How many agencies are present today when their client finalizes strategy? On the one hand, clients tend to view communications as a separate, last-mile activity - just another "expense" to be budgeted & controlled. On the other hand, agency executives are firmly focused on billing targets (driven as they are, by stiff competition & diminishing margins). Somewhere in between, strategic inputs from ad agencies have seem to have completely vanished. (Or is that banished?!)

Strategy & Marketing Communications
Business communication is as much a part of corporate strategy as say, new product development or business process outsourcing. But yet, is never granted the same importance.

Everyone accepts that marketing communication is related to business strategy. (In fact, it may be considered as a part of or an extension to business strategy.) With a significant impact on business performance, marketing communications should play an important role in every corporate body. Yet, clients are increasingly treating their agencies on par with other vendors.

The result: most ad agencies including the so-called creative hot shops, are called on to execute plans, rather than contribute in developing them. Yielding at best, gimmicks, bells & whistles, and titillation instead of communication driven by solid strategy!

There are many reasons for this state of affairs. For one, many clients see their agencies as salesmen for "vendor networks". This impression has been reinforced because of the tradition of "agency commission" deemed to be paid by media owners & other vendors. (The switch over to a "fee-based structure" should go a long way in changing this image.)

This could also be one of the reasons why many large clients have moved from the traditional agency-vendor rate negotiations to client-agency-vendor (tripartite) rate negotiations to client-vendor rate negotiations (excluding the agency).

Another reason could be conflict of interests. With large conglomerates owning multiple agency networks, it is likely that different agencies belonging to the same group service competing clients – making it dangerous to share strategy beyond a point!

Whatever the reason, it's a pity because senior agency executives who are well-qualified, and capable of contributing to strategy, rarely get a chance to put their skills to use. Naturally, agencies have come to be known as "execution" specialists, with little say in strategy. Bringing them on par with other vendors who are not involved in the client's business strategy.

Execution seems to have triumphed over strategy!

Maximizing the Number of Gift Items
Typically, the communication between a senior client servicing executive (SCE) and a marketing communications manager (MCM) at the client's end is usually restricted to (immediate) maximization of business (billings).
A typical example of one-to-one communication:
    SCE "About those gift items you mentioned, er, how many pieces do you plan to order?"
    MCM "Not too many."
    SCE "2,000 pieces?"
    MCM "OK"
    SCE "Or shall we order 5,000?"
    MCM "OK"
    SCE "7,000?"
    MCM "That's too many!"
    SCE "Between 5,000 and 7,000 then?"
    MCM "Yes, that would do."
    SCE "Thank you sir, I will arrange to show you the samples tomorrow."

It is a pity that the SCE in the above example would in all likelihood, be capable of much more. The scene is similar even when it comes to media, where more often effort is directed towards justifying media plans, rather than tying media expenditure solidly with business strategy.

On The Board
Many large public corporations follow a practice of having professionally qualified independent Directors on their boards. The idea is to ensure access to appropriate guidance in the respective fields. Independent Directors typically include professionals with domain knowledge in areas relevant to the business. Along with these professionals, one can always find chartered accountants & tax experts on Company Boards.

But there are hardly any large companies that have communication professionals on their boards. (Have you heard of any communications professionals being invited on corporate boards?) Not surprisingly, this is a global trend. As per J.P. Donlon, editor of corporate governance magazine Directorship, the reason is because most CEOs do not accept “communications as an amplification of business strategy - not something separate or apart from it”.

From Tactical Inputs to Skilled Workers
So, why are ad agency professionals hardly invited to strategy sessions? Obviously, somewhere down the line, ad agencies started focusing more on selling & execution (read: billings) rather than strategy. And in the process, their senior staff transformed themselves from providing tactical inputs to skilled workers !