What Agencies Just Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Do for You
By Jonathan Kranz
For many small-to-large sized businesses, the advertising agency is more than just a vendor – it’s a key collaborator in the company’s marketing strategy. As traditional advertising tactics (print ads, TV commercials, radio, etc.) decline in impact, agencies have scrambled to reposition themselves as “integrated marketers” capable of executing anything from web strategies to word-of-mouth efforts. With varying degrees of success, of course...
Just as war is too important to leave to the generals, your overall marketing efforts cannot be left to the mercy of even the smartest, most successful agencies. There are too many things that they either simply cannot do or just don’t do well. These include:
Mining your expertise
Who’s closest to your business? To your products and services? To your customers? You are. The richest material at your disposal – the accumulated expertise that comes from years of experience – lies deep within your organization. Yet advertising agencies – in their relentless pursuit of “impact,” image and buzz – rarely do more than scratch the surface. Chances are, your business has an important story to tell. But few agencies are prepared, by temperament or skill, to dig it out for you. You have to wield the pick and the shovel.
Developing web content
I know many of you have suffered through this: after months of meetings and “strategizing” with your agency, you get a batch of wire frames, design concepts and even a few preliminary pages. You’re just weeks from the launch date! Then someone timidly raises a hand: “Well, what are we putting on these pages? I mean, like, you know, words...” Funny thing, web pages are mostly made of words. People go to websites to read words. Search engine spiders index words. Yet words are the last thing on most agencies’ minds. Turn this around and make the first priority, content – content that matters to prospects/customers, content that comes from you.
Shaping the customer experience
Your website is not just an Internet presence – it’s a place where people experience your business, you brand. So too are your stores. Your offices. Every point of intersection between your company and your customers – from your voice mail to one-one-one interactions with employees – is an occasion from which customers form impressions about your business. In the customer’s mind, the way you handle a complaint says more about your brand than any message your agency can create. You have to master the customer experience.
Projecting the brand
This list could go on and on, but I’ll conclude with a final and most important point. Think of customer communications as a kind of onion with your business at its core: what it does; how it works. At the next layer is a brand essence that reflects your business. Then there’s a brand identity -- logo/design/position -- that reflects the brand essence. Followed by messages that reflect the brand identity. Followed by a myriad of communications tactics – web, ads, commercials, WOM, etc. – that reflect these messages. And so on. Here’s the thing: many advertising agencies position themselves, not as advertising vendors, but as “custodians of the brand.” Bullshit. They’re too far from the core to be anything of the kind. They’re servants of various aspects of the brand. But the company is the true custodian of the brand and always will be. The distinction is important, because it places responsibility for the brand where it really belongs – with you.
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Kranz Communications
(781) 620-1154
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