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.

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 ¨Csomething 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.