Yes. Why DON'T ad agencies advertise?

My morning started off the right way with a post from Stephen Lynch at the Results Group. Stephen's post is Eat your Own Dogfood! Why don't ad agencies advertise?

IF ADVERTISING is so effective, why don't ad agencies advertise?

If your menu's so tasty, why aren't you dining from it?

Woof.

Comments

[Mark Silver]

Duh! Great post- thanks for pointing this one out, Zane. Kinda obvious, and all the more glaring once brought into the light of day. :)

[Sean D'Souza]

To find out the answer to this question, you have to go back about 80 years, to the book 'My life in advertising', by Claude Hopkins. Now what Claude said, was that he went to the owner of the then largest agency in the world and asked him:
"So why don't we test ads?"

And the answer was:"Because then the advertiser may figure out that the advertising doesn't work."

Well...that kind of answers your question. Most advertising doesn't work. And education does work. Which of course means we have to do some digging. And if you do some digging, you'll find that agencies do advertise(or have advertised).

If you look up Ogily and Mather, you'll find that during David Ogilvy's time, they ran 6 full page ads (and I mean full page) on how to 'advertise' and they were full-blown educational pieces.

The net result?
They were reasonably flooded with clients interested in their work. So yeah, advertising agencies do advertise. But the usual ads don't get results as much as the educational ads.

Sean D'Souza
http://www.psychotactics.com
(Ex-Leo Burnett copywriter)