Great ads solve advertising problems. Great ad agencies solve business problems.
Not my words, but those of Lee Clow, the advertising guru behind the phenomenally successful Apple brand. Itʼs a sentiment I agree with–the idea that our charge is to help the client navigate an intensely competitive, often confusing sea of commerce.
Hereʼs another way to put it: Good advertising is one thing, good advertising that actually works is often something entirely different.
Our job is to help nurture that part of the conversation which begins and ends with the sentence “Why are we doing this?” Itʼs one of the reasons ad agencies exist–to provide the client with hard-to-come-by perspective, void of politics, board room pressures and personal bias.
Note that our job is to nurture the conversation, not dominate it. The client will always know more about their business than we do, no matter how many web pages we visit or competitors we study.
If commerce is a sea, then we should do our best to temper the wind gusts we ad folks are too often known for.
Only then will we all catch that perfect sail.