Fundamentals of an Advertising Agency Service

Let us now attempt to describe the service a capable advertising agent will render to a typical client :

1. He will add thorough gen­eral knowledge of selling methods and markets to his client's specific knowledge of his individual market and product.
2. He will recognize when data at hand are insufficient for basing accurate conclusions, and will know how to supplement these data by original investigations and trade research among dealers or consumers.
3. He will recommend suitable means of securing distribution, of handling salesmen, of winning dealers' co-operation, of cownter­acting or stopping unfair compe­tition, of stabilizing and broaden­ing consumer demand, of condens­ing unwieldy lines, of improving packages, etc.
4. He will know, or know how to find out, whether the time, the season, the market conditions, the dealers' attitude, all are favorable for the start of an advertising cam­paign.
5. He will suggest new markets, new uses of the product by con­sumers, and new products and ways of merchandising them, if such changes are necessary.
6. He will know with great ex­actness the merits of various media in relation to a given product; the value of various styles of copy, characters of art work, sizes of space, and lines of reasoning.
7. He will know the proper cost of the most suitable work, the plates and all other material en­tering into the preparation of ad­vertising copy.
8. He will know the lowest pos­sible cost of space in magazines, newspapers, billboards, car cards, trade-papers, or whatever media are to be used for the campaign. He will be in a position to buy this space at as favorable prices as any­one can obtain.
9. He will prepare in his own organization a complete recom­mendation as to advertising media to be used, together with illustra­tions, copy, plates, and finally, fin­ished advertisements, including catalogs, trade literature, and other printed matter incidental to the most effective use of the adver­tising by the manufacturer's sales organization.
10. He will forward copy to the media selected and after its ap­pearance will "check" the maga­zines, newspapers, and trade pub­lications, seeing that the space paid for is delivered, that the advertise­ments are inserted in schedule order, that they are given good position in the publication and that they are well printed.
11. He will render to his client carefully itemized monthly bills, showing exactly what moneys have been expended.

Any advertising agency that falls short of this service is not a modern agency, and is not deliver­ing the type of service which is most successful today. Any manu­facturer who pays an advertising agency for service which does not comprehend all of the fundamen­tals here outlined is paying for more than he gets.

Limitations of an Advertising Agency Service

There is no magic about adver­tising agency service. Few adver­tising agents know, or ever can learn, the individual business of a client as well as the client himself knows it.

On the other hand, few manufac­turers can have the agency's first­hand contact with hundreds of dif­ferent selling methods, or develop the agency's corresponding breadth of vision. The very intensity of a manufacturer's specialization leaves him too little time to study and profit by the successful meth­ods of other manufacturers. If positions were reversed, this broad, general knowledge of the adver­tising agent would be out of place. The manufacturer needs his in­tensive specialization to further his business. The advertising agent needs his broad, general knowledge of selling. The joint efforts of a competent manufacturer and an equally competent advertising agent accomplish the purpose of combining a high degree of spe­cialization in the manufacturer's chosen field with a broad understanding of the most modern sell­ing methods.

How to Judge an Advertising Agency

The president of a firm which spends several hundreds of thou­sands of dollars a year for adver­tising, which we prepare and place, said recently, at the end of a con­ference upon one of his products: "I used to think that all this talk handed out by advertising agency representatives was bunk,—and a lot of it is, because I have placed business through two other adver­tising agents and I have tried plac­ing it direct, but I never made much progress until I employed the S. H. Cross Company six years ago. I feel now that I could have saved a good deal of money, be­sides having my business further along if I had met you five years sooner. In the interest of good advertising there should be some way whereby a business man can check up advertising agents and determine with greater accuracy the one best adapted to serving him."

We told him that there are a great many advertising agents in this country, many of whom are trying earnestly to serve their cli­ents efficiently, but that since ad­vertising agency service has devel­oped into such a many-sided, com­plex work, it is difficult to get just the right combination of ability to make an efficient organization. We discussed the matter for some time, during which we gave this client much information regarding adver­tising agencies, and he finally in­sisted that if we would publish just what we had told him, it would be of great assistance to many manu­facturers

Advertising Agency Service is Personal

Like the practice of medicine, advertising agency service is per­sonal. An advertising agent must have learned his business by years of experience in advertising, else he gets his knowledge at the ex­pense of his clients. He must be able to reason correctly from par­ticular icases to a principle, and from the principle to another case. He must know his limitations, as expressed in terms of his own ex­perience and that of his organiza­tion, and forbear to seek business which he cannot handle to the ad­vertiser's best interest.

Although personal thought, ef­fort and contact play an enor­mously important part in really efficient advertising agency serv­ice, it is, nevertheless, true that organization is almost equally important. The advertising agent who attempts to combine in his own person all of the ramifications of modern agency service is as ineffi­cient and as undesirable from the manufacturer's viewpoint as the agent who, because of his own lack of experience, attempts merely to operate an advertising agency on a cut-and-dried plan by hiring oth­ers to do all the work.

At the head of every advertis­ing agency that gives modern service in this country will be found a man of ripe business ex­perience, supplemented by thor­ough general knowledge of the best advertising agency practice and organization. Such a man has the knowledge to select and the power to attract men whose indi­vidual experience will reinforce his own.