When clients came to agencies of the past seeking solutions to their problems, the agency would have all of their resources under one umbrella. In other words, one agency did everything. Not that this method was ineffective or anything, as their ways of operation have spurred the greatest ads and executions of all time. Its just that over the years many improvements have led to more efficient systems for servicing clients. Today, their are more than just full service agencies. They offer the four major services that are subsidized now to creative boutiques, media houses, consumer insight groups, and interactive agencies. This narrowly defined structure keeps agencies working synergistically but independent, therefore greater expertise is of each area is the result. Now a days, there are agencies that even tailor their services to specific industries, therefore offering a high level of expertise to a niche client base. You can pretty much say advertisers are pampered by a plethora of services that the current advertising industry offers.
Also, with the birth of account planning/consumer insight in the 80's, agencies are now able to develop a more intellectual understanding of the consumer. Decades ago, where consumer insight did not exist inside the agencies, they were more focused on highlighting the tangible benefits the products offered. These days, account planners provide agencies with valuable knowledge/research regarding the consumer's attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and lifestyles. In result, agencies are aware of the intangible/emotional benefits that certain products deliver to the consumer.
With the integration of media and marketing communications, the opportunities to reach the consumer are endless. The emergence of digital media as a means of advertising, consumers can now be reached virtually anywhere at anytime - a luxury that past agencies never had. How about direct marketing, an extremely efficient way of building a relationship and further understanding the consumer's needs - there was no technology in the past that could support the size of the consumer databases of today.
Nevertheless, all of these improvements couldn't have been possible if we hadn't learned from our predecessors. The innovators of the past paved the way for the industry to grow, and grow it did. Luckily for us, the advertising indsutry has evolved for the greater good.
For all of us future media planners and buyers out there, we'll be thinking of poor Steve in his Leo Burnett days when were punching in data on a pc and letting it do all the dirty work for us. Yeah, we got it easier alright lol.
