Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, observed that “more and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around,” and that “clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them.”
“When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around.”
Clients want leadership from their agency. They expect agencies to be ahead of the curve, knowledgeable about new communication technologies and trends that will impact their business. Leadership not partnership. Experts not generalists.
