Marketing, Advertising and the Meaning of Integration
Twenty-five years ago almost to the day I sat in the boardroom at the Leo Burnett building on West Wacker, Chicago trying to persuade Cathay Pacific to extend the agency’s relationship with them beyond traditional advertising. At the time Burnett had embarked on a network-wide initiative they called ICS, which was all about trying to access advertisers’ marketing budgets as opposed to limiting themselves to that portion accounted for by advertising. The agency’s case to Cathay encompassed ticket wallets, on-board materials, airport presence, mails, travel agent collateral (remember travel agents?) and even touched on the airline's livery.
There was nothing wrong with this idea in principle. Everything communicates and if everything could be persuaded to say roughly the same thing in the same way then that surely is to the good. We would be taking 2 + 2 and making 5, at least.
Even though it was a long time ago I can remember the client’s reaction to the agency’s pitch as if it were yesterday. In effect he said that yes, he understood the concept; and yes, he bought the fact that a big idea should drive not only all ads but all communication between the airline and its customers, and yes, making 2 + 2 equal 5 would be very nice, but he wanted to make one point ... which was, he had proven partners who designed all collateral material. Why would Burnett do it any better? In fact, why would we be even as good as those he currently worked with?
He concluded that he would consider our proposal if we were at least as good; we didn’t have to be better, just as good and with respect he didn’t really see why one or two frontmen with a title and an ambition would be as good executionally as his current, proven, specialist suppliers.
No one has any problem with the idea of integration; indeed in this complicated world the whole concept is more valuable than ever. But it’s important to look beyond the concept to the execution. Agencies that are very good at one thing -- say, ATL, traditional creative work -- are not necessarily that great at native advertising or social. They might be excellent at more than one discipline, but they are unlikely to be great across the gamut of communication opportunities.
If you’ve sat through a credentials presentation from a PR agency you might well think you’re in a media agency pitch from 10 years ago. The fact that the PR world has discovered audiences and audience and related marketing datasets is great news for the PR industry, but it’s rather old hat for many in the media agency business. You don’t find PR agencies responsible for overall comms strategy.
Similarly, ask a media agency about their PR capabilities and you’ll likely be underwhelmed.
Holding companies and how they work across disciplines, even when they own the practitioners involved, is at best a work in progress (RIP horizontality). When a client talks about integration, he means working with the best talent wherever that talent is housed. When an agency or holding group talk about it they mean: “Give us it all and we’ll make it easy for you.”
Compromising on quality for ease of execution is at the heart of many disappointingly ineffective marketing campaigns.
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Brian Jacobs
Brian Jacobs spent more than 35 years in advertising, media, and research agencies, including spells at Leo Burnett (UK, EMEA, International media director), Carat International (managing director), Universal McCann (EMEA director) and Millward Brown (execut…
