As Ad Mega Merger Mania Continue – Clients Believe Medium Size Agencies Do The Best Work.

37% of Advertising Clients who spend $5MM or more believe that medium sized agencies are likely to do the best work. While only 9% of those same clients believe that a mega-agency can do the best – down from 11% in 1998. These results were released by Harris Interactive, as part of its 2001 Advertising Agency Reputation Study.

The Harris Interactive Advertising Agency Reputation Study is conducted bi-annually with the sole purpose of enabling agencies to compare current positions with other agencies, respond to specific needs articulated by their customers, and develop an understanding of advertisers’ views on major issues facing the industry such as:

Importance of specific qualities in evaluating an agency

Use and usefulness of search consultants

Use and experience of performance based compensation

Opinions on agencies offering strategic communications advice

Feelings on agency size and effectiveness based on size

The impact of the Internet on advertising budget allocation and agency selection

The study found the top five attributes used to evaluate a potential agency were:

See ‘More Images’ above for chart.

“Creative is still king, with over 70% of the respondents saying that creative work that is effective in selling product is ‘absolutely essential’ in importance when evaluating an agency. This basic truth still holds: excellent creative attracts excellent clients,” said Judy Ricker, vice president of marketing communications research at Harris Interactive.

The use of performance based compensation remained flat from 1998 with only 27% of those surveyed saying that they used it. Also flat was the utilization of search consultants – with 10% claiming their use. However, the influence of those consultants leaped with 56% of those who used consultants, saying the consultant influenced their decision to switch or work with a previously unknown agency – up from only 26% in 1998.

Methodology

Started 36 years ago, Harris Interactive Advertising Agency Reputation Study measures the attitudes of senior marketing, advertising, and brand executives in a cross-section of the nation’s advertisers. The study reveals how the top agencies rank against each other in 30 important criteria:

Which agency produces the most effective creative?

Which agency is considered the most careful with its client’s money?

Which agency is thought to have the most responsive account group?

The study was conducted using traditional telephone and Internet-based questioning. All respondents worked in the advertising and/or marketing fields and had decision making or influencing involvement in the hiring and firing of ad agencies. The universe for the phone sample included all advertisers in the Adweek Client/Brand database with expenditures of $5 million or more. The majority of these advertisers were managers responsible for marketing or advertising specific brands. There are 1,564 brands marketed by about 986 marketers (companies). Executives at a particular marketer may work on more than one of the brands in the sample, thus there are over 7,000 executive/brand combinations (each represented by a label). The number of unique executive names in the sample is considerably less.

To view the public data from this study, please point your browser to:

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/downloads/IndustryInsights2001.ppt.