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Author Martin Mayer, in his new book, Whatever Happened to Madison Avenue?, describes how the agencies have been stripped of their power and influence. "What has been devastating the advertising industry," he writes, "is the growing feeling among advertisers and retailers that the selling job should be done predictably through the weight of money rather than speculatively through the employment of imagination." As a result, Mayer has said, agencies are in danger of turning into little more than "vendors competing on price." Stanton of Simmons Research agrees: "Agencies are being used like travel agents, who work to get the client the cheapest flight and get paid less for their pains."
Most agency chiefs, though, take issue with that grim view. Says Leo Burnett chairman Hal ("Cap") Adams: "It still comes down to the impact and value of ideas. Good ideas will attract support, and really good ideas are irresistible."
That is certainly true; but there have been too few of those good ideas around lately. Advertising Age, the industry's leading journal, was so disturbed by the quality of Madison Avenue's work during the past year that in March it declined to award its vaunted "Agency of the Year" prize for the first time since it began the practice in 1973. Said the editors: "While there was a goodly amount of clever recycling around, conceptual innovations were in short supply." Ad Age concluded, probably correctly, that the main reason for the relative dullness of recent work by agencies was that clients had been harassing them so much during a tough business cycle. The good news: as the economy begins to improve, both clients and agencies will be under less suffocating pressure.
Meanwhile, the stampede of account switching has put a premium on the industry's creative talent. Gordon Bowen, a top creative executive at Ogilvy & Mather, hardly raised an eyebrow last week when six dozen roses were delivered to him as he ate breakfast in a Manhattan restaurant. Rival agency McCann-Erickson sent the bouquet as part of its campaign to persuade him to switch shops. As the principal executive on the restless American Express account, Bowen conceivably could leave home with the business. If that were to happen, $300 worth of roses would go down in advertising history as one very creative and cost-effective idea.