Advertising and Company Vision


There was a time when advertising CEOs had very close relationships and personal, trusted, valued relationships with the CEOs of their clients. This was in the early days of advertising when advertising was an extremely powerful tool in the ’50s and the ’60s and even before that. It enabled clients to build their brands and their businesses in strong ways. The brand became a franchise mechanism. It was a new and powerful tool – television created a new and powerful tool. A relationship existed at that level and has evolved over time.

As new tools came about, and as new types of problems and complexities occurred, clients broadened their views of what kinds of solutions they needed; I think agencies might have gotten a little bit stuck on just advertising solutions. CEOs of client companies brought in more people, and the relationship that was very unique and special between the senior management of a client organization and an advertising agency was not as revered anymore. There were other people in the mix – people who are trying to control the split of dollars between the various media types. However, there is one thing that advertising does and will continue to do better than anything else: Advertising can drive a company’s vision or at least capture the vision in a way that people can embrace. By definition, advertising has to be extremely simple and clear. We take enormous quantities of data and we turn it into 27 words in a TV spot or three words in a tagline, and that has to represent the essence and the possibilities of a brand in a consumer’s life. If you write a direct marketing piece, it’s got copy – a lot of copy. If you write a press release, it has a lot of words, and then the media picks up on it and editorializes on it. If you do something on the Internet, it has all kinds of different elements. In advertising, you are forced to simplify down to the core essence of what the idea is and why it’s important to you. That is extremely critical. You look to leaders to say where they are going and what it is all about. If the leader delivers a page, you’re lost. If they deliver a sound bite or the right sentence, you know exactly where you’re headed. That’s what advertising can do. That is why in many cases advertising is the thing that captures the vision of a brand and then becomes an expression of it, and you will find a lot of other communications unifying under that thought and identity.




The Art of Advertising. CEOs from BBDO, Mullin Advertising & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands
The Art of Advertising: CEOs from Mullen Advertising, Marc USA, Euro RSCG & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands (Inside the Minds Series)
ISBN: 1587622319
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 68

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