Should Advertising Agencies Be Called Advertising Agencies?
Should Advertising Agencies Be Called Advertising Agencies?
Should Agencies Be Called Agencies?
by
Mike Carlton
What’s In a Name?
Juliet, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet proclaimed; “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
At a recent management meeting the American Association of Advertising Agencies announced that henceforth it would be officially called by its long-standing acronym, the “4As.”
In a stroke, the venerable industry association, which since 1917 has ably represented the interests of advertising agencies, was removing the words “advertising agencies” from its name.
Is this rebranding just an effort to simplify its handle? Or is it a reflection of more profound underlying changes in the marketplace?
Has the name “advertising agency” lost its relevance? And if so, by what name should they be called?
Definitions
My 30 year old desk dictionary has this definition:
“An advertising agency is a business that creates and issues advertising for its clients.”
That’s it. Pretty simple. And probably quite appropriate for its time.
Today, Wikipedia has an expanded definition:
“An advertising agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotion.”
And then, continuing under the heading of Advertising Agencies, Wikipedia goes on for six more pages defining; Full-Service Agencies, Limited-Service Agencies, Specialist Advertising Agencies, Interactive Agencies, Search Engine Agencies, Social Media Agencies and a bunch of more kinds of agencies.
But, perhaps not surprisingly, they keep Public Relations Firms, Direct Marketing Firms, Branding Agencies, Design Firms each under their own separate headings. Not connected at all to the Advertising Agency heading.
And what’s more, Wikipedia does not have separate listings at all for Market Communications Firms, Integrated Agencies, Digital Advertising Agencies, Creative Collaboratives, Idea Factories or Marketing Architecture Firms.
(note: if you use one of these descriptions you might want to consider staking out that real estate on Wikipedia).
Obviously, agencies have a big category mess on their hands. No, maybe it is more like a category train wreck. What was quite clear and simple a few decades ago has fragmented in to a whole bunch of disparate and often overlapping pieces.
No wonder there is confusion. The words “advertising agency” once represented a precise category. But it sure doesn’t look that way today.
The Difference between DO and HOW
That raises the age-old question; Are we best known by what we DO (what we accomplish) or by HOW we do it? (the tools used)
The answer to this question is important because there is a strong common thread among all of the above businesses in what they DO (what they accomplish).
But there is great difference in HOW they do it (the tools used).
The Common Thread
All of these firms (and their categories and sub-categories) exist for just one reason; To influence the behaviors of consumers (B to B as well) for the benefit of the client marketer, the consumer herself and society as a whole. That’s it.
When you scratch through it all, every one of these businesses are fundamentally in the behavior modification business. That’s the only reason why marketers pay for their services.
So ultimately, all are in the same big category. It just doesn’t have a generally accepted name.
Advertising Agency Etymology
That leads to the questions; How did the name advertising agency come to be? And how has its meaning evolved?
Let’s start with the word “agent.” From a legal point of view an agent is:
“One who is authorized to act on behalf of another (called the principal) to create a legal relationship with a third party.”
An agency is, of course, a business organization which performs on a generally larger and more complex scale the practical and legal functions of an agent.
So, where did agencies come from?
The first advertising agencies started about 150 years ago. They began as sellers of advertising space for newspapers (and a few early magazines) – really the only commercial media available at that time. And newspapers paid agencies a commission for selling that space and assuming advertiser credit risk.
They were in fact and in deed sales agents of newspaper advertising, thus being known descriptively and accurately as “advertising agencies.”
Creating the Ads
But there was