Agencies are not branding themselves effectively

First Published In: B&T Magazine Date: October 18, 2004 Author: Danielle Veldre Comment by: Karl Treacher

Agencies aren't traditionally known for being able to position themselves to their clients - it's like the adage that doctors make the worst patients - agencies sometimes make the worst clients.

So says Whybin TBWA national planning director Paul Mayes, who is passionately behind the agency's "disruption" philosophy, inherited from its international TBWA connection.

The agency regularly conducts 'disruption days' where it examines how it can challenge convention to get better results.

Mayes said the positioning is expressed internally and to clients by incorporating the idea of disruption into all agency activities including in its briefing forms.

He said while he's worked in plenty of agencies that expressed positionings ('it doesn't matter what your agency philosophy is as long as you have one'), few were successful in parlaying the positioning into practical benefits for the agency or the clients.

"It's the only one that helps you come up with breakthrough ideas. Obviously it doesn't do it for you, but it helps challenge the conventions. It can start to sound quite pompous if you're not careful."

Karl Treacher of Adcomm Worldwide, which helps companies communicate their brands effectively to their staff, believes there are a number of factors impeding agencies in carving out clear positions for themselves.

"Most of these reasons are a direct result of increased financial pressures throughout the industry. Increased ROI scrutiny from both clients and parent companies has resulted in agencies trying to please too many people, and in doing so they have lost sight of who they are and what they stand for.

"Another result of increased financial pressure is a distinct change in leadership teams and their management style. The agencies that have moved more toward a New York style, bottom-line focused approach have left themselves little room to understand or express themselves. In some instances, the charismatic leader had been replaced with the coffee drinking bean counter, and these types are only interested in how many beans, not what colour they are or why they are different to other beans."

Expressing a brand positioning can also be problematic when there are ownership changes to a company.

Formerly independent company One Digital is going through significant change as it is absorbed into the global media company Aegis which bought it earlier this year. One Digital managing director David Holmes stressed the importance of valuing the cultural identity of the company following a merger or acquisition.

"While there has been a slight cultural shift this has been a positive reaction to being exposed to global pitches and business and the comfort of having the financial security and backing of a publicly listed company," he said.

"The biggest reason [agencies aren't good at branding themselves] is communication or the lack of it which is amazing given that's our industry. Rather than collaborating, the big groups set up silos and pit them against each other. The MDs in big groups don't talk enough, even at departmental level about how to improve quality and insight. The businesses are structured in such a way as to make it pretty much impossible to achieve collaboration without starting from scratch."