take on the work, but often lose it in the mix of giant corporate output on bigger paying clients.
It takes 20-30 dedicated agency people to work on a brand like MTN or Vodacom. The upshot can be an acrimonious parting of the ways, bad press and a reluctance to advertise in the future.
When choosing an agency, size is not important; strategic insight and the ability to marry that to good creative work and make sure that the people who pitched on the business stay on the business is what matters.
