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How an ad agency blew its OWN advertising budget

July 2, 2009

Going on vacation from the great state of Pennsylvania to the icy cold north commonly called Maine, I had to drive an RV though a small town called New York City. During my “hold my breath I need to get out of here” drive I noticed something that blew my mind. An advertising agency that was forced to take out billboards to promote themselves. The billboard in question is a multi-thousand dollar a month one on a major busy highway right outside the city in New Jersey heading into New York.

I took a rather unclear photo of it from a cell phone camera zipping by at about 60mph… so of course it’s not perfect … but you can make it out none-the-less. Feel free to click on the image to get it full size….

adagency

I personally have multiple problems with this.

1 - The first being the need to take out billboards for an advertising agency. Seldom do advertising agencies go that route, it’s too costly and very untargeted. Advertising Agencies are not a business to consumer market.. they are business to business… so out of the million people that view that board over the course of a month… only a handful of them might be their target market.. and out of those handful…. all of them are wasting their money right now with another agency.

2 - Most C-Level employees don’t search for an advertising agency this way. Most of them use the old boys (and girls) network… Ask Julie Roehm how ad agencies are selected, the only difference between what she did… and what most others have done.. is that she got caught.

3 - The other sizeable group of C-Level decision makers go the “CYA” route, and hire an external consulting firm such as Pile and Company so when things go bad, they can point fingers at the firm and when things go good, they can credit themselves for hiring the “right consulting firm”.

4 - The last group (a small but growing group) searches online, reads blogs, spends time understanding their prior work.. We at the tribble ad agency (a news outlet about ad agencies, but not one ourselves) receive anywhere between 4-6 inquires a month, These people searched the word “ad agency” in Google and literally just sent out an RFP… with the hopes we would forward it to who we feel makes the most sense to them. When we question them on why they sent the RFP to us, the response was nearly identical. “you guys see Ad Agency dirt all day long, clearly rank for the term in Google… so you know who is good and who isn’t”.

No where does a billboard come into this mix. They are not selling cars, they are selling a B2B service… and an expensive one at that…

What a poor choice in my opinion…..

Written by TheFounder · Filed Under Advertising Agency News 


Comments

  • Joseph

    Although I could not make out the name of the agency, I know of a second one in the same area that is doing the same thing. I can’t understand if it’s a NJ thing. However, I agree with you 100%.

  • Joseph

    Although I could not make out the name of the agency, I know of a second one in the same area that is doing the same thing. I can’t understand if it’s a NJ thing. However, I agree with you 100%.

  • http://sell.businessandadvertising.com/how-an-ad-agency-blew-its-own-advertising-budget/ How an ad agency blew its OWN advertising budget | Selling and Advertising Articles

    [...] 1 - The first being the need to take out billboards for an advertising agency. Seldom do advertising agencies go that route, it”s too costly and very untargeted. Advertising Agencies are not a business to consumer market..more [...]

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