III. Client relations and the negotiated meanings of advertising

3.1 The importance of negotiations and workshops

The world of advertising, like much of human activity, is socially constructed. While some cast advertising as a cold calculated monolith that dictates consumer choice or coerces consumers with brand manipulation, advertising can be presented as a hot-blooded activity performed by a range of people. The ads that arrive on television, outdoor billboards, radio, in print magazines or on the Internet, but the way they get there is through carefully staged social interaction between an advertising agency and its corporate client. In the world of art production, marketing specialist has shown how a network of people cooperates in various ways to produce art.

In a similar fashion, discussion continues along the lines of two marketers who contend that the world of advertising must be treated as a social process, not a product. The process of ad production is one directed by key members of an agency, not so much at the brand, consumer or even rival agencies, but towards the client. Because the marketing world in which advertising operates is so uncertain and unstable, the value placed on managing impressions and directing human relations is at an all time high. This becomes apparent as this course paper examines the tenuous nature of relations between advertising agencies and their corporate clients and the ways in which agencies attempt to moderate the tension.

Advertising agencies face a number of uncertain elements, any one of which can potentially derail a campaign, or even an agency. At various stages of production ads are shaped by the collective efforts of teams, groups and key individuals who influence others. Agency account planners, account executives and client brand managers develop research ideas; agency teams write the advertising creative brief; copywriters and art directors sketch the ads; media teams then place the ads. This sequence of production, however, is anything but smooth and continuous. It is one that progresses in jumps and starts, from inspirational meetings to setbacks in acquiring music, talent, or the right media placement for a particular ad. Brilliant strategies are created only to be altered later to accommodate the wishes of contentious clients, rushed deadlines or legal restrictions.

Not infrequently, strategies are dropped altogether in the middle of development and new ones taken up. Exacerbating the situation, as two marketers point out, competition among agencies over client accounts is fierce, precisely at a time when client loyalty is at an all time low. In this light, the advertising process reveals more a state of precarious uncertainty than one of calculated precision.

To mitigate this situation, advertising executives attempt to direct and control as much of the interaction with their client as possible. Beyond the multiple daily interactions that service a client’s account, key individuals from the agency join on certain occasions with the client to negotiate the aims, means and direction the advertising should take.

Especially in the early stages of developing ad strategies, concepts about what a brand means, what appeals to consumers and the nature of the competitive marketplace are debated. These occasions are commonly called brainstorming sessions.

Workshops are occasioned by a new relationship with a client, either after winning a pitch or after having been assigned a new business opportunity from an existing client. In both cases, new teams from the advertising agency and corporate client are brought together under, perhaps, the most stressful of expectations. These events are not only explicitly charged with an objective of finding a differentiating insight to drive the brand, target consumer and market position, but also implicitly contribute to assessing the interpersonal dynamics among the personalities assembled. Under such heightened conditions, the art of negotiation takes place.

The brand workshop offers an ideal setting in which to analyze the ways an agency manages strategies in building relationships with its corporate client. An agency must manage information while it seeks to foster affinity so as not to put its client off. To accomplish this an agency faces a particular dilemma or double bind, a concept identified by a specialist in anthropology. On the one hand the agency has to present itself as competent in a service or skill that is perceived by the client to add value. At the same time, an agency places a premium on human chemistry, and so must demonstrate to the client that working together will be amicable, cooperative and mutually beneficial. This presents a challenge to negotiation since it requires one to stand apart as distinct, and yet blend in and show affinity with others [11, p.202].

From an objective viewpoint, the workshop appears to offer an ideal way for an agency and client to collectively identify a position in a highly competitive marketplace. It is also an ideal place for an agency to demonstrate its expertise and knowledge of the client’s brand and consumer. The agency typically does this by bringing out its proprietary tools to position the client’s brand.

Models of the client’s target consumer are constructed, and colorful aggressive language typically circulates in heated discussions about the competition. But while the stated purpose of the workshop is for the agency to gain a closer understanding of the client’s consumer, brand and competition, the true purpose is to convince the client of the value of entering into a union of collaboration and to build relations of affinity. In fact, the proprietary tools demonstrated by the agency and the metaphoric language used to deride the competition, are devices intended to structure relationships and cement loyalties between the agency and client, rather than provide the client strategic direction or enhance their market position.