During Advertising Week Europe, The Drum ran a panel session with a group of marketing and communications professionals from the little discussed element of the industry, the marketers and PR professionals that promote the agency sector.
On the panel was DigitasLBi international chief marketing office, Gareth Jones, Persuasion Communications founder, Jane Austin, Bhavna Mistry, director of Velvet PR and Hester Bloch, consultant and former global marketing director of AKQA who offered their advice and insight into how best to promote and deal with marketing services agencies.
Here are some of the main insights that panel came back with:
Why are so many marketing and advertising agencies so bad at promoting themselves?
Austin: “We have to be honest with our clients when they have done a bad piece of work in order to sell in that story rather than blow smoke up their arses. That’s why a lot of them do it quite badly.”
Jones: “Everyone is so busy doing work for their clients that they forget to do the same work for themselves. The simple way to do good marketing for an agency is to do good marketing for your clients. Often you see agencies who do amazing work and when it comes to marketing themselves it’s awful. A lot of that is hiring the wrong people into the job and confidence…
Top tips on how to run marketing and communications for agencies
