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No Entry! Beyond This Point
For the well-being of the Brand, Client & Agencies
By Pravin Ojha
C lients exhibit enthusiasm,
hard work, devotion and an
entire range of positive
attitudes, when and where their brand is concerned. Yes! They are more devoted than the advertising people. They want to contribute as much as they can, which is natural. This devotion can sometimes be attributed to the entertaining and exciting nature of the advertising world. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that it is their baby; therefore their possessiveness towards the brand is quite understandable.
Somewhere along this possessiveness lies a silver lining that helps agencies serve the brand with matching enthusiasm and loyalty. After all, agencies are also extra keen on turning products into brands and brands into super brands. But sometimes clients are so much in love with their brands that agencies dare not hurt their feelings by forcing anything on them—even if the agencies feel very strongly about their belief. But, let’s not forget that brands don’t simply flourish on mutually respecting client-agencies relationship, they flourish on right practices. So what can the agencies do or the client not do is the million-dollar question. Since the client-agencies relation extends within the scope of brand communication, the boundary between the two, in relation to communication process must be clearly marked.
Clients and agencies need to forge a partnership in the communication process and this is an undeniable fact. This partnership should not, however, give clients or the agencies the mandate to cross the line where their role in the communication process will look blurred or vague. So, the big idea is to limit client involvement in the communication process. And that’s the tough job. How to do it? How can one ask the client not to think about her baby? But someone has to. There is no way out.
However, my intention is not to answer the how but the why.
Broadly speaking, before deriving any communication, there are two questions that one needs to consider:
1) What to Communicate?
2) How to Communicate?
The client and the agencies require a cohesive effort to answer “What to Communicate?” This is the point where agencies seek critical elements that form the basis for marketing communication such as demographic segmentation, geographic segmentations, industry scenario, market realities, competition etc. The client has a better understanding of all these because they deal with these issues day in and day out. Once the client arms the agency with all these facts and figures, the agency gets a clear vision of what the consumer wants to hear about the brand or rather what the consumers should hear about the brand.
Now the ball is in the agency’s court where it needs to determine “How To Communicate?” For this purpose, agencies should get the freedom of choice because this is the process in which they specialise or at least this is what they are paid to do. If the clients do not do this voluntarily—and most of the time they don’t—the agency needs to stand their ground and show them an otherwise invisible warning that hangs large on a self-respecting client service executive’s face, which says “NO Entry! Beyond This Point”
The client specialises in one aspect of marketing communication while the agencies specialise in the other. The client knows the reality of marketplace, the product, the industry trend and many other information that the agencies may not have access to.
On the other hand the agencies specialise in communication. They understand how and where the target consumers consume any given message. Accordingly, the agency plans its communication and media vehicles.
The perfect mixture of these two related yet distinct components of marketing communication is what I call a perfect and effective ad. Role overplayed either by the agencies or the client creates a “Mess”.
(Ojha is Asst. Account Manager, Advertising Avenues Nepal Ltd.)
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