Small Budget?

Is your marketing budget too small to get you heavy-weight full service marketing, advertising, or public relations help? You Don't Have To Hire A Full-Service Agency And Pay Full-Service Prices To Get Full Service

My Experience

I worked many years for the two largest ad agencies in the world, J. Walter Thompson Company and Campbell-Ewald Advertising (Managing Director)
• Owned a small AAAA agency for years
• After managing both the clients and temperamental employees at the same time, I came to realize that...
-One-on-one efforts with my clients
-Were the most productive and
-Successful for them
-And the most enjoyable for me
• I also found that any company looking for Marketing, Advertising and/or Public Relations counsel
• And thinking of hiring any full service agency
• Basically should consider carefully your other choice
• A one-man shop - with all the talented supporting graphic help needed

Why a one man shop is better

If you're a small company or a large one with a small marketing budget
• Finding a creative full service marketing, advertising or public relations agency
• Really interested in winning your business
• Also experienced in writing Strategic business plans And marketing plans And implementing them
• Is very difficult and can be very expensive
• This is particularly difficult when looking for one That will assign a heavily experienced account exec To your account (they pick them, not you)
• To manage these marketing plans for you Resulting in success for you The best use of your marketing dollars A substantial return on this investment
• One highly experienced, dedicated marketing counselor is better for you
• What's more, much easier on your budget

CONSIDER THE DIFFERENCES BEFORE YOU CHOOSE NOT AFTER!

• Getting good marketing advice and work product
• Will have a profound effect on the future of your business
• Too often, choosing one is a matter of chance, such as their proximity to you
• In this age of the Internet, Instant messaging, Cell Phones, Video conferencing, the value of proximity is over-rated
• On the surface, most look alike - They all maintain...
Account
Advertising
Creative
Marketing
Media types
And time logs filled in every day
• Some larger full-service agencies may even provide...
Research
And Public Relations services
• But scratch the surface and you'll find some dramatic differences:
In Philosophy and Ability
In the experience of the account executive assigned to you
In his dedication, availability and internal clout
And the ultimate cost to you
• Most clients wind up going to a separate Public Relations agency for their PR
But this can also be very expensive for a small account

YOUR BEST CHOICE:

Hire a marketing, advertising and PR consultant with many years of experience with ALL marketing disciplines, a choice that is decidedly different and better. I've worked from home for the past 11 years, without the huge overhead and my production costs in Memphis are very reasonable, so all costs to you are very low.

You need to know the options available to you!

Choice 2

Hire A Full Service Ad Agency

If you choose to go the agency route, you basically have three choices:


1. The Big Agency: You get the prestige of being a client of one of the biggies, if they’re interested in your annual expenditure ($1 Million being the lower limit). What you really get is the heavy weights from the agency for the initial presentation, annual contract renewal presentations and multi-client social events. The rest of the time, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a part-time account executive, whose talents and experience will be a direct reflection of the size of your account, the money you spend with them.


2. The Regional Agency: One or two steps down in all ways from the big boys.


3. Small Local Agency: Will not have the talent or experience to deal with the many programs you may need or want to implement, especially PR designed to get you exposure.

Dealing With Full Service Agencies:

In working for the two largest agencies in the world and one regional agency, I want you to know how dealing with them really works. Whether you hire a large agency with hundreds or even thousands of employees, or a medium or small sized agency, everything still goes through the account executive they assign to your account via an account supervisor who (on and off) rides shotgun over him. It is the job of the account executive (also called an account manager) and occasionally his supervisor, to…

  1. Learn your business, your goals and budgets.
  2. Communicate your needs to a team the agency assigns you. You don’t pick them, the agency does. You wouldn’t know who to pick anyway. And a small account does not get their big hitters.
  3. Oversee this team’s progress, get them back in line when they stray off target, and stray they will, on a time sheet with your name on it. And be sure, everyone logs on your time sheet every day.
  4. Approve or edit their work on your behalf, again on your nickel.
  5. Present to you and sell hard, the agencies work product, mostly in the interest of the sale.
  6. Integrate your feedback into revisions and hopefully disagree when you’re wrong –something that is inherently difficult for an agency account man to do; it’s much easier to sell you what you want.
  7. Implement the approved plans.
  8. Monitor the programs and their effects towards your goals.
  9. Recommend ongoing changes.
  10. Evaluate the results against the expenditure and goals.

In other words, no matter how big or small the agency is, all of your input goes into the agency through one man, your assigned account executive, all of the direction to the agency personnel ultimately comes from him, all of the agency work product is approved or disapproved by him or his supervisor and all of the work is funneled to you through him and initially implemented by him. No matter how big or successful an agency is, you’re only going to get out of them, what this account executive is capable of understanding, explaining, appreciating and managing.

And, as far as the creative product goes, I believe that advertising is supposed to produce sales, not just win awards, a simple fact that sometimes eludes the creative types at agencies. This only becomes a problem for you, the client, when the account manager gets dazzled by his own creative team’s enthusiasm for their work product and forgets about the goal. Unfortunately, this happens too often. Sales go down, the agency gets fired, the creative team gets fired, they pull their awards off the wall, go across the street, re-hang them and it starts all over again.

Makes you think you should be interviewing account men and not agencies, doesn’t it. It should.