The Lesson of My Earlier Double Life—As the Agency and the Client

Brandweek,  Feb 21, 2000  by William W. Tucker

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Back in 1980,1 viewed a Smithsonian documentary on PBS in which an agency exec said clients usually get the advertising they deserve. Sadly, it's as true today as then.

In making new-business pitches to top management at corporate prospects, I can't count how often I hear that marketing is dead, agencies should not develop marketing strategies, the client should do the marketing and the agency do the creative. I disagree. Emphatically!

Why does this thinking prevail? It's due to a gap in leadership and talent at many agencies, perhaps an outgrowth of a brain drain caused by the last recession. Too often, agencies are relegated to being ad executors, not marketing partners. Since marketing is an entrepreneurial exercise but most agencies can't afford to take chances, clients are not well-served.

A few years ago, it was brought home to me how different the relationship could be when a client, Quaker State (now Pennzoil-Quaker State), asked me to serve as its vp-marketing. Without abandoning my agency I stepped in to reorganize Quaker's marketing department and help develop new products. It was an agency person's dream come true: to be client and agency!

My working from the inside allowed my agency to encounter marketing problems first-hand, to meet daily with those on the firing line in R&D, product testing, product formulating, sales and, of course, marketing. We were able to do what many agencies are not allowed to do: make a major marketing and creative contribution to new products, packaging and yes, advertising. Sales rose. To this day we're convinced it all happened because the client opened all those doors. We were not just supplier, but an integral part of the inner circle.

The moral? If you as a client are not getting what you deserve from your agency take a long, hard look at how you relate to the agency If you allow it to join your inner circle, perhaps you will finally get from it what you are paying for: a product you can feel good about, one that you really deserve.

William WTucker is managing partner of The Tucker Partnership, whose clients include Pennzoil-Quaker State, General Electric and Fordham University.

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